<Begin Segment 10>

BY: So let's see. So you were in Eugene for eight years, you said. And then what happened?

CH: Then we moved back to Portland.

BY: For...

CH: Well, he got a job, and actually, I don't remember what it was.

BY: Okay.

CH: But Portland State? Maybe it was at Portland State. Anyway, I don't remember what it was exactly, but we ended up back here. And because I had all of this rich environment of working with all different Asian Americans, I thought that's how it would be when I came to Portland. So I was looking, looking for the Asian American organizations, but there were none. There were Japanese and Chinese, Korean, everybody had their own organizations and their own communities. And so I was little bit disappointed, but I got involved in the Japanese American community, and I think that was also when I started studying Japanese dance in the late '70s.

BY: In the late '70s? Okay. And so which Japanese American organizations did you become involved with?

CH: I don't know if initially I was in an organization, but it was around the time that we were talking about redress, but we didn't call it redress then. But we were saying we need to, we're the generation that needs to talk about camp. Our parents didn't talk about it and look what we've experienced because of that. We need to do more about it, so there was a lot of talk on the West Coast in particular about holding media caravans or how are we going to hold space for our parents to talk about it, or our grandparents. So that's how I got involved really, and then the organizations that were involved were all the Japanese organizations, but primarily led by JACL.

BY: So was there a separate redress committee in Portland apart from JACL, or was it part of JACL, do you know, do you remember?

CH: I think it was, they were all kind of blending together. I think it was a separate community.

BY: And who was involved with that redress effort in Portland?

CH: Everybody. [Laughs] Well, first of all, what happened is Frank Chin and Frank Abe and Cathy Wong had organized the Puyallup gatherings.

BY: Day of Remembrance?

CH: Day of Remembrance. And then they came to Portland, and so they helped us organize community and the next Day of Remembrance.

BY: In Portland?

CH: In Portland, right. So that was really some of the first real organizing, but the people that I met, I just remember the Nikkei Jin Kai hall in Portland.

BY: Yes, down on Third?

CH: Yeah, it was a huge room, and it was just like tables, like big tables.

BY: I remember that room.

CH: And it was just everybody sitting around those tables. So the leaders of the Japanese community, your dad, mom, Homer Yasui and Miyuki, Dr. Tsujimura and Dr. Hara, George Hara, Bones Onishi, I could kind of go down the list, but Harold Onishi and probably anybody that was involved was sitting around that table. There weren't very many women and there weren't very many Sansei.

BY: Yeah, I was going to ask you about Sansei.

CH: And there weren't very many Sansei women. [Laughs]

BY: Yeah, who were the Sansei that were involved, do you remember?

CH: Peggy Nagae was there, Terry Yamada, he was a lawyer at the time as well, he was involved. There weren't that many Sansei, really they were mostly Nisei around the table.

BY: Which was interesting, I think, in many places. Certainly there were Nisei involved, but it was the Sansei who were kind of the instigators of redress.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.