<Begin Segment 1>

BN: So we are here on November 29, 2022, we're interviewing Doug Aihara at his office in the Kajima building on First Street in Little Tokyo. Evan Kodani is shooting the video for us, so thank you, Doug, and let's get started.

DA: Thank you.

BN: So what we usually do is start with asking you to talk about, a little bit about your parents and their families first. And as I mentioned earlier, we won't do too much on your mom because there's already an interview with her in our archive, but we do want to spend some time with your dad and his family because we have not, unfortunately, interviewed any of them. So I wonder if you could start by talking about your dad and his family.

DA: Okay.

BN: And start with his name.

DA: Okay. So my parents were Luis and Yae Aihara. My dad was the second oldest son in the Aihara family. He had two brothers and a sister. The oldest brother was Sam, then my dad, and then he had a sister, Daisy, and then the youngest brother was Henry, who I think you know as he became a USC track star. They were raised out in Garden Grove, my grandfather was a farmer and farmed asparagus, tomatoes, oranges, and strawberries. And he spent summers out there helping do whatever, and had a cousin out there, Ted. He was the oldest cousin, son of my auntie Daisy. And Daisy lived with my grandparents, so she was on the farm with my cousin. So apparently there was a separation early on, and she ended up having to move in with her parents, so got to know her very well. And yeah, so my dad, I guess, moved out. He didn't like farming, and upon returning from the war, he decided to move into the city, and that's, I think he started going to church at that time. That's where he met my mom at Koyasan, and soon later they got married and then moved into an apartment somewhere in East Lost Angeles, I believe, it was on Marina. Not long after that, my sister was born about a year and a half later, and I think that's when we moved to East Los Angeles at First and Woods right on the corner where it had a mailbox, right on the corner, and it was where First, where east met west and north met south. So on one corner was 101 South, the other one was 101 North, 102 East and 101 West. So it was an interesting corner. It was later we had to move because of the Pomona freeway, and that was in '62. So that's when we relocated to Montebello and that's where I spent my junior high and high school years.

BN: And before we go on, I want to just circle back a little. On your father's parents side, do you know where they were from in Japan?

DA: I believe my grandfather for sure was from Hiroshima. I'm not sure about my grandmother, because I believe my grandmother was a, one of those photo wives where she came over and met my grandfather and married. So pretty sure that's true. Yeah, and there's, apparently there are still some Aiharas in Hiroshima that were off the coast of Hiroshima that I guess they are, some kind of island, another small island. So never did figure out, or visit them, even though we had one or two chances to do that when we were younger. But it was never to be.

BN: Okay. And then during the war, now, what happened with your grandfather? Because he was one of the ones, one of the Issei who were arrested and interned?

DA: Well, I think both of my grandfathers...

BN: Right, we'll get to your mother's side.

DA: Yeah. So on my dad's side, he was, I think, taken away from the family for a while, while the rest of the family, I believe, was relocated into Poston. My dad, I believe, enlisted prior to all of this, and so he was never in camp, from my knowledge. And my grandfather was soon brought back, I think, to Poston to be reunited with the rest of his family.

BN: Did you have a sense, or did the family have a sense of why he would have been among the Issei who were separately interned? I mean, were there things he was involved in?

DA: I believe, well, he was instrumental, I believe, in establishing a couple of, well, the Japanese school, language school, plus he was a judo teacher and had a dojo, which my uncles were all involved with. They were all judo people. My uncle could have been an Olympic, I think, that's what I was told, an Olympic quality guy, I mean, he was like fifth dan or something.

BN: This is Sam?

DA: My uncle Sam. Big guy, yeah, kind of not your typical Nisei. And very, very nice gentleman, calm guy. Never got mad at us, we'd be running all crazy all over that farm and he'd just haul us in and say, "Come on." [Laughs] "Quit your fooling around, come on over here and help Grandma and Grandpa."

<End Segment 1> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 2>

BN: To your knowledge, did your grandfather ever talk to you or to any of the family about his time when he was interned?

DA: That was taboo, it seems to me. It's just like most families that I knew, the Isseis didn't talk very much. And so no, I didn't get a whole lot of feedback from them. Plus, I didn't speak Japanese, and their English was very, very poor. Both grandparents, as long as they were here, they didn't really get to learn the language very much.

BN: I know this is secondhand, but did you have a sense of, while they were farming down in Orange County, that they were part of this larger Japanese community down there in terms of attending Japanese churches or Japanese schools or those types of things?

DA: Well, I got the sense that there was a community of farmers down there, right? But that part, that was it.

BN: Right, right.

DA: For me, my life was more here in Los Angeles, right?

BN: Sure, and this is all before you were born.

DA: Right, right. And my grandfather must have been part of some kind of community because he had a place to come home to. The community took care of his property, so he was very fortunate. So when he came back, he didn't have to scrounge around, he was right back to farming, it sounds like, fairly quickly. So we were lucky that way.

BN: Do you know much about who it was that was able to watch over the farm?

DA: Yeah, I used to know that, but not anymore. My understanding was it was a couple of hakujin guys, other farmers that he had befriended, or befriended him.

BN: Was he able to own the land?

DA: No.

BN: So this was leased land.

DA: Leased land.

BN: That they were able to retain during the war.

DA: It might have been owned by my uncle.

BN: Right, right, yeah. That was the common way to get around the alien land laws.

DA: Because they were all citizens. But I think that was... yeah, I again, I can't...

BN: Right, it's all before your time.

DA: Yeah, yeah.

BN: Okay.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 3>

BN: And then, like I said, I don't want to spend too much time on your mom, but if you could just tell us a little bit about her and her family.

DA: Okay. Well, my mom was the second, again, of four kids.

BN: And then what was her birth name?

DA: Yaeko. Yaeko Kanogawa was her maiden name. Born up in Tacoma area, later, I guess they moved into the city of Seattle. Four kids, two girls, two boys, she's the only one living now. Yeah, they owned a little store, grocery store in Seattle before the war in which they lost everything once they had to move. Again, my grandfather on my mom's side was taken somewhere, not sure where, and my mom's family briefly moved to, I believe, Minidoka, and then they decided, or my grandfather decided to try and go back to Japan. And the boat left without 'em and then they came back to Crystal City where they were again reunited. So that was good for them. They were all, sounds like they were able to live together, a lot different than some of the other camps. They had their kitchen, they had their own room, they had privacy. So for my mom and her family, it sounded like a lot better situation than some of the other family like my dad's side at Poston and in barracks or whatnot. Upon the end of camp, they moved here to Los Angeles, following, I believe, their minister. Said they were relocating to Los Angeles, I have a feeling that's why they came here. That's what I understand, so that makes sense to me.

BN: And then once they were here, your parents then met and got married.

DA: Yeah, got married, and that was the last time my dad was at the Koyasan, it seems to me. [Laughs] Not the most religious guy.

BN: I've heard that story before, where church was like, was a means to another end, it didn't necessarily have to do with religion.

DA: That could have been my dad's idea. But it worked.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 4>

BN: And then I also want to circle a little bit back to your dad. Because you mentioned he had enlisted right prior to the war. And then what do you know about his time with the, I assume, the army?

DA: Right. He was in the army, and my understanding is he was stationed somewhere in the Mideast, and part of a supply, keeping track of shipping, I think, or something. From my understanding, never got to see any live action. So after the war, he just came back, it sounds like. He's another guy, didn't talk a whole lot about what he experienced other than he wanted me to go into the army to learn discipline and structure and learn how to take orders, that kind of thing. We had some talks about that. I said, "Dad, the army is not what it used to be back in your day." And this is during the '60s, right, late '60s, and Vietnam, and the war is going on and nobody wants that war. Then there's that whole lottery system that was set up because they weren't getting enough people to enlist. I was kind of lucky, my number was sort of on the higher side. And when it came to the year that they pulled numbers, they didn't get as high, so I didn't have to worry. So that was kind of lucky.

BN: Seems so crazy that so much of your life is determined by this random thing.

DA: Right. And yeah, for a while, that lottery was... well, finally they ended it, right?

BN: Anyway, we'll get back to that. The other thing I wanted to ask about your dad was, was he, like many of the returning GIs were able to attend college on the GI Bill and so forth.

DA: It sounded like he went to junior college for a few years, didn't like it, got into insurance, I guess, fairly quickly, and never went back. Same with my mom, she went to a couple years at a community college and never finished.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 5>

BN: I've seen kind of conflicting dates, but when was the insurance, when did he establish the insurance business, to your knowledge?

