Densho Digital Repository
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Robert Moriguchi Interview
Narrator: Robert Moriguchi
Interviewer: Brian Niiya
Location: Granada Hills, California
Date: October 4, 2022
Densho ID: ddr-densho-1000-515-23

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BN: And then you mentioned also, there was some involvement also with redevelopment, Little Tokyo redevelopment.

RM: No, I wasn't involved with the redevelopment of Little Tokyo. I was involved with the racial divide that happened after the riots. Yeah, that's what I was involved with.

BN: The '65...

RM: Yeah, the first riot. Because UCLA had a conference, and we went to this conference and they said that they wanted to set up community-based committees of different racial groups and then come up with some kind of solutions that they come up with. So we went, we had group-ins, most of them, I think, we happened to go to Van Nuys, Pacoima area, Black area, Black people's area there, Hispanic area, we went to their homes. There was about maybe almost a dozen people in the group, our group. I remember we had the police chief of San Fernando, and I was the only Asian, I represented the Japanese American community. I went to talk to our coordinating council to make sure it was all right. And they said I could represent them, so I did that, and I gave them a full report at the end. But after a number of meetings, we had a wrap up near Santa Barbara. There was a motel out there, I can't remember the name of the place, but we had a wrap up session up there to see what everybody else came up with. So I was involved with that. I also passed out Japanese American books, the few that we had. We didn't have very many, I can't remember the name of them. One was Nisei: The Quiet American, I don't know what else we had. But about two or three books, I went to all the high schools in the valley. And sometimes I was able to give talks to the class, history class, other times I gave a class at the library. Sometimes I just gave the book to the librarian. But that's what they did, we did that. So that was some of the things that we did as JACL, that I remember.

BN: And then, I may have asked you this, I don't remember, but for many of the Sansei that we interviewed, they all talk about how their parents didn't tell them about camp and so on. Did you tell your kids about your camp experience?

RM: I think I talk about it off and on about my experience, and about the family and all that, yeah, they know about it. I don't know how interested they are.

BN: Right, right.

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