<Begin Segment 11>

SF: Well you talked quite a bit about the kind of business aspect of the Japanese or the Issei community at that time. What about the social aspects, like church? And how did these get started and what were some of the important issues for them?

FM: Before we leave the business thing, incidentally, I should have mentioned that these associations in turn pulled together into what was called the Seattle Japanese Chamber of Commerce. So there was a large umbrella organization over the business associations. And then there was a separate Japanese Association which in a sense included the Japanese business associations as a kind of economic arm of the Japanese Association. So there was a large organizational superstructure in the community. Now coming back to the social...

SF: Well, I want to pursue this because this is, that's really interesting and I was sort of thinking of the same thing too. So you have this very integrated business community which has this umbrella organization, which is tied into the Japanese Association even. So what would they do collectively or this, at the level of the, the business, Seattle business -- I mean what would, what did that serve to have people tied together that way, linked to the Japanese association?

FM: Well, that's a little hard to say. The Japanese Association was the large umbrella organization and they would represent the Japanese community for example, in the... these... the Seattle Metropolitan area fund drives for, what's the, what's the name of the chest...

SF: Community Chest?

FM: Hmm?

SF: Community Chest?

FM: Community Chest, yeah, I guess it's called, I'd forgotten. Anyway, if there was a drive of this kind, then the Japanese Association would represent the Japanese ethnic community in this type of drive and they were always proud to be able to say the Japanese community came up with over the quota, you know, collections. And what the Japanese Association invariably did was to go then to the associations, business associations, and say why don't you contribute, you know, X amounts of dollars and therefore, this umbrella organization was very effective in pulling together kinds of fund, which in turn would then represent the Japanese community as very good, or socially minded community in the eyes of the larger community, and this would then get some publicity in the Seattle papers and that was good for the community. So in response to your question, this is the kind of thing that was possible given this large superstructure organization. They would -- or if an anti-Japanese kind of issue arose, then they could call upon all the various organizations, churches as well as business associations and so on, and the Japanese Association, because of its superstructure type of control, was made more effective by this interlocking relationship which they had. The relationship was strong as much as anything because many of the leaders of the business associations were also the leaders of the Japanese Association, so the -- and many of the church leaders are leaders of the business associations and also business leaders of the Japanese Association. There obviously was a kind of a network of people who did much, constantly got involved in one thing or another having to do with organizational activities of the community, and therefore were powerful in controlling such activities that represented the community.

(Narr. note: "Community Chest" was the name by which the fund was known in the 1930s. It is currently known as the United Good Neighbors Fund.)

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.