DA: To my knowledge, he started in '48 and incorporated his business in either '49 or '50. But he was first a life insurance agent, and with the Kodani Insurance Agency selling Transamerica life insurance, there was only a few insurance companies that would sell to Japanese back in those days at standard rates. But yeah, I guess he found that to be hard, and I think he was talking to Fred Funakoshi about how he was selling auto insurance and that you get commissions as long as that person keeps the policy. Whereas life insurance, for those who don't know, you get paid one time. You sell the policy, get paid once, and then that's it, so you got to keep selling. Well, auto policies, you just, the more you sell, then you get a little commission of like two bucks off a thirty-dollar policy, but it adds up. And after you sell a few hundred of these things, you got a steady income. I think my dad liked that. And that's what started, got him on his way. He met up with a guy named George Omatsu and Benny Kakita, and the three of them started a little insurance agency.

BN: Was it always in the Little Tokyo area?

DA: Yeah. The first office was right down across the street on San Pedro here, right next to Sugar Bowl Cafe back in those days. Yeah, he was there 'til they built this building, and moved here in '68.

BN: Was the clientele pretty much all other Japanese Americans?

DA: I think so. They were all pretty much Japanese. And I think that was why they formed an association. There was at least a dozen of them at one point, and they all decided to be respectful of each other and not take anybody's other business away, they felt there was plenty of business for everybody, so don't knock the other guy next door, so to speak. And that association still exists today, actually, though it doesn't have that many members anymore. That was how it was back in those days. And I think every major Japanese corporation today, at one time had a Nisei insurance agent back in those days. Because my dad, he had Yamaha, he had Suzuki, he had Kenwood, Kawasaki. But I know that Fred, he had some of the other ones. And I forget the guy, there was a Nisei guy in New York that had the Sony. He had that 'til, gosh, quite a long time, Morita was very loyal. And that's the thing, too, with the Japanese, they're very loyal. They find somebody that will give them good service, give them competitive pricing, they're not going to move. And it was only until all these corporations started going national, right, and the Niseis didn't keep up. So when companies started going national, I think that's when the other hakujin companies and those guys, they saw the writing on the wall and they started buying up agencies all across the country. And now all of a sudden you have national insurance brokerage, and I don't think the Niseis had any vision like that. They could have, you know, who knows? Had someone had that kind of vision, maybe it'd be a little bit different today. But it is what it is.

BN: In terms of, you mentioned that a lot of these companies had this Nisei agent who dealt with the Japanese companies, did your dad speak Japanese well, or was that a requirement?

DA: Well, he spoke it well enough, and I think most of the Niseis did. Some were better than others. According to my dad and my mom as well, I think my mom's Japanese was better than my dad's, but my dad would laugh at himself with his Japanese because he knew it wasn't that good. But he said he got the job done, and I guess that whole thing about living here, being American and so forth, having to speak the proper Japanese, didn't count when they came over here, it is what it is. I think the Japanese nationals just appreciated being able to speak to someone here, albeit maybe not the best Japanese, but at least they got some honest answers and someone that looked like them and that they could trust.

BN: That's an interesting story. I don't think anyone's really studied that, right, the whole... there hasn't been a lot.

DA: Yeah, not a lot.

BN: I really wish we had interviewed your dad, but oh, well. We'll get back to that later when you go into the business as well.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 6>

DA: But I want to go back to your early life now. You talked a little bit about your being in East L.A. and moving to Montebello, I think, is where we left off. Before we go back there, can you tell us when you were born?

DA: Oh, March 15, 1950, Ides of March. I learned that in high school sometime, I guess.

BN: And then you mentioned, when we talked earlier, that you knew your grandparents as a child, and I was wondering if you could just talk a little bit about your memories of your grandparents when you were a child, and obviously they're elderly, just a sense of how you saw them, what they were like.

DA: Well, I guess... well, my mom's side, he was a gardener and lived in Boyle Heights not too far from where we lived. We were in East Lost Angeles on First, and my grandparents were in Boyle Heights on, right off of Fourth Street, not too far from Evergreen Baptist Church. And later when I was maybe about eight or nine years old, I started helping him garden, so I'd go on his gardening routes. So that was in fun, or at least got to know a little bit of Japanese that way, and a very gentle man. I have fond memories of him, and my grandmother was a great cook, and so I'd love to go over there any time and partake in what she'd make. I think my mom got that bug from her, too. My mom was a very good cook, too.

BN: And then you'd mentioned that before the war, they had run a, had a store in Tacoma.

DA: That's right.

BN: Did he have any prior experience as a gardener or is that something he just picked up?

DA: You know, that's a good question, and I'm not sure. It sounds like he just, there's one thing that he found that he could do, and that there was a need. And so he just kind of picked it up.

BN: That's a common story. It was one of the occupations that it was almost advantageous to be Japanese, so a lot of, an enormously large number of Issei and Nisei went into that at that time. You mentioned going with them on some of his gardening route. Where was his clientele?

DA: You know, that's the interesting part, is that a lot of it was in Downey, and a lot of hakujins. And I don't know how he met these people, it must have been through referrals. That's all I can figure out, because like I said, they're all hakujins, none of them spoke Japanese. But my grandfather spoke just enough English, and some of his clientele was pretty impressive. Because later on, my uncle on my mom's side took over his route. He was an engineer, electronic engineer working at RCA. I always thought he was doing fine, but he ended up taking over my grandfather's route, and of course I'm following him around, too, and so I was given more responsibility by my uncle so I was able to do a few things more. And as a consequence, I'd be in other people's yards, backyards, even allowed to go into the house. And one these homes, I remember, my uncle said, "Go mow that backyard." I said, "Okay," and I go back there, and it's maybe a small patch about this big, and I'm done in like five minutes. And I go back and he goes, "What happened?" "Well, I'm finished." He goes, "What do you mean, you're finished? You can't be finished. It's big." And I go, "No, it's small." He goes, "Oh, you didn't go far enough back." And so anyways, it's just huge. I could see why. And the owner of that home was a stuntman, and one of the things he also taught was how to draw a gun. And he was telling me and I got to meet him, how he taught people like John Wayne and some of those old Western guys how to draw a gun. And he took me in the back and showed me his collection of guns. It was incredible. The room was bigger than this room, twice as big as this room, rifles, guns, all over on the walls, and you know, I'm, what, twelve, thirteen years old and looking at all this going, "Wow, this is impressive." And there was a lot of, a fair amount of homes like that, that my grandfather was able to get somehow. So I wish I could have known more about how that all evolved.

BN: Interesting. What you had mentioned about the insurance men and kind of organization and not competing, I think gardeners had a similar sort of arrangement.

DA: Maybe.

BN: So they had their territories. Yeah, no, that's a great story.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 7>

BN: So if I'm getting this, just to go back with your uncle, he left engineering to go into gardening, basically? Presumably the money was better?

DA: I have to assume that.

BN: That's interesting.

DA: Yeah, I remember I dug up this one tree, and took me a couple hours or so. I later saw the bill, and I had never seen any bill. And this is like in '63, '64, he charged that guy five hundred dollars. I'm thinking, that's a lot of money back in those days, five hundred dollars. [Laughs] Well, I guess gardening can't be profitable.

BN: Were you paid for this work?

DA: Of course not. [Laughs] Not five hundred dollars. But that wasn't, I didn't worry about that. You know, it was family, right? You're helping out your uncle, and he turned me on to McDonald's.

BN: Well, there was your payment.

DA: Right? That was my payment, and Downey, right, first McDonald's was out there.

BN: That's right.

DA: And the other thing I got as a snack was onion rings. I'd never had onion rings. And I forget where he got it. But I said, "What are these, Uncle?" "These are onion rings." "What's that?" "They're just fried onions." "Eeew," I'm thinking. "You should just try one." The rest is history, I love onion rings. [Laughs]

BN: Did he remain a gardener for basically his entire career, subsequently?

DA: Yeah.

BN: Interesting.

DA: And he was the nicest uncle, really nice. In fact, Chris, my wife, is doing a little children's book on my uncle, actually. Because one of the things he did was, he has two girls, and one year we had those carnivals back in the day, and you'd get these little ping pong things, balls, and you throw them and you try to catch little goldfish. Well, he caught a goldfish, right? He brings it home for his two girls, and he keeps that goldfish and feeds it, makes sure it's, takes care of it, that that thing lived for about fifteen years.

BN: Whoa.

DA: And he kept getting a bigger and bigger, you know, thing, and before you knew it, he had this thing living in one of those fifty-gallon trash cans filled up with water. And he had a little pump going, give a little oxygen. That thing got this big. [Laughs] A little goldfish that was that big, grew, I mean, it must have been about three, four pounds of goldfish. That was the kind of guy he was.

BN: That's a funny story. What was the fish's name? Had to have a name.

DA: You know, that's... I'm going to have to ask my cousin.

