Densho Digital Repository - Jeff Furumura Interview II

Densho Digital Repository
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Jeff Furumura Interview II
Narrator: Jeff Furumura
Interviewer: Brian Niiya
Location: Honolulu, Hawaii
Date: June 1, 2023
Densho ID: ddr-densho-1000-539

<Begin Segment 1>

BN: Okay. So it's June 1, 2023, and we're doing a second interview with Jeff Furumura at his home in Mililani. I'm Brian Niiya doing the interview, and we have George Russell shooting the video. And we're just going to jump right in. And we were talking earlier about Gidra and I think we want to start with that. But I think you wanted to preface that by talking a little bit about how you got involved in the Asian American movement that Gidra came to be the voice of in some ways.

JF: First of all, I just want to say it feels so odd to be interviewed about those days here, but I can understand.

[Interruption]

JF: So I have a distinct recollection of my sister, who, at the time, had just joined a sorority. They do this rush thing, and then you're allowed, and it was a big deal for her. So she got in, and they had a meeting at our house. And I was living at home at the time, I was a freshman at UCLA. And I think I went into the house, into my bedroom, passing by all these sorority sisters at the house at the time, and they all turned towards me because they heard the door open and they were in the middle of something, and they saw me enter my bedroom. And I just kind of acknowledged them but didn't say anything. And after their meeting was over, I hear a little tap on my door, and it's Marilyn Hamano, who I'd never met, but she was one of the sorority sisters. And I didn't know who this person was or anything. So she introduces me, and she comes into my bedroom and we're sitting on the bed talking to each other, and she's telling me about, "Oh, yeah, your sister said you're also at UCLA and you're a freshman." I said, "Yeah." I was afraid she was going to ask me to become a, something with the sorority. [Laughs] I was kind of halfway listening to her and half expecting something else. But she winds up talking to me about this Campbell Hall and how they started up this Asian American Studies Center. And so I said, "Oh, okay, sounds pretty interesting." At the time, I was aware of Asian American history, mostly focused on the injustice of the immigrants from those early years during the late 1800s, 1900s. But hadn't taken any formal history classes, I don't even think they existed back then, but I was just reading.

So I wound up going to Campbell Hall, going up there, and just by chance, I think, the first person I meet is Stuart Kuo, I kind of remember that. And he starts talking about some of the things that they're involved with up there, and it sounds kind of interesting. So I just started to hang out there. This is the end of my freshman year, going into my sophomore year, I didn't know a lot of people there, so it was a place to go and meet new people. I wound up making friends with folks like Alan Nishio, and he was there, Stuart, and I was roommates at the time with Bruce Iwasaki, and so the both of us would hang out there a lot. And then I remember Steve Tatsukawa, Alan Ota, some of the other folks up there. And that was the connection that wound up transferring over into the newspaper or Gidra. And that's where I met Mike Murase. At the time there was Amy Murakami... can't remember the other regulars right now. But yeah, used to hang out there with Duane Kubo.

BN: So you said this was... was it towards the end of your freshman year?

JF: Yeah, that's where I met Marilyn and started...

BN: Did you start in '69 or '68?

JF: I started there in the fall of '68.

BN: '68, so this would be the spring of '69, more or less.

JF: Yeah, probably didn't... well, yeah, end of the spring, beginning of the summer of '69. I don't think I went to the paper until '70.

BN: Your first byline, your first staff appearance is summer of '70.

JF: Okay, I think Mike mentioned there was a, kind of a turnover that took place about a year in, and it was just about that time. Yeah, I didn't know who the originals were except for Mike and Tracy.

BN: Right, right.

<Begin Segment 2>

BN: So when you came into UCLA, what were you thinking in terms of your course of study?

JF: [Laughs].

BN: Or like many entering...

JF: What was I thinking or what were my parents thinking?

BN: Maybe both.

JF: Because there's a difference. So my parents, my mom would drop little hints, like, "Oh, you're so good with your hands. You should be a dentist." [Laughs] Which I think I even said that to Michael at one point. Yeah, so not knowing anything about dentistry or what's required of it, I register as a pre-dental major. And for some reason, they had Physics I, A, B and C as a required series in my freshman year. So I lasted through A by the skin of my teeth. By B, I already knew it wasn't for me, but I hung in there. And then by C, I just decided, okay, this is not working, I'm changing my major. So I did what everybody else does and became a psychology major, which is what people pick when they don't know what else to pick. So that's what I was for the next year and a half until the EthnoCommunications opportunity came up. I'd always been taking pictures, still photographs, primarily black and white, and doing my own developing, I forgot, some B-22 kind of enlarger in my parents' bathroom. And so we'd do all that stuff as a hobby, and it was good enough to get me into the Ethno program. I don't know how rigorous the entrance requirements were at the time.

BN: But you're saying that, though, was like a year and a half or so later?

