<Begin Segment 16>

KU: So there was a more stable infrastructure that NCRR built. I had mentioned that a turning point in your shift to the Little Tokyo community was the book that you published, that you put together the Little Tokyo: One Hundred Years in Pictures. Can you tell me about the genesis of the book and how it affected you in terms of working on that?

MM: Okay, yeah. You know, very few people know about this story, but most people think of Little Tokyo's founding as 1884 when a small restaurant by a guy named Kame was started, Japanese restaurant, in 1884. And because it's not, it's just a neighborhood, it's not a city or anything, so we're not incorporated, so there's no definitive thing that says we got incorporated, founded in a particular year, but it was in 1884. So 1984 would have been the centennial, the 100th year. You know, I personally had not been thinking about any celebrations or anything like that, but Little Tokyo Business Association at the time, there was a woman named Frances Hashimoto, who's passed away but who was a leader in that group, Little Tokyo Business Association, they wanted to create a commemorative piece to be marketed. And so during the centennial year in 1984, so in 1983, they asked, I think they talked to Visual Communications about producing some materials. But I guess someone else, I mean, I don't know who determined it, but somebody settled on having a book, history book. And I was not in that conversation that early, but I guess my name came up because I had some history in Little Tokyo. And I was fairly bilingual in terms of, I can't read or write, but I can interview Issei about... because we're talking about history, so to have a first-person experience. So they approached me and they said, "Can you do this?" And so I spent eleven months, collected about fifty thousand images from various archives, the Rafu Shimpo, the newspaper, and family collections, and then went through all of those. And then although I am not a historian, I read up more. I had taught ethnic studies, so I had some background. But I studied more about the history, and then I went about interviewing people in Little Tokyo and put together that book in about eleven months. During that process, I think my own understanding of Little Tokyo's history obviously grew tremendously, and also my relationship to, for example, people like Archie Miyatake, who was the second generation of Toyo Miyatake, the most renowned professional photographers. And to Harry Honda, the editor of the Pacific Citizen, Kats Kunitsugu, who also worked for the Pacific Citizen and the Rafu Shimpo. And so I met all these people who gave me more perspective about what Little Tokyo is about beyond what I learned in LTPRO. So I was able to incorporate all that. And so the book got published, and if you are around in 2084, I think, there's a time capsule in the JACCC that's going to be opened. Because I think it's supposed to be a hundred year capsule. But my book is in that capsule, but I won't be able to see it. I lost track again.

KU: You said it was kind of a pivotal moment for you in shifting your attention to Little Tokyo?

MM: Well, pivotal in the sense that, like we were all moving from LTPRO to... 1981 was the Commission hearings and in probably '83 there was a lot of work being done around the redress movement. But pivotal in the sense that I moved from that to start working on the Jesse Jackson campaign and working primarily with African Americans. And so by that time I had become the president of the board for Little Tokyo Service Center, which I talked about earlier, it's the social service center that started in 1980. So I was spending day and night in Little Tokyo, but when the Jackson campaign came up, I switched my focus. That's also a pivotal year for me personally (1983) because that's the year that I got married to June Hibino.

KU: And do you want to say anything about that? How that romance...

MM: Well, I mean, this probably happened more often than people realize, but June and I met through our interest in activism in the community. Because she was a Berkeley grad and working in the San Francisco Japantown, and sort of the developing relationship with the organizations, and coincided with the time when June and I met. And you know, there are people that, I mean, life's events continue to happen for activists. I mean, we get married, we get divorced, we have children, whatever. And that happened for a lot of people.

KU: But you didn't get divorced from June.

MM: No.

KU: It's been a long time.

MM: And I would say, too, I think sometimes, like even in oral history, too, like I think the personalities that stand out are maybe more men who tend to be more vocal or whatever. But I think not only with June, who actually has played a leading role in many, many things, but not the kind of role where she would be spotlighted. I mean, we have people who were good at public speaking or leading chants at marches and things, vocal, that stand out more. But June and many other women contribute so much in so many ways. And if you look at a lot of these volunteer organizations, their membership is largely women, their leadership is largely women. That point should not be lost, that women hold up more than half the sky.

KU: Do you want to name some of these women?

MM: Okay, well, in the Gidra days, I mean, Evelyn Yoshimura played a critical role, I would say, the last four years of the publication. She contributed to other things in the movement. But now we're talking about, like, Kathy Masaoka and Miya Iwataki, Kay Ochi, there were a number of women who played important roles in the redress movement. You remember Lillian Nakano who very typically played a, took a backseat in a public setting, but she was a very important thinker and played a very important role. We have, if you look at the, what you might call arts and activist world, a lot of them call themselves "artivist." But in our community we have people like Nobuko Miyamoto, we have, like, traci kato-kiriyama, and a number of other people who do poetry, Amy Uyematsu is another. None of them, you would think would stand out maybe as the preeminent activist role model, but they have longevity, they've contributed so much that people don't realize. And I think they're really jewels in the community.

KU: And not just Japanese American, people like Linda Mabalot. After you had turned your attention to the Jesse Jackson campaign and did your work for fourteen years with Maxine Waters, you actually became the Director of Service Programs at Little Tokyo Service Center and spend fourteen years, the last fourteen years?

MM: Fifteen, yeah.

KU: Fifteen years of your career at LTSC.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.