BN: It's got to be the title of the book. But you mentioned he had two girls, which is why, probably why you're assisting him rather than them. [Laughs]

DA: Right. [Laughs] Yeah, the girls weren't going to go out and help that much.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 8>

BN: And then you mentioned, you talked briefly about visiting your Aihara side grandparents, because they were, continued farming, right?

DA: That's right, that's right. And yeah, I looked kind of forward to that, because summers were, it was wide open. It was a farm, and my other, Henry had two kids, a boy and a girl, and he lived right down... so he's maybe about five years younger than me. But Uncle, one year, he bought his, Brian, his son, a go-kart, and we just drove that go-kart all over that farm, so that was a lot of fun.

BN: This is Henry?

DA: This is Henry's son.

BN: But he also...

DA: Would help out on the farm, yeah.

BN: But that wasn't his primary occupation, was it?

DA: My uncle?

BN: Yeah.

DA: Oh, no. He was a chemical engineer, worked for Lever Brothers, I think.

BN: Okay. So he just helped out on weekends and stuff, on the family farm?

DA: That's right. Everyone, all hands on deck, I think, especially when harvesting started.

BN: Because I'm interested in this, I wonder if you could talk just briefly about his athletic exploits and also your auntie's singing career.

DA: All I know about Uncle's athletics is what I've been told, that he was the most popular guy at USC among the Niseis. And he was there at a time, I think a little bit before the guys like Tets Tanimoto and those guys that were, that got onto the USC basketball team. But yeah, there was a lot of bragging going on back in those days among the brothers. Like I said, my uncle Sam was a great judo guy, and my dad supposedly was a decent judo guy as well, and would claim certain physical, not goals, but things he said he could do, like a hundred pull ups, things like that. I'd look at my dad and go, "Yeah, Dad, don't think so." [Laughs] But you know, it's hard to challenge them when my uncle, he's like five-seven, maybe five-eight at the most, being able to jump over twenty feet. That's pretty good. And then I know the other cousin, Ted, who's the son of my auntie Daisy, he was able to jump over twenty, and he was able to jump over six feet, too, high jump, he was a good high jumper. So kind of gave all of us a sense of, well, the Aiharas must have some decent athletic genes. That kind of gave us a sense of, certain amount of pride. Here you have an uncle that owns a record at a major university. And his name would always come up when, "Oh, are you related to Henry Aihara?" as I'm growing up. "Oh, yeah, that's my uncle." So you got a sense of how well recognized that name became. I was talking to Wimp Hiroto not long ago, and he was, I believe he was, part of his growing up was back east in Chicago. And he would tell me that he would read about my uncle, one of the few Niseis that got that kind of recognition. So that kind of surprised me, that it would travel across the country even during those times. So yeah, I guess you have a famous uncle like that, you just never know how far reaching it is in some ways.

BN: And then earlier we were talking also about how he and his wife were sort of this ideal Nisei couple. How aware were you of her musical and acting career?

DA: Well, that came a lot later, I think, maybe high school time when, yeah, you're a little bit more aware of things around you, right? We always knew Auntie Carrie could sing, I mean, she'd sing at family things. And her son, Brian, became a pretty decent musician. He was able to play, he self-taught himself to play guitar and piano and I'd go over to his place every now and then, he'd be able to play The Doors, "Light My Fire," on the organ note for note, the whole twelve minutes at that time. I'm going, Brian, my gosh. [Laughs] So there was a lot of music back in those days, too.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 9>

BN: I was going to ask whether that had an influence on your own interest in music.

DA: I think... I don't know if that was, well, part of it was, I'm sure, that. And I know my parents, or at least my mom, was interested in having all her kids know or play music or get into some kind of arts. And so for me it was trumpet and trombone, for my sister it was piano, and then my two brothers, I think my mom tried to get them to do things, but I think they just kind of shined it on.

BN: Did you choose which instruments to play or did your mom choose for you?

DA: I think my mom kind of chose. Well, she chose, told me things I couldn't play, like drums. She didn't want me playing drums in the house. So there weren't too many things off limits other than that. We didn't have a piano at the time, so I think the trombone, trumpet came up because somebody just had it in their garage and it wasn't being used, and oh by the way, somebody else's son is going to be learning how to play it as well. So I think that's kind of how it happened. I wanted to play trumpet first, but I started getting braces, and that just did it. So I went to a trombone instead. Though I wouldn't have minded learning saxophone, but I guess at the time, nobody had one. Somebody had a trombone so that's what happened. And I actually got into it, at least music-wise. I liked playing music, and was part of the junior high and high school marching bands. And I actually thought about joining the UCLA, when I got into UCLA, I was actually thinking about trying out for the UCLA band until I found out that their practices were at seven in the morning. [Laughs] I'm going, I don't think so. Seven in the morning's a little bit too early.

BN: And then along those lines you had also mentioned being part of the Koyasan troop and the drum and bugle corps. Was that also, did that come first or was that...

DA: Actually that kind of came after.

BN: You were already sort of playing?

DA: I was already playing the trombone. This is, actually, I started in elementary school. And then so Boy Scouts was until I was thirteen, fourteen, and that's when I joined Koyasan's Boy Scout troop. And then as part of that, they had a drum and bugle corps.

BN: Your family were members of Koyasan all along, right?

DA: That's right. So though I find out, I thought you had to be a member of Koyasan to be a member of this troop, but that wasn't true. I got to meet kids from all over the city, which was, proved to be instrumental later on, just knowing kids from different parts of the city. So that's how the troop got to be pretty large at that, during those years during the '60s. I think at its highest, we must have had over eighty kids. And each patrol had at least ten guys in it, and we had eight patrols. Mine was out in Monterey Park, Montebello, we had one out in East Los Angeles, the west side. I don't think we had one in Gardena.

BN: Were all the boys Sansei, basically?

DA: Yeah, pretty much. And yeah, it was a big commitment. Because Friday nights were troop meetings and Saturdays was patrol meetings and then drum and bugle corps at least had a couple practices a week. And then when there was competitions, they added a third and sometimes fourth practice. So that's Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, a lot of times. My mom, she managed to keep up with this. But yeah, so that was a big part of my social life in some ways during junior high and high school was this Boy Scouts.

BN: How many years were you part of the troop?

DA: Probably six years, from twelve to eighteen.

BN: All the way through high school, basically.

DA: Right. Yeah, right through high school. Stopped when I went to college. But I never became the troop leader or the scoutmaster, never wanted that.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 10>

BN: So you mentioned competitions. How did that work? What did you do?

DA: Well, the drum and bugle corps, back in the... and I think they still do it today, they have competitions. You, either through, just like the Rose Bowl, for example, the troop marched in the Rose Bowl parade. That's not a competition, but there were parades back then and some of those parades, other drum and bugle corps were invited, and there would be a competition, meaning, so you would play two or three songs in front of this stand, and so some were that, just musical ability, some had to do with how, your marching ability, do formations and whatnot. And that was the most, I think what most of the competitions were. You'd go out into the football field and play about fifteen minutes' worth of marching around doing these different formations and playing different songs, and you'd be graded on it. So there was Maryknoll back there and they had a troop, they had a drum and bugle corps, we did, Chinatown had one, East Los Angeles had one, and some of that East Los Angeles one was co-ed. Ours wasn't. We didn't really have any women 'til much, much later when we added a color guard, and the color guard are the ones that carried around the flags, they don't play any instruments. But yeah, so I had left by then, but yeah, so we would practice at a high school called Jackson, Jackson High School in East Los Angeles, and it was a high school for the guys, I guess, that were getting kicked out of other high schools. [Laughs] I don't know why that's important. We'd be on that field at least two times a week when there was competitions, and we'd practice in their gym as well. And if it was raining outside, we'd practice inside. It was, I don't know who designed those marching things, but it took a while to memorize all that stuff. March out ten feet, turn this way, march. And you don't really know what it looks like 'til one year I think somebody finally filmed it, and going, "Oh, wow, is that what it looks like? That's kind of nice." So, I mean, you would watch other marching bands do their thing, but all their things are much different than ours so you didn't know what your own looked like.

BN: Yeah, from the ground level, I guess, it looks very different from...

DA: Sure. And all you're concerned about is you're divided into three guys normally. So you're pivoting around, you're moving around, and so is everybody else. But you know, you could see what everyone else is doing, but you don't know what it looks like from the stands.

BN: Right.

