<Begin Segment 22>

SY: Well, I have to congratulate you on having recently turned into a new decade, right?

HK: Oh, yes, I just turned eighty a couple days ago, three days ago, September 14th.

SY: So what are your thoughts as you enter another decade? What would you like your life to be now?

HK: I think I have come... I have always felt this way but probably more keenly now, how important family is. And the cohesion and the commitment of family to each other, you know, having brothers and sisters and now grandchildren, for me, that's what makes the world go round for me is the family. So we have the two grandchildren and we go up there maybe every other month to see them. We're older grandparents, so one is only four and the other is only two and a half, three, so they're still very young. But we're delighted to have two of them. we weren't sure we'd even have two or one or two for that matter. So we're pleased with that but from that experience and so on to me the underscore is how important family is. I guess that's part of our Japanese tradition, too, the importance of family, the cohesiveness and responsibility to each other. So I'm sure that's going to be a continuing value for me in importance.

SY: But when you think about the work that you did in your last --

HK: Several years.

SY: Fifty years. And the accomplishments really were rather major in terms of redress and really dedicating a lot of your time to those kinds of things, is there something that draws your attention that is equally as important now?

HK: Well, I think all those things you mentioned are important and it's nice to see our movement, which is no longer called the movement but has matured and grown and developed and evolved, so we have, I remember one of our outspoken leaders in the movement at the time was Warren Furutani. So to see him now, he's an assemblyman, school board member, now he's running for the city council to be a councilman for Los Angeles. So to see that happening, I mean, he's wearing his army fatigues and all this speech-making and he was quite something. But to see how that's changed. He's walking around in suits and tie and becoming more the establishment although he's still very outspoken which is good. So we've evolved and we've grown and developed and we have more further to go obviously, but I think we've developed some real skills and some inside information knowledge, et cetera et cetera. So I think we've made some very good strides, so we can feel good about that but also acknowledging we still have a ways to go.

I'm very pleased that, like I know JACL and NCRR they're working closely with the Muslim community because the parallel of our experience with Japanese Americans in camp and then the kind of treatment laid upon the Muslims and Muslim Americans. I think it's nice to see that conversation we're having with them, and that they feel our support which is also wonderful. So that we're learning from that experience too, so we've made some progress with that. And I guess the very fact that they're being harassed tells you we've got a long way to go to help the country understand the diversity of our society, the multicultural dimensions of our country to understand all that the kind of flak they're getting now with their Muslim background, it's just appalling. But as you say, we've seen this script before and it's playing out again and that's very disturbing, but we need to ally ourselves in a broader context with people who are being discriminated against simply of because of what they appear to be and their religion and their culture and whatever.

SY: So I did want to mention that now that you're retired, right? When was that that you retired?

HK: Six years ago.

SY: Six years ago.

HK: Yes.

SY: So you have more time now?

HK: Yes, I've kind of been involved with our community, the Pasadena area community. I've served on several boards with non-profit groups, largely service agencies. And the most recent one is the one I'm serving on in Monrovia. It's called the Foothill Unity Center and I'm on their board, this is my third or fourth year on their board, and we primarily serve lower socioeconomic people, low income people. So we provide food and shelter and school things for the kids and so on. Thanksgiving we give turkey, a lot of food we provide so I feel good about kind of a helping thing that we're doing. And just last week the U.S. Census Bureau came out with some statistics about poverty in America which is appalling. This is a rich country. We still have forty-two million people without insurance and children living in poverty, that's outrageous, totally outrageous. And of course, we see the gap between the rich and the rest of us, this gap is widening, that's not good, poor for our society and you see this playing itself out right now. And here again, this gap, it's just... it shouldn't happen. So Obama's having a real struggle with trying... let's tax the rich. I support that totally. Warren Buffett himself says, "Yeah, you should tax us guys, we're millionaires, billionaires, tax us." Throw out Prop 13 -- of course, that created quite a bit of strife, confusion in California, but I totally agree with that. And this gap is growing, and it's just not good for us so I think whatever we can do to close the gap and then I help a little bit with different things to help make life a little more comfortable for lower socioeconomic people.

SY: So this is a kind of... would you trace it back to your religious upbringing?

HK: Probably there's some roots there, yeah, but this whole notion of service to your community, to society, I think again back in the '60s and '70s there was a big thrust as part of the movement. Serve your community, make their lives better, improve their lives by the service things we go there and help. I mean, that was part of it too, you just don't make speeches or the rhetoric, but you actually get your hands dirty and working in the community and helping out. So I think that's all part of it too as far as this continued interest in community improvement, community empowerment.

SY: That's rather unique really, I mean, it's not everyone who takes that position.

HK: Well, perhaps. I don't know, but more people certainly need to do this because the well-being of our society depends on that and I'm appalled by what's going on right now. That the greed and selfishness of segments of our society to the detriment of those who are among the lower socioeconomic. To me it's upsetting, appalling, and sometimes just depressing to see what's going on. And the lack of compassion and the safety net is falling apart, people don't seem to care and it's, we have all these economic problems so it's just a very disheartening to see what's going on right now. It'll take it a while to turn that around economically.

SY: Definitely, and you're doing our part which is great.

HK: Well, we all need to do our part, need to kind of pitch in and help out.

<End Segment 22> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.