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BN: Okay. So I wanted to continue with, we're kind of going chronologically. So now I believe you said fall of '72 is when you started law school?

MM: Right.

BN: And you're still... which I can't believe, knowing how onerous law school is, you're still kind of in the core group of Gidra, putting out issues and writing pieces. But you also wrote that, at this time, I think you said that December '72 almost didn't come out, and that there were issues with staffing. And then the other thing I wanted to ask you about is that you also wrote that you had this group of artists, David Monkawa, Dean Toji, Glen Iwasaki, who start coming in and playing a larger role. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about kind of the look of Gidra. Because it really, looking at the first year to later years, it evolved greatly in terms of the way it looks.

MM: So let me talk a little bit about, sort of, the mechanics of everything. And for today's audience, you have to remember that this is pre-computer, pre-internet, pre-cell phone. And so the tools that were available to us for research as well as for graphics and art and all of those things, are very primitive, pre-digital. So what that meant on the one hand is that the products reflected that sort of primitiveness. But at the same time, it meant that I think the production process tended to be more collective, we're in the same room. When people read about cut-and-paste on the computer, they probably don't realize that it comes from cut and paste physically. Like we used to have razor blades to cut out mistakes on a piece of paper, and then to replace it with the correct spelling, for example. The type setting itself was also like, if we made a mistake, we might have to start over, or to figure out ways to... and I won't get too detailed into this, but even this idea of what's called right-justified, columns being even on both ends. To do that, we had to type every text twice. You type it once as a rough, ragged edge, and then we adjust and add spaces so that would become straight, things like that

 So the context is that none of us were journalists, none of us were newspaper... or even being trained to do that. We were just people who were involved in the movement, who liked writing, we liked engaging in things, getting people exposed to new ideas, all those things. Now, so a lot of the actual production, I mean, all of the production was done by just a bunch of amateurs, basically, us. What I think happened was that we had people like David Monkawa who became involved sometime, I don't know exactly when, and Dean Toji. They were studying to be artists, graphic artists, so that was their training. And they also had friends like Alan Takemoto, who was probably the most recognizable of the illustrators by their product, very popular sketch artists. So anyway, they came in, and I think for a period of time, there were differences between the editors, writers, editors, and the artists. But I think we found a good blend of things where they were able to contribute. In the beginning, people who wrote articles were just asking them, "Can you illustrate what I'm saying here?" And I think they did that, and they did that well, but after a while they got kind of, they found that role to be too limiting. So they'll continue to do that but they wanted to produce things on their own. So we have art that stands on its own and makes points in a very poignant or very smart way of communicating. And I guess, in a way, some of them went into marketing later on and all. But that addition of this cadre of graphic artists and visual artists really, I think, enhanced the product itself and really made it the kind of, what would you say, the feel that Gidra has. And a lot of it is, sort of, it's eclectic but it's irreverent, in your face, and very humorous and captures a lot of good things.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.