DA: We went to a couple, later on, there was Nationals. We never made it to Nationals. But there were things like that where you would compete, and if you won, then you'd go to the next level and then you'd get to State. And if you win the State, then you go to Nationals. We got to State one year, but we never got to Nationals. But we were invited, and I remember going to one, and it's pretty crazy. Pretty impressive what some of these organizations can do and how good they are. Some of these players, they were incredible. So you're going, oh, this is the cream of the crop. Plus, you know, we're a Boy Scout troop, right? We have to take whoever we have. Whereas a lot of these other organizations, you had to try out. And plus, you had to be a certain height for a lot of these. You know, ours was like this. [Pantomimes people of different heights]. You line up, right? Some of them, like the more professional ones like the Air Force or something like that, they were all same height, within an inch or two, and they all look great because their belt lines are all the same, it looks better.

BN: Right, right. You had a, more a handicap.

DA: Yeah, a little bit. But that's not supposed to count, but aesthetically, it's hard to compete against something like that. But we would never be going against that kind of competition anyway. They had flights, so to speak, categories, so we were more like a community type.

BN: This might be a dumb question, but I was not a Boy Scout, so I don't know much about this. Because Boy Scouts were, at some level, are they not Christian based organizations? Isn't there a religious component?

DA: Actually not.

BN: No? Because this is affiliated with a Buddhist temple.

DA: I know, right. Now I know that other troops did, but ours didn't. And yeah, there's the Scout Law and the things that we were, part of that was trying to be reverent, right? And so I can see where it could be a lot of Christian values in it, but I don't know, I never looked at it that way. Trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. Those are the twelve rules of the Scouts. That's kind of how I was indoctrinated. And I did achieve Eagle Scout by force of my mom. [Laughs] "You've got to set an example for your two brothers." "Okay." That was her mantra.

BN: It gets you a picture in the Rafu Shimpo and stuff, too.

DA: Gets me into... yeah. Anyways, got to set a good example for your younger sister and brothers. "Okay, Mom." That kept me on pretty much the straight and narrow for a while. [Laughs]

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 11>

BN: So you mentioned that you moved to Montebello when you were twelve, thirteen?

DA: Twelve years old.

BN: So you pretty much went to middle school, junior high school and high school there, right?

DA: That's right.

BN: Yeah. So what schools were those?

DA: Montebello Junior and Montebello High.

BN: Okay. And then you'd mentioned it was largely, that there weren't too many Japanese Americans in your schools?

DA: Right. Going from East Los Angeles where I knew everybody in my neighborhood, pretty much, walk into anybody's home, and a lot of the neighbors were Nihonjin. Either that or Jewish or Hispanic. But yeah, a large portion was Japanese. So you go to Montebello and there's hardly any. I think I mentioned to you, out of my graduating class, there must have been about twenty of us out of a thousand. And then my sister's class was a little bit bigger, maybe she had about a hundred in her class, which was right behind mine. But still it was primarily an Armenian and Hispanic population there. Hard to find Japanese girls to date, actually. [Laughs]

BN: And the Boy Scouts weren't helping in that regard.

DA: No.

BN: Although they, buddies had sisters theoretically, but maybe not such a good idea.

DA: Not such a good idea. There was a few.

BN: So you were kind of almost living in these two worlds in some respect?

DA: Oh, yeah.

BN: Because you're doing all this Boy Scout stuff in a pretty much all Japanese context, and the high school world is totally not.

DA: Totally not. Yeah, so that was how I kind of grew up. Plus, because of the move, losing a lot of friends from elementary school, I had to find new ones, make new ones. Actually, one of the people I knew from East Los Angeles that made that same move was the Miyatake family. So Gary and I were the same age, so at least we had each other for a while, and that's where Gary and I joined the Montebello golf team, so that's where I kind of got my hankering for golf, joining the golf team.

BN: This is when you were in high school?

DA: High school, yeah. I kind of lost my train... where were we now? We were talking about... oh, the groups, that's right. So sports also became a large part of my life as well. So I always wanted to have sixth period PE in junior high, so in order to do that, you had to be on some kind team. So I started going out for different kind of sports. So growing up, I had school friends that hang out during school, and then after school it was mostly my sporting friends or guys that played basketball or swam or golf or I did a little track. I tried everything, actually, baseball. And then, yeah, on the weekends we were the Boy Scouts, pretty much, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday was church, which is generally Boy Scouts, somewhere around there.

BN: And then given all the Boy Scout commitments, were you able to play in the JA basketball leagues or anything like that?

DA: Well, not much.

BN: Because of all the Boy Scouts stuff.

DA: I do remember CYC being in baseball for a little while, and basketball, but that's when I was, before Boy Scouts. I think once Boy Scouts started, all that stuff is just too much.

BN: And then given your family interests, did you ever do judo?

DA: No martial arts. Though I know we all wanted to. But I think just given, just thinking back on it, all the things that my mom had us into, that was just too much. We were already taking some kind of music lessons, right? And then once this whole Boy Scout thing started going, she had three boys that she was hauling all over the place, and one more place just would have, wasn't going to work.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 12>

BN: And then the other thing I want to ask you before we get to UCLA and the Gidra period was, you know, you're growing up in the '60s. As you're growing up, there's the assassinations, uprisings, Vietnam. Looking back, how aware were you of the things that were going on, and how did you see the world at that point?

DA: Yeah, I think I was like most typical kids. I think I was... of course you knew what was happening, I think everybody knew where they were, my age when John F. Kennedy was killed. That was in junior high, I was in junior high. But you read about it, but just looking back on my life up until that point, I'm trying to do the good and the narrow, and my mom should keep me on the track: Boy Scout, Eagle Scout, getting good grades, trying to go to college, all of that. I was indoctrinated in a certain way. So in terms of my global outlook, I had really none at the time in some ways. But there was this, certainly, I could see this growing apprehension among the young people, especially this whole war thing, right? And so, but again, it was just peripheral. Your life is high school, you got to get good grades, every day is kind of the same kind of thing, and you just didn't want to get into trouble. And there weren't a lot of issues that I knew of at our high school in terms of drugs, it was mostly alcohol. Kids were trying to sneak drinks and whatnot into school, but I didn't think there was any... anyways, I wasn't aware of any kind of drugs going on, but I'm sure there was.

BN: Were there any African American students?

DA: No, not in Montebello. Not that I can recall. Maybe there might have been one or two.

BN: Did your parents ever talk about camp and the war and any of that stuff as you were growing up?

DA: Very minimal. And I know we would ask, and I know I asked my dad about what happened during the war. But like I said, he wouldn't talk a whole lot about it. He didn't bring back very many friends from those days, and he didn't really talk about it much. My mom, too.

BN: And then he didn't go to camp.

DA: Yeah, plus, he didn't go. And my mom, from her, all I got was mostly good stories. And I could see why, given her situation versus what my dad's side had to go through. So a lot different.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 13>

BN: What prompted you to ask questions, or how did you learn about the whole history part?

DA: Well, that came, I think, when I started going to UCLA.

BN: Later, uh-huh.

DA: That's when I started hearing from other people about other perspectives. And that's when the whole identity crisis, so to speak, started raising its head. And the Civil Rights Movement was happening at the time, Chicano Power was happening, and Black Power was happening, all this upheaval was, particularly started going on when I hit college. So those were the kind of times, so then I started going and talking with my mom and dad about how do they feel, what's going on, discussions about what the "establishment" was and, "Why are you rebelling against the establishment?" So we'd have talks about that, and yeah, it was good.

BN: That you at least were able to have those ties which a lot of people did not.

DA: Not a lot of agreement there from my dad. He was pretty steadfast in his views. I could see where I put myself in my dad's shoes back in those days, here's his son he sends off to college that he thought would be so radical. Because I think I told you, my first week back was --

BN: Yeah, you should tell the story.

DA: Wanted to go to Berkeley, and they put their foot down, they did not want me to go to Berkeley because that's where the riots were happening and all the smokers were happening and the "flower power" was happening. So I went to UCLA and the same thing kind of happened anyways, in a way.

BN: Sent you to UCLA to avoid Berkeley and you end up working on Gidra.

DA: Right. [Laughs]

BN: And one last thing before we get to the UCLA years is I did want to ask you about your mom's community work also. Because, as I said, we did interview your mom, but it pretty much cuts off. Because her war, her camp story is, there's so much, it kind of just ends there, so she doesn't talk much about the postwar. So I wonder if you could talk just a little bit about some of the stuff she was involved with in Montebello particularly.

DA: Well, as you know, my dad was an insurance agent and my mom didn't work. I think back then, that was very typical. And so we were raised with the idea of giving back to the community, and so because of that, I think there was a group of women, including my mom, that formed this, what was called the Montebello Women's Club. In fact, pretty much all Nisei women from back in the day, which includes Sakaye Aratani and the Kawaguchis and, well, most of the, a lot of Nisei women, Linda Fujioka, Mitzi Miya, anyways, they would put on functions, raise money, and give it away. And it just kind of depends on what entity that they felt they needed help with. So a lot of what they did was, I think they helped raise money for the VFW. They also helped with raising money for Nisei Week. They helped out at certain churches as well. So that would keep her busy, that part of her social life. Anyways, that sort of thing. She also was very instrumental at temple, at Koyasan.

