<Begin Segment 19>

BN: Now before we get to JCCH, before that, right, you wrote the Okage Sama De book.

JK: (Yes).

BN: Now how did that come about?

JK: Okay. Actually it came about because when I was teaching, this publisher came to me and said, "I want to do a series of books on different ethnic groups in Hawaii. Would you do the one for (the) Japanese?" And I said, "Well, maybe." And so he got a group of us together, (...) the Hawaiian was (by) Dot Hazama, she had done hers, it's thin (booklet). And then Chinese was well on her way. She said, "When are you going to start?" I don't know. And I said, "I don't know," for so long, so Dot said, "If I came in with you, would you do it? You know the history and I know how to go about doing the book." So I said, "Okay, maybe." But Dot is the one who pushed me, and so she and I worked on it together.

BN: How did you develop kind of interest in the history?

JK: I've always been interested in history. It's just that my nature was such. And then later on I found that my mother's family were historians writing books. So maybe it's genetic, I don't know.

BN: How long did you and Dot work on the book?

JK: Well, it took about eight years from the time that the publisher asked, because I dilly dallied, and Dot said, "We need the book." It was going to be first for fourth graders, that's where the curriculum was. By the time we started working on it, it was in the seventh and eighth grades. The curriculum had changed. And by the time we gathered materials, we found that we had a book for (the) public -- general consumption. So that's when the book came to be a full-sized book.

BN: It came out kind of tied to the 100th anniversary.

JK: Yes, Kanyaku Imin. In fact, I think the book was introduced -- we had a coming out party at the East West Center, and I think that was the same year as the Kanyaku Imin (Centennial). This is 1985.

BN: But the way you tell the story is you were working on it for eight years. That wasn't necessarily the intention...

JK: Eight years. No, I wasn't that motivated.

BN: Kind of happened that way. Tell me about the title.

JK: That came about just spontaneously. We would say, "Okay, now we have a book. What are we gonna call it?" But you know, as we talked with these older people, the word always came out. Okage Sama De, now we're comfortable, we struggled at the beginning, but look at what we are today. Look at my kids. Always refer to where we are today, the kids. They were able to go to college, etcetera, etcetera. And so that was a natural for us. And you know, we struck it rich, I guess, because everybody else would say, "Okage same de." It wasn't a common terminology for that kind of thing. But the book, (after) the last publication (...), the publisher came to us and said, "We need to republish the book." And (we) said, "Oh my, so much has happened since then." So we worked on it together again and added.

BN: Do you know how many copies you've sold?

JK: [Shakes head] I know (we got) thirty-five cents a book or something, the royalties are. [Laughs] But Buddy Bess has been very good to us. And his wife was an English professor, so she edited when necessary. So we had a good deal there. It was an enjoyable... we have an apartment in Makaha, so Dot and I would go out there for the weekend and, you know, look at the surf. [Laughs]

BN: That's why it took many years. [Laughs] I was telling you before about how Nisei: The Quiet Americans is in every household on the mainland.

JK: That's right, Hosokawa.

BN: And I think your book was almost like that here, you find it almost, everybody's got it.

JK: Yeah. Well, we're so grateful for that. But he has done a good job, Buddy Bess.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.