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BN: And then in the interim, there were some other things happening, too. When did the Ozaki materials come in? Was that around that same time?

JK: You know, the Ozaki material was there from long ago.

BN: Okay.

JK: And it was in a box, and among the many boxes that we were working with, and because it was all in Japanese, we'd kick it around.

BN: So it was already there, you just didn't really know what it was.

JK: It was there, we didn't know what it was. Good thing we didn't throw it away.

BN: But can you just explain a little of what it was?

JK: Yeah. It was in a box, and I think Hideto Kono had tried his best to figure out what it was. And Hideto had tried to organize it into, there were little manila folders with papers hanging out, but we still didn't know what it was. And then somewhere along the way, we began to pick up more bilingual people. And so I think Tats maybe, Hayashi, or Mr. Hirai, they kind of identified what it was, and then we didn't know what to do with it. And then, but then, again, serendipitously, or maybe because now we're aware of the deed, there was an archival workshop planned by a state person. And so we said, "We got to go." And so several of us went to that workshop and they had brought in someone from the mainland to give us the theory or how to do oral histories and archival collections. And then we actually worked on the YWCA files, and I think that was, they were the ones that paid for them. And then at the end, the state person said, "Well, we've had the whole weekend to do this. If you have any more questions, just let me know." And we went back to... and we looked at the box again and we said, "We need help." And so we called her right away. And so she came and she kind of went over what we had learned in the workshop, and we still looked at her very blankly. And so she finally said, "Okay, bring me one of your collections." And so we brought that one, because that one was very puzzling to us. And she looked at it, and then she told us step by step what we had to do. And then she could see the light coming on, and then she said, "Now all you need are some supplies, and you need the boxes, you need the file cabinet files." And then that deflated us, and she says, "What's wrong?" And we said, "We don't have any money, we've got no budget." And she said, "Oh, that's okay, write a grant." And we said, "We never wrote a grant." She says, "Oh, you know what? I'll help you." And she became our principal scholar for the Hawai'i Council for the Humanities. She said, "Call Bob Buss." And so we called him, and he was... I mean, these are the people that I would like to credit in some way. And Bob says, "No problem. I'll send you the papers, you fill them out the best you can, get them to me three weeks ahead of time, and I'll tell you what's wrong with it. And then you fix it, and then you'll still get it in by the deadline." And that's what we did. And he caught everyplace we fudged, he was good. [Laughs] And so we got the grant, and that's how that first archival Otokichi Ozaki collection was archived. And once we had that going, then we were able to do the others.

BN: When did you start with the oral histories?

JK: The oral histories were going on before I got here. Because Jane Komeji had that going, and by the time I became aware of it, I think Ted Tsukiyama was kind of, he was the committee head. And he had one transcriber that used to come to the resource center and use our computer. So he was doing all that, yeah.

BN: And were you, from this point, were you kind of trying to find people with internee kind of storylines or was that later?

JK: Yeah. I think that once we discovered it, we did try to. Because again, the librarianship kicked in. Because once you know this part of history, then your job as a librarian is to collect, organize, preserve and make this part of history available.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.