JF: Yes.

BN: And then you just mentioned you were roommates with Bruce Iwasaki?

JF: Yes.

BN: Was that...

JF: Sophomore year.

BN: Okay, so that was later.

JF: Yes.

BN: So what drew you to these people and the political and intellectual environment of this whole Asian American thing, what was the draw?

JF: I think for me it was... and I'm pretty sure, well, I made the assumption that the others I hung with felt the same. It was, the knowledge that we had gained about the history of minorities, the way that they were mistreated since the founding fathers landed in Plymouth as far as that goes, as far as native peoples goes. So it's so clear to see the historical treatment of all minority peoples in the United States and how all of us can share stories about the way our ancestors were mistreated. And so I felt like, okay, I'm among kindred spirits. So what they were involved in, I kind of gravitated towards. So I'm embarrassed to be the subject of a Gidra interview because I wasn't really one of the... I didn't think about let's start this newspaper up and try and change people's minds and stuff. But I was contributing, so I'll take that credit. But it was more people like Mike and Tracy, the original founders, those people were the instigators and originators.

BN: And at that time, also, that was right at the beginning when the whole Ethnic Studies centers were forming in Campbell Hall and all of that. Did you take early Asian American classes?

JF: No, I didn't. [Laughs] I wound up just, I guess, Ron Takaki taught a history class there, but that was about it as far as I can remember. I wasn't really big into school. So I hate to say that on tape, can we delete that? [Laughs] Don't want my grandkids, if there are any in my future, to hear that. But yeah, it was a good for, the relationships lasted a lifetime, obviously, so in that respect, I loved school. It was valuable.

BN: You often learn more out of class than in class.

JF: Precisely, precisely.

<Begin Segment 3>

BN: So how did you then get involved with Gidra? You know, a lot of people you mentioned, of course, were also involved.

JF: Right. I don't know. You know, when I think about what I did there, I just remember burnishing Letraset letters onto white paper that had a very light blue line down for alignment purposes and just lining up each letter one at a time and pressing them down, burnishing them with this polished wood little chopstick shaped thing, and then making sure that was all correct and typesetting for hours on end with one of the early IBM Selectrics, which would justify what you typed, it would justify the right-hand side of the column -- for the camera's purposes over here -- so that each line would look even. I thought that was a minor miracle and you could pop out just a little ball that contained all the fonts, and then depending on what font you wanted, if you wanted to change it to italic for a particular word, you'd have to physically lift this little ball out and replace it with your italic ball and then continue for that word and then do the same to get back to normal font. But yeah, I was a real fast typist, a trait that my mother passed on to me. So it must be genetic. [Laughs] And I still type pretty quickly, thank goodness. So yeah, that, and the photography, it kind of took advantage of some of the interests that I had personally, along with the fact that again, we all felt as though we were building something that could change people's minds. And the whole movement for me, at least, was about change, personally.

When Gidra stopped publishing and we had a little staff gathering, I think it was at Bruce and Evelyn's house, there was a slideshow that they started showing of, over the years, the different staff members. And inevitably, in the dark, one comes up with me, of my face. I'm looking kind of, almost like that. [Laughs] And then there's silence for a beat or two, and then Alan Ota says, "Now what's Jeff worried about?" [Laughs] And that was mean. Because I kind of took things very seriously, and the movement for me was an effort to change people from the inside out. So for me, personally, like I would read Todd Gitlin's article about the "Maoist man." So here are some of the attributes that the "Maoist man" or woman possesses, and then he would come up with these examples. And, of course, he'd use the Vietnamese people and their struggle against the United States and the imperialist army and stuff like that. And those were our heroes, and then we kind of wanted to demonstrate that same kind of fighting spirit by changing ourselves inside out. So for the newspaper, the newspaper was kind of a physical extension of that desire for us to change people by our example.

So I can't even remember any of the articles I wrote, but I remember Mike Murase. He had these "Murase-isms" and he would just think of them on the fly. Like during a staff meeting I'll be just kicking around on the sofa that was falling apart inside the Gidra office, and we would all circle around. Inevitably Mike would come up with these phrases, but I remember one that was just stuck in me for the longest time. He said that the purpose of the paper in what we do and in our writing was "in style reflect them," "them" being the readers. So, "in style reflect them," and, "in content, change them." So I thought yeah, that sums it up pretty much for me. And so I remember deliberately, when I would put articles together, trying to write it in a way that didn't turn off people, and that was, it sounded friendly and not "holier than thou," and I wasn't trying to force anything down people's throat or sound condescending or anything like that. Not that other people did, but I think sometimes that was a mistake in some of the leadership, that they would put people down for not being, or having street values, whatever that is. Because they happened to live in the Baldwin Hills like my parents did. Laying it on, something that was beyond people's control, that they couldn't do anything about, and consequently they would be turned off by that because they felt like, damn, I'll never be a part of that. So I thought that was a mistake. Anyway, minor.

