Densho Digital Repository - Stanley N. Shikuma Interview I (Densho ID: ddr-densho-1000-517-20)

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BY: Okay. So I want to move into talking about your community involvement and activism. So can you name or list all of the community groups or organizations, Japanese American community organizations or groups that you're involved with?

SS: Let's see, okay. So I'm involved with Tule Lake Committee. I went to my first Tule Lake pilgrimage in 1979, and I've been on every Tule Lake pilgrimage since that time, which, I think, is like twenty-one at this point. I'm one of the leaders in Tsuru for Solidarity, which supports immigrant rights, relatively new group. We formed and sort of started coalescing in 2018 but officially formed in 2019. I'm active in JACL, Japanese American Citizens League, at local, regional and national levels, I guess, because I'm currently co-president of the Seattle chapter of JACL. As such, I sit on the Pacific Northwest District Council, and I'm also on the National Education Committee for JACL. And then I am co-editor of the Nisei Veterans Committee newsletter, Seattle Nisei Veterans, NVC, is a local veterans group formed by 442, members of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and Military Intelligence Service or MIS when they came back from the war in '45, '46. Because the local VFWs and American Legions, these other veterans groups would not allow Japanese to join so they formed their own group. So anyway, I've been the co-editor for about twenty years now.

BY: Taiko?

SS: Oh, taiko, yeah. So that's another thing that happened when I moved here in '81, is I joined the local taiko group, at that time called Seattle Taiko Group. Now there's been a name change, so now we're known as Seattle Kokon Taiko. I've been doing that since '81, and since 2000 I've also taught a youth group called Kaze Daiko, and I helped organize the first regional taiko gathering of taiko groups from Vancouver, Seattle and Portland. And then joined the advisory committee for the North American Taiko Conference which was the national, well, actually, international committee, includes Canada, conference of taiko players. And then we formed TCA, Taiko Community Alliance, and I was on the founding board of that group. I'm no longer on the board, but I'm still on the advisory committee.

BY: And you mentioned Hiroshima to Hope?

SS: Oh, yeah. From Hiroshima to Hope is a peace group. We commemorate, in an annual program, we commemorate and remember the victims of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but we've also expanded our focus to any victims of war or violence, gun violence, domestic violence, and of course wars wherever they're happening.

BY: And then APALA.

SS: Yeah, APALA is the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance, and again, Tracy is actually the activist on the labor side, so she's active in both her union, American Federation of Teachers, and APALA on kind of the local and national level. So I'm kind of more there as support for her. But I've gone on and participated in, like, a fact-finding and relationship building tour that went to Okinawa and Tokyo to look at the effects of militarism in Okinawa and in Tokyo to look at labor conditions for non-Japanese, which was pretty bad because of racism within Japan towards non-Japanese. And then just recently, a few months ago this summer, we went to a border tour that APALA sponsored, a symposium in San Diego on one day and then a border tour into Tijuana on the second day.

BY: All right, I think we're going to stop here, because I want to get more into each of these organizations, how you became involved, what your roles are, all of that. So I think we'll stop for today and pick up just talking more about the organizations as well as the pilgrimages and... let's see, what else do I have here... is that all right? Okay.