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BN: So what were the mechanics in terms of how it actually began? Because it started at UCLA and then kind of moves off campus.

MM: So what happened was that we... the studies centers in Campbell Hall, they were all babies. We were just trying to figure out how to move forward. But I think that was Colin again, but I think we all noticed that the Mexican American Studies Center and the Black... I forgot what it was called. Was it called Black Studies Center at the time? It could have been Black or African American Studies, I'm not sure.

BN: It may have been "Afro American" at the time.

MM: Anyway, so they had campus newspapers in addition to the Daily Bruin. They had, it was called NOMMO and... I can't remember now. So we said, "Let's go to the administration and ask if we can have a newspaper." And I don't remember who we spoke to, Winston Doby or someone, and said, "We want to put out a publication. Would you pay for it?" And they said, "We can do that, but we have to have editorial control. We have to look at your galleys or your proofs before it gets printed." So we said no thank you, and that's how we started. We collected some money among four or five of us. I remember the number differently depending on what it is, but four or five got together on the third floor of Campbell Hall, talked about it, and we decided, this was probably like January of 1969. And then by April we were able to put out our maiden issue, a modest, four-page tabloid, and we put all that together in a Campbell Hall office. And I think the first one might have been typed, I'm not sure, on a regular typewriter. Because you'll notice that a lot of the graphics are handwritten or those press-on types and things like that, very primitive way of putting together a paper, but that's what we had. And at that time, because it was on the UCLA campus, most of the people that participated were UCLA students, and they were people who were, did not have the background of coming from Asian communities, but grew up in other areas, so we had a mix of people who became the core of Gidra in the first year. But after the second or third issue, we talked about moving the newspaper operation off campus because we were spending so much time closer to downtown anyway, and to other enclaves of Japanese and other Asian Americans. And so we decided to... many of us grew up in the Crenshaw area, Colin, Tracy, myself, James Okazaki, a number of people. So we decided, okay, we'll look for an office. So we found one on Jefferson, and this Nisei man who was either the owner or the, I don't know he was the landlord or the property manager, but he was friendly to us and he let us rent two offices, and that's how we got started.

And I think it was not just a matter of convenience, but I think it was a political decision to say, number one, that UCLA will not control what we say. Number two is that we're going to be community based, we're going to be with our people. And "our people" is not going to be just UCLA students who are Asian American, this will be for the community. Because at that time, there were a lot of young people who were, despite the myth, there were a lot of people who were not going to school, who were not doing well in school. People who were into gangs, people who, some who got into heavy drug use and abuse, and so there's a whole range of people. And the Crenshaw area is a working-class community, was, and if you think about it in the 1960s, it was after a period of the Niseis and their families coming back from camp, resettling and rebuilding their own families and their communities. And then at the same time, there was a fairly significant number, probably a, still a small minority, but a significant number of shin-Issei families, new immigrant families that came after World War II like mine. And so there's quite a mix of people in that area. So it was a political decision as well to say we want to be based there and work with those people. Like in my case, I was still enrolled in school, so I went to campus when I had to. But for the first two years, the campus was my life. It was like I spent all my waking hours on the UCLA campus. Later on it became the opposite.

BN: Couple of related questions. I noticed the first issue lists a publication address of 1157 Muirfield Road?

MM: Yeah.

BN: What was that?

MM: Okay. We didn't have the office on Jefferson yet, so 1157 Muirfield Road is my parents' family house.

BN: Okay. And then what were the print runs at that point, like at the very beginning?

MM: You know, I regret not having all these records, but I think it was around three thousand. Depending on what was in the issue, we increased or decreased it. For example, the women's issue, or some other special issues, we would increase the print run.

BN: Then how did the distribution and the financial side work? I know it changes over time, sort of towards the beginning.

MM: Okay. I don't really remember that well. Alan Ota did a lot of that. But I think in terms of distribution, we might have had the price, twenty-five cents or something on it, but we kind of liberally distributed it free when we went to Asian American Studies conferences, went to dances, we went to anywhere young people congregated, we passed them out for free. And then for a period of time, once we started working with the Yellow Brotherhood, people even younger than us, they're high school kids, and we were able to use their labor to even deliver them to houses. I mean, there were like throwaway papers, they were not subscriptions, though. And in the Jefferson area and also in the areas both to the east and west of Holiday Bowl, where there were large numbers of Japanese American families, we used to hand deliver them to their houses. And then after a while we started doing mail-in subscriptions. One thing that we know is that from earlier on, even from the first issue, it was the kind of paper that got read, one copy got read by many people, because it got passed along. And so we think that the influence of Gidra at the time grew because of that, and people who visited from the Bay Area, from New York, other different places who were interested, they would take a copy with them, take them back home, and start circulating in those communities. And the fact that Gidra was sort of the seminal or thought to be one of the first Asian American movement publications, had a lot of influence.

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