BN: Yeah, I will ask you about some specific articles. I think what you just said, it does come through, that your articles do come across that way, like not didactic, and you're often writing about everyday topics. You wrote an article about fixing toilets and kung fu films.

JF: Oh, I remember that one. [Laughs]

BN: I'm going to ask you about that one. In my first reading of Gidra years ago, that was one of the ones that stuck in my head, is like, "Oh, that's interesting."

JF: And then you went straight to the bathroom to fix that leak.

<Begin Segment 4>

BN: But one thing that I did want to ask you about, as I said, you first appear on the staff in the June/July 1970 issue, I think Mike mentioned was the one issue that didn't come out. There was one month that was missed, so that was a combined issue. But then you have a photo credit in '71 for the first time, but you don't have a first credit for a writer until like November of '72.

JF: Wow.

BN: But then subsequently, for the last year and a half, you're one of the most frequent contributors, you have a lot of articles subsequently. So what I was going to ask you is just especially in the first couple of years, you described kind of a staff meeting, but how did a typical issue come together? Because Gidra, there's no listed editor, there's no hierarchy, so what happens? Like okay, you've put an issue out, you're now going to put out the next issue, what is the process or how does that issue come together?

JF: I think for a while, this may be late, like the last couple of years of the paper's existence, we assigned editors, but they're not that particular...

BN: They're not noted anywhere in the paper, but this is an internal thing.

JF: Yeah. And I'm not sure if that was voluntary or "voluntold," but somehow... and it was usually, at least two people work in tandem to make sure that a paper got produced. So they'd be in charge of putting the articles, soliciting the articles and making sure that follow-through to commitments made earlier in the month would be there at press time. So it's kind of a... because you knew you were responsible, you made sure it got done. I think if it were completely free, I think a lot of those people, probably me included, would kind of slack off and nothing would ever got done. We think about it a lot, though, but as far as actually following through and submitting whatever it was, then you had to hold people's fire, feet to the fire, so to speak. And that was the responsibility of the editors that month. Did that answer your question?

BN: Kind of.

JF: How an article came together?

BN: And then like how big a core group are we talking about? I mean, are you assigned to be the editor like every three months or four months or six months? Like how...

JF: You know, I can't remember clearly how often it was, but at least three times a year maybe. Or maybe every four months or so, we'd rotate. But you never worked with the same person.

BN: So you're paired up with someone different each time?

JF: Yeah. At least that's the way I remember it.

BN: And then if you're the editor for that month or you and the other person, do you have kind of final say on this article yes, this article no, or was that all just...

JF: [Laughs] Organically, yeah. I think there might be an informal get-together about, "Oh shit, what's happening next month?" And so then, okay, then kind of a list of known events is generated, and then we'd find out, oh, "Maybe Colin, he's a part of this group. Maybe we'll contact him and find out if he can put something together to cover that." And so you kind of put the responsibility on the people closest to the event. Hopefully they're a participant and have some interest in the event and the organization that they could speak about the larger issue that the event is addressing. But yeah, we just made sure that we covered events that were known or planned for. I recall being responsible for the calendar a couple of months, and Alan Ota and... well, primarily Alan, he was very focused on the style, the look and feel, so to speak, of the paper. And I remember him experimenting a lot with the way articles would be laid out and fonts used, and I guess newspaper culture that I wasn't even aware of. And so that was an aspect that not a lot of the staff members were into, but Alan certainly was. And so I tried experimenting with other styles, too. Of course, we looked at other newspapers and got some ideas from them. But the look and feel of the paper, it fell to, I guess, just a few people who were interested in that aspect of it. Otherwise, you get the typesetting done and get the layout in.

<Begin Segment 5>

BN: Are you still doing photography at this point?

JF: I gave all my black and white equipment to my son, my youngest boy, Daniel, who has kind of done that.

BN: And then while you're involved at Gidra?

JF: Oh, at Gidra? Yeah, I'm still doing black and white photography there. They had a darkroom, a real darkroom that was in one of the... I think the office that we used for the Gidra office on Jefferson right behind Koby's Pharmacy was a former dentist's office, so it had been segmented up into little rooms. And one of the little rooms, Mike Murase converted into a darkroom. And it was pretty cool because once you flipped on the light switch, it would convert, I mean, it would have the red light on that you're supposed to use when you're working in the darkroom. And then on the outside in the hallway, a red light would come on that would indicate somebody's in there, so don't open the door by accident and ruin everything. [Laughs] So that was kind of neat. I spent a lot of time in there and in front of the typesetting machine. We used to have a little waxing machine, I remember, that once you finished typesetting the article and you've got columns, and you'd snip the columns physically with scissors and then run it through a little, this waxer that would stripe the bottom of the paper with lines of hot wax, a layer of hot wax. And then you quickly lay it down where you want it to be on the press ready piece of newsprint or whatever it was that we were working on. Same with the photographs, have to have a photograph. I think you had to label to the printer which photograph went in what space. I can't remember that detail, but I think it was separate from where there articles were, you had to hand in the photographs separately, so each one had to be matched up with the space that it was supposed to fit inside of.

