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Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Nancy K. Araki Interview II
Narrator: Nancy K. Araki
Interviewer: Tom Ikeda
Location: Los Angeles, California
Date: July 19, 2011
Densho ID: denshovh-anancy-02-0011

<Begin Segment 11>

TI: Another leadership group that you got involved in was CINO. So tell me about, again, give me some background on that organization first and then we'll talk about that.

NA: Well, I didn't know this until I got involved with it, it's California Intercollegiate Nisei Organization, and apparently it was a group that was started before the war and it was mainly to get all of the Nisei collegiates together, I guess another way of networking and all. And I knew it existed up and down California, but when I got involved was, I think it was my sophomore year, and CINO was gonna do its conference, and I don't know if it was the revival conference -- at least it was the first up in the Bay Area and it was at UC Berkeley. And I guess they all had queen contests and all, so San Francisco State dug down deep and they said, "Nancy, you got to run."

TI: So how does that work? When San Francisco State wants to run someone for queen, is that, yeah, how do they, how do they decide?

NA: [Laughs] Well, San Francisco State, we, the campus was relatively new by the time I got there. The institution's old because it was downtown San Francisco and then they built this new facility, campus out in the cold, foggy Lake Merced area, and I think it was in its second year of, after it opened that I entered San Francisco State. And it was like there's a gathering of people and they're, pretty soon ended up being a kind of an informal grouping of college students. And the age group, as I said, there was some of us fresh out of high school and then there were the ones that maybe had had some college before they went into the military and now they're coming back to finish up, and then there were others who were there before we even got there, so there was this kind of mixture of age group as well.

TI: And so every college kind of had their queen contestant?

NA: Yeah.

TI: And what would it mean to be the queen of CINO? I mean, so they picked --

NA: I have no idea. [Laughs]

TI: -- they pick one, right, from all the campuses?

NA: Yeah, and supposedly it was based on the service that you give the community and your, how active you are on campus, and a whole bunch of things like that.

TI: So was it anything like the queen contest today where, stage, they ask you a question, you answer, things like that?

NA: No, it was pretty much a judge. There was no bathing suit or all the, but you were required -- oh yeah, I guess we had to, there was an interview, so obviously we had suits and all, our own suits, and then I guess there was the ball, so we all had to have our ball gowns. And that's where the, I just remember the judges asking questions and you answering, and then next thing you know you had to go change to your ball gowns and have the ball, and then comes this announcement who's the queen. Not me. But then --

TI: And what would the expectations be for the queen?

NA: I don't know. To tell you the truth, I don't know, because it isn't like Nisei Week where then you have to go, you have all these arrangements and go across states even to support the other contests and all. This was just California. I'm assuming the person has to show up at the next conference, or convention. But at this part somebody put my name in to run for the state secretary of CINO, and somehow I won. [Laughs] Without me even knowing my name was in there, so I now --

TI: And what's the role of secretary of CINO?

NA: It's to support the president of CINO and to ensure that notes are taken. You know, it's all the secretarial kind of stuff.

TI: But an officer of the organization. I mean, you had...

NA: That's exactly, the officer of CINO. And we had people, if I could recall now... it's been a long time. The president was somebody from Berkeley. He was Berkeley. I was secretary from San Francisco State. Treasurer was from down in Fresno somewhere, then there's two regional reps, or three regional reps or something like that, and we had an advisor who was from southern California.

TI: So I'm curious, if you took a snapshot of the people who were active in CINO back then, whatever happened to these people? So these are Japanese Americans in college, active with CINO, what...

NA: Well, that'd be an interesting thing. I often wonder what happened to some of these folks because our, our cabinet was the one that decided that we're going to have to disband CINO because we were exclusive to just Japanese. We're just going through this whole civil rights movement in the United States; we cannot be against others, so as CINO stands should be disbanded. If we then could open it up, then we should reconvene. That was our big -- and of course, that means the next CINO conference, which is in Los Angeles, and this was all proposed and all and argued well enough so that the organization was disbanded.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.