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TI: But then the other thing that happened during those three days, you spoke out, you were a spokesperson.

KN: Yeah.

TI: How did that come about? Was that something that you were thinking that you would do?

KN: I think I mentioned before, our family as a whole were kind of on the shy side and we were not outspoken at all. There's one person that organized this, she's like a writer, and she does a lot of great projects, her name is Nancy Ukai. And she basically just gave me the mike. [Laughs]

TI: So you weren't, I mean, she didn't warn you?

KN: Well, Satsuki was on the mike and this is the mike that Hiroshi Shimizu put together, he has a portable one. And Satsuki just got finished speaking, and then she said, okay, she said it was my turn, and I'm ready to speak, now the mike goes dead. [Laughs] First of all, I don't have a great speaking voice, it doesn't carry. The rest of my family, they had a great voice, it just carries, not our family. But I spoke out, and what was good about all this, it just came out naturally who we were, we were kidnapped, we were imprisoned without due process, blah, blah, blah. And so Hiroshi Shimizu is the one that suggested, "When you introduce yourself, do you want to use your Spanish name?" And I said, "Let's give that a try," so I said, "Kazumu Julio Cesar Naganuma." Oh man, that sparked everything. Right after the rally or even while it's going on, all the local papers were just tugging at me, "Can I speak to you?" "Can I speak to you?" Emails, all that. So I made several interviews there and then several after that. Natasha was involved in all of that, and she took all that down, of course. Since then there's been many other interviews, including NHK. And recently KAWL, that's the radio station that's here, they're doing a short documentary. They used Hiroshi Shimizu and myself and Hiroshi Fukuda, who was one of the sons of Reverend Fukuda, they got a grant to do a short film just to educate high school students about our story. So that's, they're almost done with it, actually, going to be done at the end of the month. So the story's getting out, and so I'm not an official protestor, never was, but it got all over the papers, and I went to different events and people were coming up saying congratulations.

TI: And so when you came back to San Francisco, what was the reaction first with your family? I'm interviewing a couple of your brothers, I met your daughter, what did people think?

KN: I don't think they got the full sense for that, not at all. Even though I showed them some of the articles, even some of the live things, I don't think they really got it. But the people that, the community leaders, they knew right away that I was at an event, and somebody, definitely a community activist, came to me right away and said, "Oh, that was really good." I'm thinking, boy, what did I say? But it came out right, so I'm very fortunate.

TI: How about any pushback? Anyone say, "Hey, Kaz, maybe you shouldn't have done that," or, "What are you doing?" Any of that?

KN: No, not at all, not at all. It's all been supportive, so I'm glad. Again, everything I'm doing today, and then this is all to do with what I can do to bring the story out is really for my parents. That's really the important part of all of this. I'm part of it, but it's for my parents' sake. Even the redress, we could get into that later, but my parents had passed away so they didn't get the redress, and boy, did they need the money more than anyone else.

TI: So when you say it was for your parents. Tell me why this is for your parents.

KN: I think they suffered the most. I still don't know how they made it through, but this is, like I said, many other Japanese Peruvian, Japanese American families. How do you make it through when you're already in your mid-fifties and you have seven children and you're basically penniless? And you're in a country where you don't speak the language, how do get a job? And to go through all of that and to be able to live a pretty good life, and all the kids come out doing okay. That's a wonderful accomplishment, but what they had to do to sacrifice... first of all, they lost everything, so that alone is a big, I don't know people make it psychologically when you're stripped of all your hard work and your wealth.

TI: Well, and talk about how much they lost. Because in Peru, the family was very wealthy.

KN: Yeah, you know, my dad, I guess, went there... again, in those days were all hearsay, there's no CNN news, he had nothing to check so it was all hearsay. He went there with, he said, hundreds of Japanese men on a ship, so that takes a long time to get there. They said there's all this work in Peru, and he said immediately they found out there was very little. He said people starved. It's not like people could just pay and say, "Oh, I'm going to go back and fly back." There's no even taking a boat back. So he quickly went from his trade, which was being a carpenter, and did some farming, and then got into the laundry business and was successful with that. He ended up with three different laundries, and he was quite involved in the community there as well. So when you're involved with the community and you start to grow as his business, you became successful, and that's one of the reasons why he was targeted. And he was at a point where, I don't know for a fact how many people worked there at the three laundries, but to the point where he had a nanny to take care of the younger kids, a cook, they didn't drive them, but they would call their limo, so they were wealthy. And he was at his prime when they took all that away from him, the business, the property, of course, all the money that he had. That's probably the hardest part. My mother, being the typical Japanese wife, just went along. She's a "picture bride," and so she went along. It's not like she had a choice either. And so that's kind of the whole story there, that what they've lost, I just want to be sure people know about this story. It's really, again, for them. All this is, everything I've done recently, in particular, is for them, to get the story out. My nephew in L.A., he's the son of my oldest sister, he's already sixty-four, sixty-five, he's going to go to the pilgrimage, because even his mom didn't tell him much, but he wants to learn. And on Friday of this pilgrimage we're having some workshops, some plenaries to talk about the Japanese Peruvians and some of the redress issues. So it'll be educational, so I think they're going to like that a lot. My two sons are going as well.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.