BN: And then once you did that, then you would take it to a printer?

JF: Yes.

BN: Do you remember who did the printing?

JF: No. [Laughs] I think somebody else always did that part.

BN: And then from there, did you as a group do the distribution also?

JF: Yeah. Once the paper was returned to us in bundles, I think our print run was about five thousand, so we would, the first thing we would do is send it out to all of our subscribers with gum labels, who knows how many of those fell off in transit? But those would be sent out to our subscribers, and then the leftovers we would refer back to that calendar and say, okay, we're going to hit this event, this event, this event. And then we would have Friends of Gidra or whoever come in and they'd take a stack and they would just be at the event, talk to people who looked like they knew how to read. [Laughs] And might be interested in picking up and taking a peek at this newspaper, so that's what we did.

BN: Then how did the financial side work? I mean, where is the money coming to print and...

JF: That's a mystery.

BN: And then I assume none of you are getting paid, right?

JF: Oh, no. In fact, we didn't ask about that. Compensation was never a thought to any of us. In fact, how the money came to pay the printer, I don't even remember. Probably came from Mike Murase's checkbook. I have no idea.

BN: I mean, subscribers were paying...

JF: Two dollars and fifty cents for a year. Yeah, the money side I have absolutely no knowledge of. [Laughs]

<Begin Segment 6>

BN: And then as you're going along, you come in after the first year, then you're kind of there, from there to the end, so it's like four-ish years. How did your role change and then how did you think the paper changed over that time?

JF: Hmm, heavy. I think as far as my own participation... let's see now. We were, the staff members were real close and good friends. At one point we decided we would form this collective, a political collective that would be a living space for whoever wanted to be there, long term living space for whoever wanted to be there, and the focus would be on our community involvement and work. So it didn't have to necessarily be Gidra, but anything associated with the Asian American movement was fine as far as membership goes. So I think Duane Kubo, Bruce Iwasaki, I want to say Amy Murakami, Kiyoko Shibasaki... I'm naming all these names, what's the statute of limitations? No. [Laughs] And then Terry Nitta, Tom Okabe, and myself, I think we were the original six or seven of us. And then other people would join, Colin Kurada came in later, Clyde... I can't remember Clyde's last name, but he came in for a few months. I think it lasted for maybe a couple of years. During that time, I think the way that we thought about what we're doing became a little bit more serious. But during that period of time, I think this is the mid '70s, so '73, '74... well, '73, '74. It was a time when -- well, this is earlier, Fred Hampton's being murdered. People are dying because they're trying to affect the same kind of changes that we all wanted to. So when that starts happening, and then your activities become... you see them physically monitored by the authorities, then things take on a little bit more serious tone. Even though we were all just a bunch, I mean, we were friends, and of course we were doing all these, at the time, illegal activities, like smoking marijuana was considered a felony offense. But we just had a good time as well as we're involved in activities that we thought were trying to bring about positive change for the country or at least the Asian American community. But yeah, I think that focus, being in L.A. and focusing with primarily Japanese American communities, pockets in the L.A. area. I think that began to open up a little bit. Maybe not for myself personally, but for others on the staff, I think that began to expand as the time went on. Did I answer the question? [Laughs]

BN: Yeah.

<Begin Segment 7>

BN: So I'll follow it up with a couple things. One thing you mentioned, and I was going to ask about, too, is that Gidra is defined as an Asian American paper, but the staff is largely Sansei. I mean, was that any... was there...

JF: Did we see any of the contradictions?

BN: Yeah, or did you actively try to seek out, I guess at the time it was mainly Chinese, Filipino, and a handful of Korean Americans who were around? And then I guess related to that, did you have interactions or influenced by other African American, Chicano, Native American kinds of publications as well or interactions with...

JF: When I think about both of those questions, it kind of reminds me, I don't know why, of this organic term. Because we never really did that consciously, but I think it happened. It happened because some of the staff members were involved in those communities and so they would draw in maybe not staff members, but at least people who would contribute to the content from their point of view, which we didn't have, so that was great for the newspaper. But I wouldn't call it like a conscious effort, it was just, there's an activity in the community, in the greater Los Angeles community that is getting some attention. And we know this person's involved with it, so let's get an article about it from them. As far as other publications from other communities, we looked at the BPP, the Black Panther Party paper, and that was, talk about style, some people might call it crude, but it's like everybody can kind of read that and relate to it. So there was no obstacle as far as obtaining the content that was for them, and their content was pretty focused on the violence against the community by the police at the time, and still now. Yeah, so our content wasn't focused on the same subject, but the manner in which they were reaching out to people, I think, at least, I tried to not mimic it, but to borrow that approach.

