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BN: One thing I always wondered, because looking at JACL, you have, at the end of the '60s, this influx of younger people. How was the interaction or the relationship, kind of, with the so-called old guard? Because I feel like some of the newer people wanted to go places that the older group were a little uncomfortable with.

AK: Right. We made it so it was bad politics if you didn't support youth. I mean, that was the general rule. So the fact that we had advocates within the board, and we had all these advisors for each one of these chapters, we also got youth to be on those boards. And I didn't want just one, I wanted at least two. So I said, "None of this, you remember Noah's Ark? In Noah's Ark it's two by two, so you always want at least a couple of kids, otherwise they're not going to feel supported. And then we had the youth advisor, so you really had three people on these boards as part of the conversation, so that helped. Now, I didn't care about some of the back room bickering, I just wanted the formal stuff. So we had to strategize, so it was all part of planning. How do you beat somebody at this game, and part of it is figuring out what is that system, how does the system operate? There's three things: what's the organization and structure, how is it organized and structured? Okay, so we got to look at the budget process and planning process. Are there any formal procedures or processes that we need to look at? And then, three, who are the people? So we had some grouchy old guys and things like that, that we had to either neutralize or at least have them keep their mouth shut. They could bicker in the back of the room, but when it became the formal time for the vote, no one ever turned down the youth. So we made it part of the culture to support the youth.

BN: And I didn't know about, that you knew Joe Grant and had some involvement, so I wanted to ask you a little bit about that When you went on these trips, were those the times when he was actually collecting stuff and doing interviews, or was that a different kind of thing?

AK: I don't remember if he actually did a lot of interviews and things.

BN: He interviewed many Issei, that's in the UCLA collection now.

AK: Right. Our trips were mainly to inform people in different parts of the country what the project was, and to get them more engaged with that. So it was to identify more who those people should be that he could contact and communicate with.

BN: So maybe afterwards he went back and did the collecting and interviewing?

AK: Yes, that's how I saw it. I mean if there was an occasional interview and so forth, I don't remember that. Because we were just moving on, moving on, and we were trying to personalize it, we were trying to target certain places. So I remember being in Detroit or someplace.

BN: And then... well, actually, I should ask you, before we leave JACL, what, for you, were the best things about working for JACL and the worst?

AK: I didn't know how vehement people are in terms of their hatred towards JACL. I mean, I wanted to be involved with that organization because, to me, it was an organized group that impacted the lives of a lot of JAs, Japanese Americans. So for me, this was a formalized way of going and seeing how this organization operates or who they Nisei are, what are they like? I'm in Los Angeles, they keep saying that HICO and some of these other things, "Oh, that's West Coast," "That's Los Angeles." I mean, people still say that, right? That L.A. is different. The ocean keeps coming in and out, in and out, "that's why you guys keep changing your mind. We're solid people, we do this, we do that." So I got to see Salt Lake, I got to see both the Mormon side and the non-Mormon side, I got to go to the Midwest, I got to meet some of the so-called "leaders," and that was part of the effort, too, is to meet the leadership, the so-called leadership, at least with this organization. And this organization is recognized by the mainstream. Now, the extent to which it's accepted within the community, is one side, but how well is it accepted with the mainstream? It has to have some weight. Because it could be effective within the mainstream, and we're not just living within the community all the time. So that was my grand experiment, to increase my knowledge base about an organization that impacted the lives of many, many people during the war, too, and after. And I saw it as that civil rights group, that line of defense, in case of something happening. Did I agree with everybody? Did I agree with Chiz Satow and some of her ways of handling things in terms of funding and things like that? No. That's okay, we figured a way of getting to Mas, and he was the director, even though she was his wife and she was the boss. So we always told him, "We work for you."

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.