Densho Digital Repository - Mike Murase Interview I (Densho ID: ddr-densho-525-17)

<Begin Segment 17>

BN: I think one of the other kind of well-known articles that you wrote were, well, one was, there was a letter to the editor, I think, of someone who was kind of taking Gidra to task for not supporting McGovern. I think this is in the '72 election, I think you wrote the response. And I was just kind of curious about, are you writing as yourself or is that just kind of representing the perspective of Gidra as a whole, or was there any sort of difference of opinion within Gidra on that issue?

MM: Okay, I don't remember the contents of both the letter and my response. But what I would guess is that... I'm thinking it might have been a letter from Laura Tokunaga. But anyway, I think it may have been questioning the point of view that the electoral system and politicians...

BN: Yeah, it was Laura Tokunaga.

MM: In a way, irredeemable, I guess. And so why should we participate in electoral politics? And I think Laura was saying we should. When we see progressive candidates or liberal candidates, one is better than the other. And I think whether it represented either of those points of view, represented a whole group, no, I don't think so. I think we all had different versions of them. In a way, I had been struggling with that question myself. And I did understand fairly deeply, both sides of it. But as far as becoming more involved in electoral politics, it wasn't until decades later, the '84 Jesse Jackson campaign.

BN: Yeah, that's the next interview.

MM: Yeah, we could talk about. But at that time, I think we were seeing, like 1968, Bobby Kennedy was killed, Martin Luther King was killed, way before that. It's not related to electoral politics, but another Black leader, Malcolm X, being killed. All of those assassinations and violence taking place, and then also seeing that the limits of, like, for example, the Chicago convention and the trial of the Chicago 8, to demonstrate against the Democratic party and Mayor Daley, Democrat of Chicago, suppressed that whole dissent. All of that was going on, so we could really see the limits of working with politicians. But we also saw that we couldn't ignore them. And I personally did not know of any, sort of, historical tradition in the Japanese or the Asian American communities in the way that you see in the Black community, particularly in the South. I mean, electoral politics was one expression of the liberation struggle for them. And conditions were very different, too, because before, in the '40s and '50s, you had so many preachers, ministers, be the community and political leaders because they had no elected... they had no congresspersons that represented the Black community. So, in the same way, like in here, I think having Daniel Inouye, Spark Matsunaga, was too remote for us. And even in the city, we had people like Tom Bradley, David Cunningham, George Takei ran for that seat, all of those things are going on. But we didn't play -- Gidra or myself -- didn't play that much of a role, and kind of were spectators to most of that.