But I have to say, the first thing when I think about working with Gidra is how close we all became as good friends. And we had a lot of fun together and that was, I hate to say that that was probably one of the primary things that kept the staff together. It's how much fun we had with each other and around each other. Producing the paper was a lot of work when you think back about it, I mean, we would pull all-nighters, and I remember staying up until three when we finally decided we'd better eat something. And then we took another hour and a half just to figure out where we're going to eat. Because of course we did things collectively or as collaboratively as possible, not thinking that, I don't even know if that word was spoken back then, collaboration and stuff, which is, that's the way we worked. That's why it took a long time to make decisions, even like where are we going to eat, where are we going to go, when is this article going to be up? But yeah, we managed to do it for every month, that's a miracle. [Laughs]

BN: Only missed one.

<Begin Segment 8>

BN: So I'm going to get back to some specific articles in a minute, but I wanted to also now, while you're doing this, you're still at UCLA, right?

JF: Yes and no. I wound up in my senior year dropping out of what is now the Ethnocommunications program because I felt like the activities I was involved in at the time were more important, and they wanted just, like I said earlier, school wasn't, I wasn't really a great, active student. It was just something I had to do, kind of, because my dad wanted me to have a degree. Anyway, so I dropped out of that EthnoCommunications program for two years in my senior year, and focused on working on the paper and my involvement with this Asian Black Chicano pride program. And then working, still had to earn an income, as little as it was. But back then I was only paying sixty-five dollars a month for rent, so different times.

BN: What were you doing for a job?

JF: Let's see. Back then, I was working at the UCLA basement of the medical center. I don't know if people still do this, but they had kind of a hierarchy of workers at the UCLA medical center and we were the bottom of the bottom, so we wore these shit brown uniforms. I forgot what they called us. Anyway, we had to push around these huge metal carts, they were about seven feet tall on huge, big, like four-inch diameter wheels. And we'd push 'em around, we'd... well, the first thing we did, first thing in the morning was visit our floors, we were assigned floors to visit each of the supply rooms, and then you take an inventory of each room, what they need, needles and syringes and these Kelly clamps and all this other stuff that each particular supply room needed. So if they were low, you have to replenish it. So then you'd go back down to the basement where all the supplies were and load up your cart and then you'd start on delivering all those supplies, so I did that at UCLA. And the only thing I remember from that was this Chicano guy we worked with, this phrase he used to like to say when he would look forward to the weekend. He said, "Yeah, and remember, there ain't no rest for the good lookin'." [Laughs] He's kind of, is that a biblical phrase or something that you're kind of twisting? Anyway, he was a lot of fun. Yeah, but like I said, I was only paying sixty-five dollars a month for rent, and that was for a back house that was standalone, had one bedroom, a little living room and a little kitchen. You couldn't beat that.

BN: Where was it?

JF: This was on Vista Del Mar.

BN: Oh, wow.

JF: Just below Santa Monica Boulevard.

BN: By the beach, too.

JF: No, it's more like West Hollywood.

BN: Oh, Vista Del Mar. The Vista Del Mar I know is right along the ocean.

JF: Or maybe it was just Vista. [Laughs] I had to almost have a lottery for whoever, when I decided to leave that place, for who took it over, because everybody wanted to go there. They couldn't believe how nice a place, nice situation. So I remember Clark Nakashita, he was the winner.

<Begin Segment 9>

BN: So as you're getting, doing the Gidra stuff, getting more politically involved, what's the reaction of your family and how does that...

JF: You know, my parents really never understood what we were doing. I remember when, maybe about six months into the collective started, that collective was called 2412 by us, but by outsiders, they would refer to it as the Ping Pong Hotel because we had ping pong tables set up in this covered lanai that was screened in. And it was not really part of the house-house, but it was right adjacent to it. So he could walk into it from the house. And so we would have these pretty competitive ping pong games there. Anyway, and then other people called it the Gidra House, which kind of was a misnomer.

BN: That's how I've heard it referred to.

JF: Oh, okay. Maybe because most of the people who started it were there, Gidra.

BN: But there wasn't any actual connection?

JF: I don't recall, other than...

BN: People, some people from Gidra lived there.

JF: And we would have meetings there, but other organizations would come to the house, because it was a big West Adams two-story, kind of a mansion almost. Yeah, so we were there. What was the question? I forgot it already. [Laughs]

BN: What your parents or...