BN: Did they remain members throughout...

DA: My mom did. And my uncle Stogie and that family, they were members of the board forever. In fact, my cousin is still helping out at Koyasan, helping to keep the legacy going. Because my grandfather, my mom's dad, like I said, followed, I believe Sogabe-sensei here, and was on the board from day one and was very... and so a Kanogawa was on that Koyasan board for, maybe 'til now. So we're talking about seventy years now? Still active.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 14>

BN: Okay. So we get to UCLA now. So you would have, did you graduate in '68, then?

DA: '68.

BN: And then started that fall?

DA: Started that fall.

BN: And then did you, I forget now, did you commute?

DA: Decided to stay out there. So that was actually a discussion that, should I stay at home and commute? I remember having those kind of talks. And then, well, what about staying on campus? So we went out and visited the campus. Back in those days -- well, they even have one today -- the parents and child get to go out to the campus, and I remember visiting a couple of the dorms and thinking I could, wanting to stay there. And I guess it didn't leave a good impression on my parents because there was a lot of activity that day and lots of yelling, lots of screaming, lots of kids running all over the place. And then my mom's thinking, "How do you expect to study during all of this commotion?" [Laughs] And so I guess they decided they didn't want me staying in a dorm. And as a consequence, my dad, I guess, had a friend who owned an apartment not far from campus. So he had a little studio apartment, and I think it cost him a hundred bucks a month back then, something like that, maybe less. And so that's where I spent the first year is in a studio commuting on a motorcycle to UCLA.

BN: Where was this?

DA: Barrington and Santa Monica, right behind this Ralph's -- I think it was Ralph's -- supermarket. And those were fun days. All I had was a, there was no microwaves back in those days, so there was only... so I had a little rice cooker and a hot, little oven, and I'd make chicken pot pies, two for twenty-five cents. [Laughs] Made a little pot of rice and then you had a meal. So yeah, so UCLA, I don't know anybody that went from Montebello, maybe a couple guys, but I wasn't really close to them. And so as part of trying to find out what was going on, I'd go to these get-togethers, parties, dances. And then there's the Nisei Bruins Club, so I decided to go to that. And that's when, I think, I met one of the more influential people back in those days, was Mike Murase. So he was barking away at people, just like he does today, or did, and he and I hit it off. Really liked him, and he's a couple years older than me, and started planting seeds in my mind about things that, "You haven't thought about that yet?" "Why haven't you thought about that yet?" "You should think about that." And so yeah, so being that straight-A guy, that Eagle Scout, being told, "Well, that's not exactly true, Doug, there's a lot more to this picture than meets the eye." And so that just opened up a whole new way of looking at things up that I, up until that time, was oblivious to. In some ways, I think that made it even a stronger impact in some ways, being on the straight and narrow path, and all of a sudden you're given ideas that kind of contradict some of those things that you had built your whole life on. So that started a new, I guess, road of identity and ways of thinking.

BN: I think fairly early on, Mike was involved in the founding of the Asian American Studies Center at UCLA.

DA: I think so.

BN: So did you get involved in that at all, or did you take any of the early Asian American classes?

DA: Oh yeah, definitely took the classes. But wasn't, I didn't get involved in, necessarily in all those meetings that were taking place at a much higher level. Mike was, some other people I knew were, but not me. I was doing other things. [Laughs] I had other interests. And that's actually when I started getting into sports as well. And so I started meeting other people and getting into, especially the basketball leagues. And Mike, too, he was a good basketball player and a volleyball player, too. And so yeah, Mike was such an all-around kind of guy with a lot of different interests and a lot of different expertise. And yeah, so some things he'd get into and I'd say, well, okay, that's Mike's thing. This is my thing over here.

BN: And then you were, at this point also, playing music, too, right?

DA: Actually, yeah. I started self-teaching myself. One of the other first people I met there, too, was a woman, Candace Ota. And she lived nearby, actually, she went to Uni High, had a twin sister. And their whole family was into music as well. And because she lived right down the street, I'd be over there, and I got to know the family very well. And I remember the mom was really into the Lakers back in those days, the Jerry West days, and Elgin Baylor, and she'd be in front of that TV yelling her head off. But music-wise, though, she played piano. The dad, he didn't play anything, but they had an older brother, Brian, who would play this... I don't know what it was called. Anyway, he ties a rope to a broom, and then it's hooked up to a big kettle, and he plays bass. You know, he plucks at this string, and makes it tighter to make it higher, lower to make it lower. And they'd have these little family get-togethers where they, and Candace and Colleen, they play the guitars and they'd have these little singalongs. And I thought that was such, that was a great family thing. And that kind of also prompted me to get better, because I was just learning, and I'd try to play a song, but I'd end up trying to do the chords. Plus, I liked music, so in about a couple years or so, I was half decent. And then people I was meeting through Gidra also had some of these same talents or interests. And later, a few of us formed a band. And so that's back in the day when there was a lot of garage bands going on, and got to meet a lot of people that way, too, that that's kind of when I met Dan and June and got to know them, and obviously they went on to form the band Hiroshima.

BN: What was your band called?

DA: Fine Weather. [Laughs] That was one of 'em. Street Flower was another one. I played in, I'd back up some of the other bands because we all knew each other and we were all kind of friends.

BN: What type of music were you playing?

DA: Mostly R&B, dance music. Though I liked rock and roll, and we were writing our own stuff back in those days. But it was a combination of, I'd say, R&B and rock and roll.

BN: So you were playing dances and so forth?

DA: Yeah. Playing dances, weddings, receptions, lot of fun.

BN: Were you getting paid for these gigs?

DA: Yeah, actually. Not a lot.

BN: But something?

DA: But something. And I think, actually, some of the other bands, they actually had managers and you can actually... our band was, got kind of on the larger side, there was like seven of us. So from a money-making standpoint, you have to divide everything by seven. And I know Carry On, man, they had like twelve at some point. You know, they had a horn line. They were expensive, but they were good. And because of that, they were a draw. But yeah, I knew a lot of those guys as well. And yeah, so that was a big part, took up a lot of time. So I think that was also part of my life back in those days is the music part as well as the Gidra part.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 15>

BN: So how, moving on to Gidra, how did that -- I mean, you knew Mike, but was he the one that kind of pulled you in?

DA: Well, I think it was a combination of Mike, and I later met a couple of other people that I roomed with, one being Duane Kubo. So Duane was another guy that I met, I can't exactly remember when, but we met that first year and we ended up living together for the next maybe four or five years with different guys. But Duane also was in the same boat as me, meaning that he didn't know a whole lot of people either, he's from San Jose. So he was in this, we were both meeting a lot of people, and he must have met Tracy Okita, and Tracy and Mike and some other guys, some other people were forming the Gidra at that time. And I was hearing bits and pieces about it during my first year there, but I think it was Duane that finally got me to start coming and helping out. I'm not sure why Mike wasn't instrumental, but it was mostly Duane, but that was probably because I was living with him. So something to do.

BN: And you were not living in the same place now with Duane, you're in a different apartment?

DA: Well, actually, the same complex. Just moved down the hallway into a two-bedroom that we shared with two other guys, actually. And so we were there for about two years. Then later on, Duane and I moved to the Crenshaw area where we rented an apartment there. Yeah, it had been going on for maybe about a year or so, Gidra.

BN: The first time I see you on the staff, listed in the staff box is in November of '70.

DA: That sounds about right.

BN: Which is about a year, little more than a year after it started. You were pretty much there the whole, for the entire run, subsequently?

DA: Yeah, that was something else.

BN: What drew you to it, or once you were there, what was the draw for you?

DA: Well, I think it was mostly like Mike had challenged me, the global outlook. Why are you going to college, why do you want to do what you want to do? What is it you want to do? What about these marginalized people? You've been marginalized. I have? Because I didn't feel that way. I felt we were, I never really felt that discriminated against, primarily just because I think the way we were raised, we were kind of protected against it. And my father made a decent enough living where we didn't have to worry about where our next meal was coming. So those kind of ideas of marginalized people and people having a hard time, I thought all JAs were fine. And I come to find out, well, no. [Laughs] So yeah, those kind of questions and those kind of identity issues back in those days is what kind of kept me going and kept me interested. It was a whole thing about trying to give back to the community, trying to treat people as you wanted them to treat you. And then you find out that there are communities that are just getting trounced on. I never really knew any people of, Black people, so I didn't know about their struggles really, other than what you read, and what you read is not the same, right? It's limited. And so those kind of questions and the search, and the process of where you think you want to go, I think became part of what I found important, the whole process. It's not so much... yeah, it's working together to try to get to another point, and that's what I felt these people were trying to do, that we had certain common beliefs. But we did have certain common goals, and we all tried to reach for it in our different ways. So I had my way, Mike had his, everyone had their own little different ways of expressing themselves. And that was also kind of part of it, too, realizing that there's a certain amount of freedom that you have and that you can control, and some of that you can't, obviously. But the stuff that you can control, then what are you going to do at that time?

