<Begin Segment 19>

BN: I think maybe we should start to wrap it up, and maybe I just want to end talking a little bit about, segue into your role in LTSC.

AN: Well, I've been a board member since 1984, so it's been a long time.

BN: We should say Little Tokyo Service Center.

AN: Oh, Little Tokyo Service Center. And so, when I started it was a three-person organization with Bill, Yasuko and Evelyn, and joined the board in 1984, and continued as a board member and then chaired the board during the '90s, and then we took on affordable housing and things like that and then we kind of split into two organizations. And then I stepped down as the chair to be able to kind of be on both groups as a board member. And then when we reemerged in the early 2000s, I became chair again. So I've probably chaired the board about ten, twelve years, I don't know. But yeah, it's been an organization that's near and dear to me, and represents an extension of who I am, and provides the avenue to really be able to express my values. And it's a testament to Bill Watanabe for the kind of organization that he was able to build in his own understated way, it empowered others to do work. So I just am fortunate that I found a vehicle through that to transition this point in my life. Because I think LTSC has grown, the affordable housing, they helped me in my own political maturity, because we moved from opposing everything, to when we had to build the San Pedro farm building to actually begin to do work raising money and doing other things. So I was able to use my work. On the one hand I was at Long Beach doing administrative work in the community being, riling things up, etcetera, but it allowed me to kind of pull some of these together and starting transitioning my own thoughts about taking values and creating and trying to implement things like that. The affordable housing, the community development piece really started my own transitioning of more, building things that were reflections of my values rather than just merely opposing things that happened.

And so I moved into the affordable housing, community development stuff, it was exciting because it was an organization that was based in Little Tokyo, grounded in the community, but serving a much broader constituency and its perspectives were much broader, and I just loved to be a part of that vision for an organization that, to me, represents my values. I believe in Little Tokyo, I believe in Nikkei and all those things, but there's broader issues within the community that we want to address. And so being part of that in terms of the vision and work they're doing. So it's exciting now because LTSC and staff, they're the critical people thinking about the future of Little Tokyo and how to sustain and survive and build a community that we can be proud of. And I think as I look at JANM, JACCC, Go For Broke, they're doing important work, but they're consumed with doing the work that they have to do, and do not have the, quote, "luxury" or the staff expertise to be able to really devote a lot to, well, where do we want to go? And LTSC has the somewhat luxury of having some expertise, but also the time, and it's part of our mission to think about where do we want this community to go. And it's important, and it plays an important role in the community, much beyond the social services, but also just the thinking and our ability to attract visionaries, like trying to recruit Dr. Umemoto to our board, people who...

BN: Sounds familiar.

AN: I know, I know. But that, to me, is exciting. It's exciting to me to take a historic JA community and to value the history and the legacy and the stories that we have, but to make it relevant to the current area of things and not make it just... and not just the JA community, but something that values inclusion, that values all the other kinds of things that are important to me, and then also looking to the future on how we build, sustain things for the next generation. So it meets so many of my values. I don't want Little Tokyo to just be old Sansei activists. I wanted to bring in new people, other ethnic groups. We want it to be a place where there are some yuppie types that have money, but also we want a place where people working in Little Tokyo can also live in Little Tokyo. So balancing all of that to me is, it's real, and it's frustrating because there are so many challenges. But like I said, it's nice to be able to continue to try to build and move forward some visions. So my work when I was with LTSC, JACCC, with Kizuna, because I think those represent, to me, key organizations. The museum is also critical, but it has its own sense of priorities, and I only have so much time. So I really kind of focus on JACCC because I think it's, the art and culture piece to me is critical, and the role and the campus, with the theater and the plaza, it provides the future. To me, that represents the future of my bringing together a lot of these pieces. LTSC is like its values, and brings in those things to the community. Kizuna with the pipeline is really a critical kind of component. The museum is also important in terms of being able to tell our story, so it's all of those pieces all come together.

BN: Yeah, it's interesting hearing you talk, it really does... consistent, it's a theme consistent with a lot of the other work you've done, this idea of bringing these different people, different places all together. Whether it's a college setting at Long Beach in the community setting, even with redress, it's bringing all these different people to the table.

AN: Yeah, I like to think so. I've always tried to network and build and engage people into the different parts of what I do. And at this point, I tried to consciously spend time working with students and younger folks to try to convey some sense of vision for Little Tokyo and themselves.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 2018 Densho. All Rights Reserved.