JF: Oh, my parents. So they were in, all the parents of the six or seven of us who had started this house, we invited all our parents and we had an open house for the parents, so that was kind of different. [Laughs] And we were tasked with speaking about individually taking turns and introducing our parents to the other parents because they'd never met each other. And then each of us would give a little spiel about what we were involved in at the time. But that was the first time, first and only time I think my parents were exposed to what I was doing. They never sat in on a Gidra meeting, thank god. And they never, I don't think they ever saw an issue of the paper physically, so they weren't involved, but I didn't expect them to be involved. So, yeah, my father, he was an educator, and he used to say this phrase that would come up occasionally. Said, yeah, you have to get an education because they can't take that away from you. And I was wondering, who's "they" to him? Who are "they"? But I think looking back on his life and what they lost as a family, they used to run Parkview Dry Cleaners, no, Parkview Cleaners in the Boyle Heights area. And at the time that they were incarcerated, they lost everything. I'm just going to assume that that's where that phrase of his comes from, because he was a UCLA graduate and had lots of opportunities that came out of that. And he suffered a lot of loss personally, like his five year old kid brother, I think he was, my dad was twelve at the time, and they were flying kites together, and they lived at the bottom of, like where Angels Flight is, Bunker Hill. And a car, so we're talking about... what year would that be? He was twelve, so 1928, something like that. Anyway, the car loses its brakes, jumps the curb and strikes Eddie and kills him there, right in front of my dad. So I'm sure that kind of, it's kind of a traumatic experience for anybody to go through, much less a twelve-year-old kid. And so I think that's why he retreated to the main library which was close by there. And another one of his sayings was, "Books make good friends." [Laughs] I couldn't relate to that one too well.

But yeah, so he grew up and then felt later that he understood what we were trying to do, what this whole movement thing was about, and I remember at the dinner table before Gidra, he would say things like, "Yeah, if it weren't for what Black folks are doing in the streets, we would be nowhere. And we owe whatever progress we made as Japanese Americans to what they're doing out there in the street," so wow, okay. And then when we would have events, not necessarily Gidra sponsored, but maybe somebody would get married or some kind of non-related thing, but hosted by young people. I kind of remember Patty Iwataki for some reason, in charge of some event. But anyway, he would get up, and after singing - because he liked to sing, he was a singer at Heart Mountain -- not the George Izumi band, but when George left, one of the band members, Tets Bessho, he took it over. And so he sang as the lead singer for the Tets Bessho band, thought that was impressive. And so he would sing, but then later at these events, he would say things like, "I really support what you young people are doing," and in that way he was public about his support for community efforts. So that was kind of nice.

BN: Yes, it is. Most of the stories I've heard are not that. [Laughs]

JF: Yeah. He never tried to stop me from doing what I was doing, probably because he knew it would be a futile exercise.

<Begin Segment 10>

BN: So anyway, yeah, so I wanted to ask you about a few of the articles. Offhand, do you remember any of the ones you wrote?

JF: The toilet one thanks to Mike Yanagita, who, at the time, was an apprentice plumber. And I think I also, seems like no matter where I live, I have this problem with a leaky toilet.

BN: So semi-autobiographical.

JF: Yeah. And I knew I couldn't be the only person in the world who has this kind of problem all the time.

BN: And it was actually, there were a series of articles like that, right, on just how to sew and just everyday kind of life skills.

JF: Oh, yeah. I think Murase did that, how to sew one.

BN: How to make a shirt, and there were different ones.

JF: Wow. Okay, yeah.

BN: But yours might have been the first or one of the first? I mean, how did that come about?

JF: It's related to that whole self change thing where you want to, one of the attributes that you're trying to demonstrate, is your self-reliance. You don't need to call a plumber to fix your leaky toilet, and you could do that yourself. This is how you could do it. I think all our articles were kind of written in that vein, it's to build that feeling that we don't need professionals to do it for us, we can do a lot of stuff ourselves. But I don't know why that one struck a chord. It wound up being reprinted by this paper out of Atlanta, The Big Bird, which I know nothing about other than that. I think it was Alan Ota or Steve Tatsukawa who told me that they had picked it up and reprinted it, so I don't know. That's pretty funny.

BN: Something everyone should know. [Laughs]

JF: Then you did also a multi-part article on an Asian American or Japanese American street gangs.

BN: Oh, yeah. Like the [inaudible] with Roy Nakano and Tom Okabe. How did that one come about?

JF: Good grief, I have no idea, other than these guys, like Ats Sasaki and Gary Asamura, they were kind of like street legends growing up in the Crenshaw area.

BN: But you knew them from before?

JF: I knew of them, yeah. And then a friend who was in the same YMCA group, Danny Uematsu, he became part of the Ministers, III, three being the third generation. And then Little Danny Wong, they called him Little Danny Wong, I don't know why, there must have been a bigger Danny Wong, he was also a part of the Ministers. And we knew each other personally, so there's that connection. But yeah, as far as the originals, we wanted, because everyone knew about them but didn't really know their origin story, we kind of felt like we could do that and that would be of interest to some.