So working with that group of people, which I thought was some of the most imaginative, intelligent people, I had never really been exposed to those kind of people per se. Because Boy Scouts and whatnot, right? So coming in contact with people like Mike and Tracy and Duane, a guy Steve Tatsukawa, just challenging the norms and seeing if it's something you should continue to believe in or throw aside and adopt something new. It was a really good experience to be a part of that kind of group of people, and I just, to this day, I still feel it was very special, that group, that all those people that went through those doors had something to offer.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 16>

BN: In looking back through the issues, one of the things you noticed is there's no editor. There's sometimes not even a staff box, but oftentimes there is just a list of people. So can you just take me through how a typical issue would come together? I mean, how do you decide what goes in, who decides what's on the cover, and how did it work?

DA: Well, again, I think it was all, like you said, there's no one person in charge. But that actually wasn't quite true. There was always some... at some point, someone was given the responsibility of making sure the edition got done, and it would be passed on to different guys, they would rotate.

BN: So you would have, like, you're responsible for the March issue and someone else for the April issue?

DA: Something like that. And then it would always be in a group situation, so in terms of, for example, the cover, whoever was in charge might have put together some ideas, but he or she would not decide which one, they would all be part of a group, and we would all decide, okay, we'd decide as a group what would be done. And then as far as the content, there was really no editor per se. If you had something you wanted put in, it got put in. [Laughs] Pretty much. So we would end up with this whole collage of different things that we wanted to go into the edition, and the group of us would decide, okay, this, this, this. And then we would be given pages to put together, and depending on if it was a poem or if it was an actual article. Then if it was an article, then we'd have to have it typed out. Back in those days we actually have to have a typewriter. We actually ended up investing in one that could kind of... you know how the columns are a certain width, right? And nowadays it's very easy with computers, but back in those days, to have so many characters in a line, this typewriter would, you were able to kind of program it where it will, when you type out a column, it will type out to that certain width and then move to the next line. Yeah, that typewriter was kind of expensive. I can't remember where we got the money to get that. But that was our, I think our number one major buy. But those were interesting times back then, because today it's all computerized. Back then you'd have to lay out this page, and then we'd edit it, and then if we find a typo, we'd have to actually cut it out of that piece of paper, lift it out, get the corrected piece and paste it right in there. So for young guys out there, that's how it was done back in those days. So yeah, it was kind of fun that way.

BN: Did you have a primary job of laying out, proofreading, or did everybody sort of do everything?

DA: Everyone did a little bit of everything. I think, though, that some people would do what they were better at. I mean, there were good people that were typists. So me, at, like, forty-eight words a minute, not too great, when we had guys that could do a hundred words a minute, so they'd obviously do the typing. But I had to end up doing some typing as well, whenever I had to. And then obviously we had a lot of artists, right, if you saw those articles or the editions, there's about, I'd say about six to seven that would consistently draw something. So I know that they were given themes every now and then, and they'd come up with some illustrations that we'd print. Yeah, so we have these big boards, we'd finally lay 'em out, and then we'd take 'em over to, there was this place out in Glendale that would print it for us. Every year, there was... I know that during the course of those five years, we had to change printers a couple times. Just 'cause either they went out of business or they became too expensive. Those are a lot of all-nighters, lot of all-nighters. I mean, I never did that before, but I got used to it. I don't know how we did it.

BN: For five years.

DA: For five years.

BN: Nobody got paid, right?

DA: Right, nobody got paid.

BN: So how did the finances work? There was subscription income, right?

DA: Right. There was subscription income, there was ad income, and I think we even got a grant from UCLA, not often, but enough. And I know some of us paid out of our own pocket sometimes. But by hook or crook, we were able to raise enough to make the print run. It wasn't that expensive from what I remember. So, yeah.

BN: Got by somehow?

DA: Got by somehow. You're going to have to ask Mike more about that.

BN: Right, right, yeah, I will.

DA: About the finances, because I wasn't involved with any money.

BN: And then in terms of, the way you describe it, you were kind of making these collective decisions. I mean, what happened when there was like a disagreement, or do you remember times where, "Oh, we can't run this article?" Or there was even political disagreement, right, on, "Should we take this position?" "No, no, we should do this." Well, first, did that happen a lot and how were those resolved? Do you remember a particular example?

DA: A particular instance or example? No. But I know that there was a lot, a lot of talking. A lot. And you know, if you ever bothered, on a lot of the issues, or next to the staff, there's blurbs. Those blurbs -- and generally that was either written by Bruce Iwasaki, Mike Murase, just those two, I think. Those will give a reader a sense of what happened that month. When I was going over them, I was kind of reading some of those going, oh, yeah, that's right. Oh, did that happen? I don't remember that. [Laughs]

BN: I noticed those.

DA: To me, that's more interesting reading than some of the articles, right? But yeah, there's a lot of discussion, lot of talk. And for me, I know that I felt that there were times that we were just beating a dead horse and that we're not going to get to any kind of consensus. That was just me trying to be pragmatic, I guess. But never harsh words per se, just agree to disagree. And when that happened, then nothing got done. [Laughs] In some ways, we'd reach an impasse. So I guess it would depend on any particular issue what we'd finally decide on, but I'd imagine that somebody would have just taken the bull by the horns and just make a decision. I think that's kind of what happened, happened at some point.

BN: At a certain point, this issue's got to come out, so someone's got to decide.

DA: That's right.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 17>

BN: So were there any particularly memorable articles or issues in your mind, looking back?

DA: Well, I think I like the one with Steve. I think he did one on his... I forget what the, I was trying to find it. It was kind of a story about going to Las Vegas, and it was a made up story, but illustrated some of the craziness of the times.

BN: This is Steve Tatsukawa?

DA: Steve Tatsukawa. And one of the most imaginable... his imagination was the greatest one for me. And met him at UCLA, and he was actually instrumental, I think, and helped Mike with getting the Asian American Studies Central up and running. He was taken to the hospital when the first riot happened at UCLA on Janss Steps. And apparently he had some pebbles in his pocket and was seen kind of throwing it and so that a bunch of police just converged on him and beat the heck out of him. And nobody knew who he was. Everybody found out afterwards, because yeah, he was bleeding. I know a lot of us were going, "Who is that? Who is that?" We'd later find out, and then yeah, he became very active, obviously. It was essential, not only in Gidra, but also in the establishment of Visual Communications. He was a high ranking VP over at KP...

BN: The radio station?

DA: The radio station.

BN: Not KPCC.

DA: Not the community, not NPR, but the...

BN: Oh, commercial station.

DA: Commercial. And, what, thirty-four, thirty-five years old? Senior vice president of programming. The thing was, he'd kind of hang out. When I got to know him, he's such a crazy guy, very well spoken. But you read his papers, they read like an academia book. I'm going, "You wrote this?" [Laughs] You sure you wrote this? Because the writing did not fit the person. It's totally like wow, Steve, how is that possible? That was, again, it's just one of those, yeah, he's just another one of those guys in that group around Gidra that I just thought was just so extraordinary. And yeah, women, too. First time I'd met women like that, you know? I mean, up until then, I didn't know any women that would curse. But yeah, some of these women, they had no problems. [Laughs] No problem at all. I thought, far out. So yeah, so again, I was being exposed to an environment that I never knew existed.

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

<Begin Segment 18>

BN: I went through and read some of your pieces also, so I was going to ask you just about one or two of them.

DA: All right.

BN: One is, like, written from the perspective of a Sansei young man having these discussions with older Nisei about the times. And from what you've said, it sounds, I mean, was that based on you and your dad and uncle, it sounds like?

DA: Real experiences, that's right. My dad, my mom and other people. So I was just coming from the point of view of, I thought those kind of conversations were happening. And so I just wanted to at least indicate that, hey, this is what's kind of going on. And not try and force feed somebody, and just trying to come from a little bit different place, not be so, beating on your head kind of thing. There were some activists that liked to do that, right? But that wasn't my style, and that was kind of the thing, too, about the group of people. It was part of the process and where you're coming from and just trying to be honest and transparent. And if you're that, then whatever it is that's coming out is true. And even if it's, maybe you don't like what you're hearing, but at least it's honest and it's, yeah, it's coming from the heart. How bad can that be? So yeah, in that talk with that imaginary Nisei, I was just trying to get across different points, and I was trying to give their points as well.

