<Begin Segment 28>

SY: And what was your involvement with the Gardena Pioneer Project?

GN: We started that organization, and it was mainly to help the Issei, or some of the older Nisei, but mostly the Issei, for those who didn't have social security. And many of them didn't want to go on welfare, so we provided recreation programs for them as well as going on, like the hanami trip, cherry picking, taking them to arboretum.

SY: So, and that just came out of --

GN: And then you had a lot of young people, we were able to engage a lot of young people with the Pioneer Project.

SY: And that was just out of nothing, then, you started this, this group for seniors kind of.

GN: Well, the way it happened was Coral Foundation had a program, a graduate program to get your Master's degree, and they had a process that you had to go through and they were having problems retaining people. What it is is that you'll get, you get a graduate degree from Occidental College, but you have, at that time they made it a requirement that you got to sign some commitment to teach in inner city schools for five years 'cause they were finding people getting their graduate degree and they'll teach one year and they leave. So anyway, I applied and I didn't make it. And I was upset because here they have all these people who grew up in the middle class area and they get this degree and they didn't, they haven't figured out a way to try to retain people because I felt that they didn't know how to construct their process to get people that's gonna be committed. And so, like in my case, I grew up in the barrio and inner city area, and that's what I wanted to do. So anyway, at that time Jim Matsuoka and Mo got involved --

SY: Mo Nishida.

GN: Yeah. We're, we sent a letter to Coral Foundation and, you know, we're ghosts here. You can't even find the right people, people who grew up in the barrio and inner city, and you select people from the middle class area who have no background in teaching or growing up in those kind of areas and you got to get them sign some paper. So then they wanted me to get involved in the interview process and be an interviewer.

SY: The Coral Foundation wanted you to?

GN: Yeah.

SY: Wow.

GN: And that's, and it was at that time Mo suggested that I help Karen Chimori create the Gardena Pioneer Project for the seniors, and so that was in 1969 that I started doing that.

SY: I see. And you just said no to the Coral Foundation, left that behind?

GN: Yeah.

SY: Interesting. I wonder if that changed their, their policy or not.

GN: I don't know.

SY: So this senior, how long were you, then, with this Pioneer Project? It was strictly --

GN: From '69 to, I would say, around maybe 1981 or so.

SY: A long time, and you volunteered your time.

GN: Yeah, and we used to have meetings at our house in the beginning. And then my younger brother Tosh got involved, and so they started having meetings at his apartment.

SY: And this was an offshoot of the Japanese Cultural, in Gardena, the Japanese Cultural Institute? Or it's completely separate?

GN: No, completely separate.

SY: But it was sort of --

GN: So we would raise money and we would get buses to go on these different trips. We would also have a health fair at the, actually at the JCI, so people would get preliminary medical checkups.

SY: I see. And this was all volunteer.

GN: Yeah, all volunteer.

SY: And did you have a committee, or was it just you and Carolyn?

GN: No, there were group people, we were able to recruit people to join the Gardena Pioneer Project, the younger ones that would actually do the legwork with us.

SY: Wow. So that got you interested in going into more community kinds of things.

GN: Yeah.

<End Segment 28> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.