<Begin Segment 11>

BN: I have to have you tell the Pat Sumi, Park Chung Hee story, it's legendary.

JF: [Laughs] There's... oh, I don't know what issue it appeared in.

BN: Yeah, I don't remember the date, which issue it came.

JF: But all I know, we took up a real large section of it because, at the time, there was an election going on in Korea that involved the incumbent and some other, I forgot. Anyway, the incident was, I was in the office late when the phone started to ring. And no one else was around, so I pick up the phone and Pat Sumi, who, at the time, is considered a "movement heavy." So she's one of the people who is a public face of the Asian American movement, she's asked to speak at all these different events, very eloquent, and powerful speaker. So she's on the other end of this phone, and I can tell there's lots of street noise and stuff going on in the background, and she's reminding me about this article that I was just typing up about the reelection of --

[Interruption]

Anyway, Pat Sumi calls, and she wants to check on the status of the article. And I said, "Yeah, we got it," and she says, "I want this to be the headline for it." And she recites it off and I write it down, and it says, "We support the free election proxy of the Korean people," or something like that. And so I read it back to her, it didn't make sense to me. And I read it back to her and there's a pause, and she says, "Yeah, okay." Click. So I said, okay, get my burnisher out and the Letraset, and I select these one and a half inch high bold Letraset type to print it out, what she told me to appear above this article, and it was totally wrong. Oh, my god, I got it so wrong, it didn't make any sense to anybody when it was printed, and it ran that way in the paper and it's still there for all of Densho's readers to find. We'll call that a little Easter egg -- [laughs] -- for all the Densho listeners, you could find the one issue where there's big headline that says, "We Support the Free Election Proxy by the Korean People," or something like that.

BN: To declare which...

JF: What was it supposed to be? It was supposed to be, "We Support the Reelection of Park Chung-hee." [Laughs] It sounds the same... oh god, that was so terrible. And so Bruce and Evelyn, they noticed it right away and they said, "What the hell?" And to this day, they still have a big laugh about it with me. But man, I was, I think I avoided all public events for the next few weeks where Pat Sumi might show up so that she wouldn't strangle me. [Laughs] That was so funny.

BN: Yeah, I've heard that story, like I said, so it's an honor to meet "Free Election Proxy" guy.

JF: Yes. Guilty as evidenced.

<Begin Segment 12>

BN: So Gidra, the final issue was, I think, April of '74. Did you have a sense that its time had run out, or what was going on towards the end of it?

JF: Yeah. I was working with other organizations who were kind of, I guess evolving in the same fashion. We were all kind of turning inward and felt like a pause in publication would be best until we worked out what our next steps would be, whether it's to continue publishing or not. And so when Gidra folded, at the time I was starting to be drawn into another... I don't want to say umbrella organization, but another group that started in New York as Worker's Viewpoint, and then it evolved into this other thing later. My involvement with them was, again, drawn in by people I knew, like Mary Uyematsu. And then Mary had finished the Ethnocommunications program, and so I was... I think I'm getting my years mixed up, though. I think I went back to school during that time to finish my senior year in the film program, and then I stayed for another year to get -- that's my dog -- to get my teacher's credential. So at the time I felt the work I was doing with -- is this getting on the sound track? [Dog barking] It is? Okay, I'll just talk. The work I was doing with the ABC Pride program and its field testing process in the public schools. I thought, gee, if I just got a teacher's credential, maybe that's a way I could kind of make a living. And yet execute, continue to execute on efforts to try and change people, because that's what were kind of trying to do with the ABC Pride program. So I thought, hey, I could just be a teacher and then kind of subvert the curriculum with the pride program and we could have all these speakers and all these grandiose ideas. So I finally became a teacher and then realized I can't really do that easily. So that's how I became a teacher. So my involvement with the paper kind of ended at that point.

That's when, when I was a teacher for two years, I think that's when I was introduced to Mary and her husband John Kao, who lived right up the street, and happened to see each other, and we started talking, and then they were telling me about what they were doing and they needed some help. Especially after five members of the organization were essentially set up and assassinated by the Klan, Klan members in Greensboro, I think. Greensboro, is that South or North Carolina? I can't remember. Anyway, it was a horrific event. But they needed help in creating a film that would follow the attorneys, I think, who were the defense attorneys, who were trying to drum up support around the country behind what happened. And so Mary was working on it, and they asked if I could get involved. And through that initial introduction, I started hanging out with some of the other people involved in that group. And one of the oddest things -- this is all post-Gidra, though. I remember standing at Boy's Market of all places, wearing a sandwich board that had kind of bullet pointed items about what had happened in Greensboro and why were there, and getting up on top of the back of a pickup truck bed and had a bullhorn and was speaking about Greensboro and the tie between what happened there and what's going to happen here. "Yeah, if you guys can show your support," and we'd pass a little number ten bean can around for donations and stuff like that. That was kind of a wild time.