BN: It's interesting that you don't vilify them, you just agree to disagree at the end, basically.

DA: Because that's real life, right? And that maybe I would have brought up some points that others might not have thought about and vice versa.

BN: Which raises the obvious question, what did your parents and family think about, not just that article, but just the whole Gidra experience?

DA: Oh, my dad did not like it at all. Not at all. He thought I was going off the deep end. Of course, it didn't help that I was letting my hair grow real long, becoming a hippie musician, I was smoking weed and so were a lot of my friends, coming home. I was working at, part-time at a liquor store in Crenshaw, and getting to sound like I'm from Crenshaw. Started to sound like a Black person, and my mom is going, "Oh, can't you talk normal?" [Laughs] I'm going, "Aren't I talking normal?"

BN: "What happened to the Eagle Scout?"

DA: Yeah. But I think, as time went on, they saw, and the more we talked, I think the more they understood. And though my dad didn't like it, he finally came to understand.

BN: And the other thing I wanted to ask is what was your relationship -- not you personally, but Gidra in general, to, like, the Rafu Shimpo or other, the mainstream Japanese American media, if any?

DA: I don't know that we had any.

BN: You kind of were going on parallel separate tracks.

DA: Yeah, definitely on separate tracks. I don't know that we had...

BN: So you didn't really have run-ins or anything like that, you just went, each going your own way.

DA: Right. It's not like we were robbing advertisers from them.

BN: Right. Distinctly different audiences.

DA: Distinctly.

BN: And then where... I know it started at UCLA, but I think probably by the time you came along, it was off of campus. Was that true?

DA: Actually, I think it got off campus not long after I started.

BN: And then where did it go?

DA: It went into Crenshaw. So there was a... I'm not sure who knew who, but where Kobe's Pharmacy was on the corner of Jefferson and Fourth? Anyways, it's a small strip mall, and we were able to rent a small office space there. And that's basically where we ended up. Is that right? No, we moved once. Oh god, this is a little foggy.

BN: But you did have an, kind of a dedicated office space?

DA: But we did have an office. We had a dedicated office. And actually, Visual Communications' office was in that same strip mall after a while. And so I know guys were kind of dipping between the two, like Duane and Alan Ohashi.

BN: So you were able to generate apparently enough revenue to be able to rent this office?

DA: And again, I'm not sure where all that money came from.

BN: We'll ask Mike about that, but yeah.

DA: He ought to remember that. But yeah, lot of sleepless nights in that office.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 19>

BN: Another article I wanted to ask you about was in the last issue. It was this big, kind of... you had an article called "People Were All Human," which seemed...

DA: I did? [Laughs]

BN: Do you not remember? Okay. If you don't, that's fine. But no, it seemed to, it made the point that... kind of a call for tolerance and understanding within the Asian American movement, which seemed to suggest that there was disagreement. Do you remember that at all?

DA: A little bit. And well, there were a lot of different organizations back in those days, and so some more militant than others. And I thought, for me, the militancy I never could get past. I never was into that. And I think that was part of it, too, and why are we fighting amongst ourselves? We are overall a marginalized group of people, so why should we fight? Let's try and listen to each other and learn from each other and try and do things together, try and find common ground. And I thought there was enough there to do that. But I look around today, in certain ways, the human element, how we all try and get along with each other, that hasn't really changed much. Just wondering if that's just a curse that we're born with as a human race.

BN: Yeah, probably. [Laughs]

DA: Yeah, it's sad in a way that we can't really seem to get along. Just because their skin is a different color or their religion is different or whatever, you know? It's crazy how people will try and separate themselves and make themselves want to be better than somebody else or something, they're willing to kill over it. And that's... I never could understand that. To this day, I still can't, and it's just kind of sad that way.

BN: Now, another thing I wanted to ask about was that there were obviously both men and women on the staff, and was there a sense of, I mean, how gendered was it? I mean, was there a fairly equal treatment of... or were women kind of doing more of the typing, or do you know what I mean? How conscious were you of that, falling into traditional roles versus bucking that?

DA: I think there was a fair amount of consciousness around that. I mean, there were women that made us make sure we were conscious of that. But I think as time went on, in the beginning, there was a lot of people coming in and out of those doors, especially the first couple years. And then maybe the fourth and fifth years, it really started coming down to a core group of maybe about fifteen of us, and I think the large majority were men. Yeah, I was kind of looking at some of those staff boxes over the years, and it was quite a lot of people some months. But as it got towards the end, there was just some core guys, I think.

BN: The other thing I wanted to ask you was that, looking at it today, it's interesting that there really seems to be this conscious effort to adopt kind of this third-world perspective where you've got articles on the American Indian movement and on African American movement and all of these things, and just asking if there was, how conscious an effort was there to kind of build this solidarity amongst other communities of color, and how successful do you think that you were in that effort?

DA: Well, there was definitely a conscious effort to include other struggles of other communities, there's no question about that. How successful we are? I would not know. It's hard to tell how to judge something like that.

BN: Did you ever collaborate with other organizations or publications from other communities of color?

DA: Not that I can recall, though I think there could have been cooperation or collaboration with other writers. But in terms of other organizations, not so much. We could have been maybe a mouthpiece or a way for, like the Van Troi Brigade, you know, back in those days. We wrote some articles about them, certainly we wrote about some of the things that were happening in Chinatown, of course, Little Tokyo, NCRR. Wait, was it started by then?

BN: Well, their predecessor, and I think the Little Tokyo...

DA: Oh, right. LTPRO, Little Tokyo Progressives. So, yeah. Mike would know again more about that.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 20>

BN: So how did it, I mean, after five years, it kind of ends. How did you decide to, kind of, end it?

DA: Gosh. I know that was another big meeting, and if I recall, wherever the money was coming from, the resources were dwindling if they're not all gone. And so the idea to continue on was fraught with a lot of hurdles, obviously. Money being one of them, and the other one is a lot of us were transitioning out, right? Transitioning out of school. So I think, yeah, we took our time, I think, on that last issue, didn't come out right away. And with the idea that, yeah, we're going to put out this one big last hurrah. So we did, and we finally put it all together. We had a big party afterwards, I think, once we finished it.

BN: Did you feel... well, reading it, it doesn't say that it's the last issue. It says it might be or...

DA: Is that right?

BN: Yeah, this is Mike's piece. He says, "This may be the last issue for a couple of months, or a year, or maybe forever." Kind of leaves it open. So how did you feel at that point? Was it your understanding that this was kind of it?

DA: Well, I thought so. And you know, as it turned out, there was another group later, many years later, that tried to revive it.

BN: A couple times.

DA: So I still find that kind of, very interesting. But I knew at the time that what we did was somehow important in that we made our mark. And certain things have to end, there's kind of a natural order of things. But I felt good about it. And yeah, again today, I'm still so surprised that people are still interested in it.

BN: Yeah, yes. I mean, did you think people would be reading it fifty years later?

DA: Not really. [Laughs] Not really, you know. But I do think that that time in the '60s and early '70s is a really special time in our country's history. And I'm happy to be a part of it.

<End Segment 20> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 21>

BN: We'll get back to that at the end, but before we get there, I want to ask you a little more about what happened after that in your life. So Gidra ends in, I think, is it April of '74? Something like that. And then you had been kind of out of school for a while by then, right?

DA: I'm leaving school now.

BN: You'd mentioned you were working at a liquor store part time, or was that earlier?

DA: That was during college.

BN: Oh, that's during college. So how were you paying the bills during that last Gidra period?

DA: Bookkeeping. I was part of, yeah, some of the stuff I learned at UCLA economics and whatnot taught me about finances. So I was able to pay, was keeping books for five small businesses, including my mom's little cosmetic business. So that was able to pay the bills. And I was also in a band making a few bucks a week. I was kind of hobnobbing around, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. I was also making money running the sound for the band, Hiroshima band, so it was kind of a nice few years of just kind of exploration. Met my first wife then.

BN: Was she in the music field, too, or did you meet in some other way?

DA: No, I met her through... I met her through some friends that I had played music with.

BN: Okay.

