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KU: How would you describe your involvement in LTPRO, and what would you say were LTPRO's highest and maybe also low moments, and what contributions, and what was the significance of LTPRO?

MM: I think as with the passage of time in Little Tokyo, it's just like in any other community or society, there are different problems and obstacles that come up because we're really dealing with limited resources, limited parcels of land and all of that. Part of the work had to do with talking to people who didn't think like us, didn't agree with us, and in some cases, having more power than us and more money than us. But to really... I think LTPRO had, I think was able to put forward initially an alternative view of how redevelopment can proceed. But over time, I think it became more embraced by larger sections of the community because I think people understood that we were advocating for people's human rights and right to dignity and live safely and all those things, and people can't argue against that. But I think oftentimes, it might have been our tactics, our strident advocacy, things like that that maybe put off some of the Nisei. But I don't think that we were ever seen as a negative force, I think, a positive force that they had to understand, that we had to understand. And I would say that, as young people, there were probably many confrontations that we started that didn't need to happen, or some sectarianism, some dismissal of other people's, other strata of ideas. But all along I think many of us who grew up during that period, we can be proud of the work, and we have relationships with those people that maybe we got into beefs with, but they're still around, we're still around, and we're just moving forward. But I think again, being able to work with all those different kind of groups, like they strengthened LTPRO and Little Tokyo community as well.

KU: You know, LTPRO produced a lot of activists who continued the work, like, over the next thirty, forty years in the community, and that's, I think, pretty significant. Can you talk a little bit about some of the people and organizations that grew out of that fight against redevelopment and kind of the lasting legacies?

MM: Yeah. I think here in 2023, I'm seventy-six years old, will be soon, and I'm involved still, and all my friends are. And the organization that many of us work in now is called Nikkei Progressives. Nikkei means "Japanese American," and Progressives. And I could even say that we trace our roots to the LTPRO days and the Anti-Eviction Task Force days, through a large portion where we had the redress movement. But I think many of us became politically aware through those kinds of struggles. And I think the influence of LTPRO was that even within LTPRO, but even after we decided that that wasn't the priority organization, the issues that we took up then, I think we were faithful to them even if the organization didn't exist. What I mean by that is, for example, the idea, concept of multinational, multiracial unity, supporting each other. Because, again, it's clear to us that Little Tokyo doesn't exist in a bubble. There's Chinatown, there's Koreatown, there's Thaitown, the Chicano community, East L.A., Boyle Heights, South Central, Watts, Leimert, all of these things are going on. And so we did want to, and we learned a lot about those communities and sometimes from each other about what to do. And I think that was good for us, because I think that's part of what sustained us, to be able to feel like we're not all, individually or as a community, that we were part of a larger picture of things and changes in society.

So between LTPRO in the '70s and '80s and Nikkei Progressives now, there are a lot of things that happened. But one of them that I was involved in was, as an LTPRO and JWRO member, I started working with a group of people that Nisei and other people who were Little Tokyo stakeholders to look at, okay, what exists now, the most efficient way to provide services to the people in Little Tokyo. And we found out, okay, in some cases, a senior would have to go to this office to get a bus token, that office to go get a social security check, another office to get something else, another place to get nutrition. So the idea of Little Tokyo Service Center, that LTPRO, JWRO and other groups started, was to have one place where a senior can go and get all those services that they required, and not have to go from place to place. Little Tokyo Service Center is a funded organization today that provides social services and builds affordable housing, been doing that for about maybe close to three decades. But I would say that that sort of institution or nonprofit agency has its roots in LTPRO and other grassroots efforts at that time, too. Which addresses two major things, social services and affordable housing.

And then another trend was all during that time, we were learning about the impact of camps on Japanese Americans, particularly people who were adults at the time of the incarceration, and the psychological, I would say, damage, psychological impact that that experience had. And people not talking about it, our Sansei generation not learning about it, and I think little by little, there were people who came before us who were working on it. But really, looking at the concentration camp experience, and looking at the impact of it. And one of the threads in that movement led to the redress and reparations movement to seek out an apology and monetary compensation for people who were taken away. So those were three major things that connect to LTPRO.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.