<Begin Segment 15>

SY: Can you just describe... because if you could take us back to that early '70s.

HK: Yeah, we got caught up... the class provided the impetus for what they called ethnic studies, and it was a big movement, but I think it was an awakening not only for all the minorities, the African Americans, the Latinos, Native Americans, and then of course for Asian Pacific Americans. It was an awakening about who we are, our identity, our self, sense of self, our ego development, and developing our communities. Before, others defined who we are... well, we said that's okay for a while, but we went to identify ourselves who we are, we want to define ourselves and create our own communities so that we become empowered as individuals and as a community. And so that was a big thrust in the movement, and it caught a wind, so we had marches and rallies and of course this is still Vietnam era time, the Civil Rights Movement, so all that came together to give further impetus to our movement. And so we got pretty excited about community development and community service and identifying ourselves.

SY: And was it difficult getting this Asian American Studies program together? How exactly did that happen?

HK: Well, it wasn't real difficult for us at Pasadena City College. Again, we were fortunate in ethnic studies that a lot of our road was paved with some previous work from African Americans and Latinos. At Pasadena City College they had already developed those programs, not as large as it is now, but so we kind of got in on the tail end of that, so on the coattails of African Americans and Latinos we came in and we didn't have to twist the arms of the college. Said, "Hey, you have African American studies, you have Latino studies, it's very appropriate because there's a growing Asian population in the San Gabriel and San Gabriel Valley area, you need to have Asian Pacific American classes." So it was a strong rationale for it, and they already had precedent with the other groups, so we didn't have to fight for a rationale for why we wanted to come in with Asian Pacific American studies. So they allowed us to start in, I think this was in 1972. One of the early community colleges to really establish a program, and so we just started one class but eventually now it's about four or five classes. We have the history, sociology, psychology, literature, and I think even the philosophy now, so it's really developed over the years.

SY: And who were some of the early people that you were involved with?

HK: Well, I helped provide the impetus initially, but eventually we were able to bring in some part time people. And there were some notable people, we had some great people come in largely from UCLA. UCLA's Asian American Studies Program was really developing nicely and they had some very strong people who were coming out of their program. So we hired some of those part timers, and some of them were, look, Akemi Kikumura was one of our part timers. Judy Chu who is now a U.S. congresswoman was one, and she was out of UCLA as well. And we had several others from UCLA, so we had some really good people come in and help us out and we still do. We bring in people, we have a couple of full time people now, tenure track people, and we utilize now maybe three or four part timers, adjunct faculty. So for a community college we developed a pretty decent program in Asian Pacific American studies.

SY: That's wonderful.

HK: Of course, part of it is also the demographical shifts in the San Gabriel Valley. I mean, it's incredible now how the Asian presence in the San Gabriel Valley, particularly among Chinese. When I started at Pasadena City College, this was back in 1978, Asian Pacifics made up only about four or five percent of the student body. Today it's almost a third, so it's a reflection of our pulling students in from the San Gabriel Valley, so that's added to the growth and development of our program.

SY: But at the time, maybe when you started, then you came up with the idea for an Asian American studies program you were really getting input from people all over Los Angeles.

HK: Yeah, because we had made these contacts. What's also interesting is that the first class that we taught was called The Sociology of the Asian American. I helped coordinate that, but I had a lot of support from the JACL chapter. It is called the Greater Pasadena Area Chapter of JACL, and in preparation for our... we agree that we would all jointly teach the class. So we broke it down into different units, segments, and we had members of our Greater Pasadena Area Chapter take on responsibilities for the different units. So they helped teach the units as they came up, so my task was the coordinator so just to kind of pull it all together.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.