<Begin Segment 19>

SY: So did you feel that having lived in Pasadena for a number of years right before that happened, that the area... Pasadena area had some sort of contribution other than your JACL group?

HK: Pasadena does have a Japanese American... small Japanese American... there were probably about four hundred families there. And we helped with the Pasadena Unified School District, our chapter again the Greater Pasadena, we helped develop units to be taught in an eleventh grade history class in high schools. A unit on the Japanese Americans and Japanese American incarceration, the camp experience, because we got feedback that not a whole lot was being done to teach about this experience. Maybe some short little paragraph in a book, but to expand on that and to see the larger issues of human rights, civil rights, Bill of Rights.

SY: This must have been... when did this happen?

HK: Late '60s.

SY: Late '60s?

HK: Yeah, as early as that because we got the Pasadena City College going in 1972, so I would say late '60s we began working with the unified school district, the Pasadena Unified School District about helping teach about Japanese American incarceration in U.S. History classes in the eleventh grade. So we were finally, just by pushing on this, able to incorporate, and we helped develop that unit on Japanese Americans. So we used that curriculum information which they used when they taught about our experience to their U.S. History classes.

SY: So there was quite an active movement then in Pasadena?

HK: Fairly, fairly. Yeah, we had to kind of galvanize the troops to some degree.

SY: And how did you do that? Did you do it through church groups?

HK: It was with our JACL chapter. We worked with a church group, the Buddhist church and the local Presbyterian Christian church, and then some community groups as well. And we thought it was important and we still do, to work closely with African American groups and Latino groups, and so we can work collectively. We would have more influence and power by working together. So we worked on these coalitions with these other ethnic groups as well, and I think that really helped to give us some more impetus for what we were trying to do. I guess they would say there were power in numbers so that was certainly true. So I guess it was just kind of a growing awareness for all of us together, ourselves, the JACL Greater Pasadena Area Chapter, the members of that group, the core group, and then some members of the community. So we kind of grew together from that experience.

SY: Amazing. So this obviously took a toll sort of in terms of your time. Were you working?

HK: I was working full time, but for me this is a priority because it was of great interest to me and an important issue. So again, I'm not alone. Without this other core group of twelve to fifteen people, we all felt some of the same things. So we were willing to put in a lot of our own time, our own energy to help develop these areas because it was important to us and we felt to our community as well.

SY: And with this core group is it still --

HK: We're still there and we're not quite as active as we were 'cause the issues are different now, so we were not as active in terms of daily things, monthly things, but whenever an occasion arises, we rally the troops and appear before the city council or make statements before community groups, write letters to the editor to make a point. So the most recent thing was now we have established Fred Korematsu Day in Pasadena, and we had to go there and appear before the city council and provide the rationale for why we think it's important to have Fred Korematsu Day in our school district and in our community. So they approved, they agreed, and so we're now working on how best to accomplish that to honor Fred Korematsu on Fred Korematsu Day.

SY: So there's still a good core?

HK: Yeah, so the issues are there whenever something comes up that we want to rally our group, then we'll make phone calls and emails and okay, now we got to come together and work on this issue. So that seems to be our modus operandi now is we rally around issues as they come up.

SY: Amazing. And there's also a strong Quaker presence in Pasadena?

HK: Yes, I think we've talked about this before, but a woman named Esther Takei Nishio was recruited by a group of Quakers in Pasadena, a very active group, and they were very strong on human rights, civil rights. And one gentleman was Hugh Anderson who was particularly active in that group, and they felt it was time for a test case to challenge the executive orders to leave California or be incarcerated in the internment camps. So they were able to somehow recruit Esther Nishio, Esther Takei Nishio from Amache in Colorado. And so they went to Amache and talked with Esther, and she was only like eighteen, nineteen years old and she agreed, amazing. And she's not even from the Pasadena area originally, she's more from the west side towards Santa Monica. And she agreed to be a test case, and so she was allowed to come to return, not return, but come to Pasadena as a student to enroll at Pasadena City College. So again the Quakers played a key role in getting her to come, and not only come but also she lived with this Hugh Anderson family for several months when she first arrived because housing would have been difficult and they were concerned about her security. So she lived in this home with Mr. Anderson was going to be safer obviously.

So she came -- and I have to give her a lot of credit for this -- by train from Amache, Colorado, and arrived in the station in Pasadena and she was welcomed by a committee which is wonderful, college, church people, and they welcomed her when she got off the train. And then they went to Hugh Anderson's home, Esther lived there, and then they helped enroll her at Pasadena City College again with a lot of concern. Fortunately there were people there who were sensitive to the issue and were quite receptive to having Esther come. The president of Pasadena City College was very supportive, very helpful, and made it a point to make her, Esther, feel very comfortable by coming. Now this is in September, fall of 1944, this is well before the end of World War II in the Pacific, so that ended August '45, so she was there well ahead of that. So there was still this suspicion and some hostility about Japanese and Japanese Americans, so she was quite brave of her, a nineteen year old girl at the time to agree to be a, quote, "test case." So there were some incidents, but overall it was a good thing and I guess you're going to be hearing from Esther later on with another interview, but it worked out.

SY: That legacy really for you was starting this Asian American studies program, was it something that you were aware of?

HK: No, I was not fully aware of that. I knew that there was some Japanese American woman who came back, but that's about all I knew. And so it was after we started our class -- classes, plural -- studying more about this and this Esther lives in Pasadena. Oh, wow, this is fantastic, so we would talk to her and heard her speak at different functions and we have a relationship, so she's developed a nice presentation about her experience.

SY: But you sort of nurtured her story?

HK: Well, she nurtured herself, so we helped create an avenue for her to express her concerns and her point of view and her experiences, which was very helpful and beneficial. So as far as we knew, she was the first Nisei to come back to California and attend college.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.