DA: And he's still playing, Scott Nagatani. Scott Nagatani had... my first wife, they were all part of this group that came out of Dorsey. So I'm not sure how or when I met her, but I did. Ended up coaching her basketball team, yeah, and then started dating her. Can't remember what happened first. Anyways, yeah, so I bipped around, I was playing in bands, keeping people's books, and then got married when I turned thirty. And still kind of bipping around, and then my wife gets pregnant, and I'm thinking, oh, maybe I got to start thinking more seriously about a career. So I kept the bookkeeping thing still going, and then at some point I decided that wasn't enough. So I started looking into insurance, and my younger brother Dean had already been working with my dad. So I didn't want to crowd him, so my dad had this other partnership that was just selling life insurance and group benefits, group health insurance, and so I decided to do that instead. And so I started working, doing that kind of stuff, and got to know the business. And I think I mentioned later on, after two or three years, I find out that my dad's partner is embezzling money. So that was a shock to all of us, so obviously he had to get let go. And so that's when I ended up taking everything over, and there was nobody to take it over, and I was just two years into the business.

BN: So about what year was that?

DA: That was about '74. No, '72, '71, '72... no, no. What am I thinking?

BN: About a decade later.

DA: 1980, '82, somewhere in there. It just kind of started from there. And then, let's see, where do I want to go to next? Anyways, I did that from '80 to the next ten, twelve years, and then my brother, there was a situation that happened at the agency where he had to leave. So then my dad, I ended up, I had to help him. He was ready to retire back then, by that time. This is in, like, 1990, '92, something like that. So that's when I started running the Property Casualty agency. I did that 'til we merged with FIA in 2000, and then came back to J-Town in 2007, 2008.

BN: Been here ever since.

DA: Been here ever since.

BN: So during the post-Gidra period, did you stay involved with things like the redress movement or the whole Little Tokyo redevelopment protests or that type of thing?

DA: Only on a fringe level mostly. Mainly because I was busy raising twins and getting divorced. [Laughs] And then raising twins, and it kept me kind of busy.

BN: So the twins are with the first wife?

DA: First wife.

BN: And then you had two more subsequent?

DA: Yes. And yeah, that's later, that's when I met Chris and got married and had two more kids. So got married to her in '85, and been married to her since.

BN: Let's see. Did you continue with the music thing?

DA: The music thing I kept going for a little while, but when I started working to do this group thing, it was harder and harder for me to just drop it and take off with the band. Because I wasn't playing hardly anymore, right? But I was doing sound for the band, at least. But when I couldn't break away, then they ended up finding other people, and after a while it just became, couldn't do it anymore. But I certainly kept in touch with them.

<End Segment 21> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 22>

BN: And then we talked a little bit about this, but I think just last year, you reached an agreement to sell the business.

DA: Right.

BN: So can you talk a little bit about...

DA: Well, I have four kids, right? So I wanted one of the four to take it over hopefully. I thought I had a couple chances at it, but nothing quite worked out. Though my son, Blair, I think, is interested in taking over the financial planning part of the business, so hopefully that will work out for him. So in looking around in the landscape of who I might want to try and partner up with or sell to, I felt that I didn't want to deal with any kind of agencies outside of Little Tokyo, or outside of our community. I had talks with a couple of other people I knew that had been bought by some of these other agencies that were looking, and didn't like what I was hearing, just the way they treat people, employees, that they wouldn't necessarily be guaranteed jobs, whatnot. And then looking around at the other agencies like mine, there weren't any really that had any type of perpetuation type of idea except for the Moreys. And I've known Josh and his dad, and his dad went to UCLA, so I've known him since college as well, and knew his wife, who unfortunately passed away due to cancer. But anyways, I knew the family, and so when I sat down with Josh and got to, listened to him, he convinced me. So I felt good about it and still do. And I think he's got a very good group of, a team that can take it to the next level, and he's doing that, I think. Meaning that he's looking for other agencies to buy and build into a much larger entity. I never had a vision like that. I would have had to have a lot more competent people around me in order to do that. Josh does, so I feel good that the agency's in good hands. So the fact that he set up this other umbrella corporation that will house all the agencies, and we're able to keep our own names still, I don't know how important that is for the long run, but I think in the short run I thought it was a good idea to keep all of our names. His name, my name, the Buna name, they just, being part of another large agency in Hawaii, so same kind of family agency. So anyways, he's growing pretty quick, I hope he's not growing too fast, but given I know that the people that he's got around him, he should be fine.

BN: So to what degree do you feel like the values that you carried from the Gidra days had an impact on the way you ran the business?

DA: Well, I thought... the one thing I thought that, and I still think is important today is the process. Is it collaborative or is it just "do as I say," kind of thing? And that was my dad's era, I thought. Do as you're told, walk the straight line, don't get into trouble, so forth and so on. I think the thing about the college days, and particularly the Gidra days is this whole idea of collectiveness, and deciding things as a group. But you have to have certain rules around that, right? So that, to me, made sense to me. This whole synergy idea, they call it synergy now, right? One plus one is three. I think that's kind of the most critical thing I think I've taken from it is the understanding is that it's better to try to make decisions as a group, and that's... the process of making that decision is as important as the decision itself.

BN: Right, right.

DA: I think that's most... because before it was all about the end result, the decision. This is the thing you've got to do, do it. Why? Just because that was the one done before, or that you told me to do it. Well, that ain't good enough these days, right? So I think to get to where you need to go, everyone needs to kind of understand how it's going to get done.

<End Segment 22> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 23>

BN: You mentioned kind of this very different style from your dad's generation to your generation. Do you think there's as much of a difference between your generation and your kids' generation?

DA: Oh, yeah. I get into it with my son all the time. His thought process is a lot different than mine, and not to say it's any better or worse, it's just different. So some of it, I think, is just terminology. But yeah, they have a whole different set of values, I think, or how they process information. So I don't know if it's any better or any worse.

BN: So he could write the same article you wrote about your dad and uncle.

DA: I'd be interested to know how he would, yeah, or write something like that.

BN: Yeah, yeah, not the little ones, but the differences between the generations.

DA: That's right, that's right.

BN: You should show that article to him. [Laughs]

DA: Yeah, maybe I should. [Laughs]

BN: Interesting. When you were talking about your kids not necessarily wanting to go into the insurance business, it made me think of the gardening business, too, where the same thing happens. The next generation doesn't want to do that. Farming, the next generation doesn't want to farm anymore, so there's this transition happening once you get to the Yonsei and beyond. Certain occupational niches are just not, no one wants to do that anymore.

DA: Nope. None of my kids wanted to get into insurance.

BN: I think often just going into businesses or family business in general, whatever it might be, whether it's insurance or restaurants or whatever, farms. Yeah, interesting.

<End Segment 23> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 24>

BN: The last thing I want to ask -- unless there's anything else you want to talk about that we haven't talked about.

DA: In terms of...

BN: Yeah, that you want to cover. Because if not -- you can think about it -- but what I was going to end with was looking back at Gidra, what would you say to a young person at UCLA, twenty years old, who wants to do something similar today or is doing something similar today?

DA: Just do it, I think. Yeah, it's hard to know now, you know. I don't know what young people are thinking about these days. I think there's so much going on, right? They're being bombarded by so much, I feel sorry for the kids today. But in some ways I think what is happening now with this whole MAGA thing, and the whole Trumpism and people becoming more polarized, is somewhat similar to the Vietnam days in a way where people are so polarized over the issues. And it's kind of the same issues, too, the way people want to try and resolve things is by violence. And that's so sad, and it's just become even worse just because of the kind of weapons these people can have access to now. I don't know how to answer that. They have so much to look forward to in some ways, and in some ways there's a lot happening that they have no control over. This whole climate issue, who's going to take the lead on that? I'm just waiting for, maybe another Martin Luther King will show his or her face someday and be able to put light on subjects that are kind of being taught in the dark areas, and bring it out into the light. This whole thing was happening with our city council, right? That's sad. But I kind of think those kind of private conversations are going on all the time.

BN: Right. The difference is they're being recorded now. Probably a lot worse was being said back in the day, but no one heard them.

DA: I'm sure. I'm sure as I'm sitting here. Talks like that are going on even today, now. And not just here in L.A., but all across the country, and not all of it's good, obviously. So how do you stop that? I don't know, there's no easy answer to that, other than to keep an open mind. They had this whole thing of information, disinformation, that's going to be answered. If you can't believe what it is that you're hearing or seeing, if you can't trust it, but other people can trust it, will trust it, then how can you keep bad information off the air, so to speak? You can't.

BN: Or should you even?

DA: I don't know. How do you do that?

BN: Well, on that cheerful note... [laughs]. Thank you so much. Again, if there's anything else you wanted to talk about or add, feel free. But if not, thank you, that was...

DA: How long was it?

BN: We went a little over, well, actually almost two and a half hours.

DA: Oh, really?

BN: Yeah, that's about... that works for us.

DA: Okay.

BN: So yeah, thank you.

<End Segment 24> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.