<Begin Segment 14>

KU: Can you take me back a little bit briefly, anyway, to the Sun Building where a lot of that organizing took place? It was the Sun Building, the Sun Hotel, those were some of the, kind of, places where people really took a physical stand to resist evictions.

MM: Well, the Sun Building was a three-story un-reinforced brick building, it was an old building. But within it, many of the nonprofits like JWRO and there was another entity that was started by movement folks, called it AI...

KU: Asian Involvement?

MM: Hmm? Why am I blanking? I do this a lot now. Anyway, there was a group that was started that provided services, JACS-AI, so it was Japanese American Community Services, that was money that they traced there was to, like, I think a Japanese orphanage that existed many, many years ago. But anyway, so JACS-AI and other nonprofits were in the Sun Building. Small, grassroots cultural instructors that taught calligraphy or flower arrangements or odori, dance, different kinds of things also were in that building. And I believe there were residential tenants in that building, too. So this is a building within Little Tokyo which is now in the footprint of a shopping plaza called Weller Court. And I think there are many other brick buildings that I remember from that time. But here there's a concentration of both activists and residents and cultural instructors who got red tagged, got an eviction notice saying they had to move out. And so there, I think we decided we would take a stand and defend it and make sure that we didn't get evicted. And until there were certain conditions that were met, like relocation benefits, replacement facility and those things. So there's kind of a famous picture now that there were a number of us, maybe ten of us, that are standing in front of this building with picket signs and things. Because what we were trying to do was like a last ditch effort to prevent evictions after eviction notices were given. And we had learned that there were going to be marshals coming to evict people physically. So we set up this kind of blockade. There's not much more story to tell behind that, because we didn't get arrested, whatever, and eventually we had to move. But I think even doing something like that was, in a way, sort of contrary to how Japanese people would handle things, many people thought. But I think, in the end, now it's a very important part of Japanese American history. I mean, if you go to the museum, you go to a study center, it's part of the history of Asian Americans, history of Japanese Americans in Little Tokyo.

KU: I mean, it wasn't able to stop redevelopment, but I think there were other things, other benefits that came out of it, too. So how did... why and when did people in LTPRO -- oh, can you talk a little bit about the relationship between LTPRO and some of the Bay Area organizations that were also fighting evictions at the same time?

MM: Again, I keep backing up, but when Japanese began migrating to California in the 1880s in larger numbers, they settled in many places throughout California including small towns in the Central Valley like Bakersfield, Stockton, Fresno, Sacramento, all these places. Because they came here to work the farms and all of that. So at one point, there were Japanese American communities or Japantowns that existed, some say about forty, others maybe number even higher, closer to eighty. But there were many Japantowns dotting the landscape of California from San Diego, Santa Barbara, all over. Today, I think most people consider, there are only three, I'd say four... and I'll say four for UCLA's sake, too, but most people acknowledge that, they agree that Little Tokyo, San Francisco Japantown, San Jose Japantown, are historic Japanese communities, and recognized as such. I include Sawtelle, there were people in Sawtelle who were consciously working on making it sustainable. So now we only have four, not eighty or forty or whatever it was. So I think the challenge for us is to look at the last remaining three and see how do we retain the benefits or the most positive aspects of the history of Japanese Americans in this area, and also take into account the development of the future for any group of people who want to relate to Little Tokyo. And I missed the point about, what was the question again?

KU: How did the organizing, how was organizing influenced by some of the organizing elsewhere, like in San Francisco?

MM: Oh yeah, okay, I'm sorry. So anyway, yeah, so today, we have four Japantowns remaining. I think in the 1960s and '70s when urban renewal was happening to many central city areas, which all three of these Japantowns were in, well, we took up the task of maintaining Little Tokyo in Southern California. There were other groups similar to us, many of them were activists that came off of campuses in other areas, too, but who were working on similar issues. And for example, in San Francisco, there was a group called, for the longest time, it was called CANE, Committee Against Nihonmachi Eviction. But so they're doing their thing in San Francisco, we're doing ours in L.A. But we had similar issues, and we had some correspondence and friendships and other things that developed over time. And so we had exchanges, and we would have meetings between the organizations, particularly with LTPRO and CANE. And so eventually we got to a point where we organizationally decided to put out one newspaper and had some coordination among the group. So I think that experience, I think, really helped us to kickstart the national efforts that was required for the redress campaign.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.