[Interruption]

BN: Yeah I wondered if you could go back and talk about the story with Mary and the sandwich board and that whole thing again?

JF: Yeah, you know, I'm trying to recall what I was saying, but I distinctly remember that that morning we all gathered at Deborah -- I can't remember her last name -- but she lived down near Crenshaw and Slauson around there, and I remember she made these great hash browned potatoes for us. We met there early in the morning, and then we were talking about what we're going to be doing that day, and who was going to go where, people were going to different locations to talk about this death of the CWP 5, and what it meant to the country. And so once we get all our talking points ready, then we disperse, and we go out like two blocks away from where we were living at the time, at the Boy's Market at the corner of what is now Obama and Crenshaw, but was then Rodeo and Crenshaw. And it's like the only supermarket around for that neighborhood, so everybody has to go there if they're going to buy groceries. And we parked this pickup truck there, I donned my sandwich board with pictures of what had happened, and it was something like "avenge the death of the CWP 5." [Laughs] And so we were talking to people who would listen about what would took place, had they heard about this event, did they understand what it happened, what's the role of the government and all these other things. We had these fliers that we were handing out to people, and I remember at one point climbing up to the pickup truck, and I was just so full of myself. [Laughs] I got inspired enough to take the bullhorn and shout out, like a carnival barker, and draw people into what we were trying to tell them. But that was a perfect example of, I think, I guess, an approach that doesn't work too well to change people, but was worth trying. And so this is like, I want to say '78, '79, somewhere around there. And so the paper had folded, we had all grown up, and so we were concerned about how are we going to make a living? Some of us had even started a family, so yeah, things began to change. We couldn't afford to stay up all night and pull an all-nighter in order to produce a newspaper that sold for a quarter. So we went to do different things. I wound up getting heavily involved in a hobby that I had in Chinese martial arts. But then I went back to school, got my teacher's credential, because I thought that this was a way to make a living as well as try and change the little kids' minds at least through what I had picked up from the ABC Pride program. So I stayed in teaching for six years. Was unsuccessful in my attempt to create a little revolution here. [Laughs] And just kind of got burnt out like a lot of teachers, I think, did.

<Begin Segment 13>

BN: Now at this time, late '70s, early '80s, it's also the beginning of this whole redress stuff. Did you have any involvement with that or was your family supportive?

JF: I think my family didn't even know about it. For me at the time, it sounds funny, or not funny but kind of sad now. But I thought that the focus of that was too narrow. I don't know why, because now I don't feel that way at all. I think it was a very, a pivotal point in Japanese American history and they effort that they did, resulted in a huge change. But at the time, I just felt like the focus is too narrow, because I was involved with this other WVO group, and their stance is more based along the class differences between people and not so much focused on racial histories and minority or racial lines, and the incidents that happened to this particular minority group. It was kind of a broader perspective, I guess, but the mistake that this group made was thinking that they were like the vanguard of the movement, that the movement needed some kind of a spark to set off people's underlying rage and feelings. Yeah, that created my involvement with that group created kind of a family crisis. I'm not sure if the term "intervention" was around either, but that's what happened, because Jeri, we had been married for, gosh, less than two years, I think. And the people in the organization were trying to tell me that I had to make a choice between what's really important here and decide for myself whether the work with them, they felt, is more important than even my marriage. So that didn't sit too well with Jeri, and my father, who called a family meeting, we went up to their house in the Baldwin Hills, they were still in the Baldwin Hills. And I remember sitting around the table, and my dad was across from me and my mom, and Jeri was next to me, and they just wanted to express their feeling about what was happening to our marriage at the time. And another one of his sayings that he said repeatedly, he said, "Family comes first." It's a common kind of thing for JAs, I think, for I guess any immigrant family or family with immigrant origins, that family was first, so he wanted to make sure that he knew that's where he's coming from and he wanted me to decide along those lines, hopefully, but he just left it up to me, and that's what I decided, too. So ever since then, it's like, okay, I'm going to pull back. I'm going to refocus and just do my best to provide for the family.

<Begin Segment 14>

JF: And I think a big part of that wound up with us moving to Hawaii where both Jeri, Michael and I felt... well, maybe not Michael, because he was only seven, but where we felt as though it's easier to be Japanese American here than it was where we were. [Noise in background] That's my dog. Where the culture is, it's part of the greater culture, your own, what you grew up with, everybody is familiar with here. It's not something odd, like we would... I still remember saying, "Oh, boy, we're going to have fried rice tonight, Mom's going to make fried rice." And it was a big deal because she rarely did that for us. Whereas here, we can just go to Zippy's or go down the street or make it ourselves with leftovers and stuff, it's like no big deal. And then everyone wears slippahs here, or zoris, we used to call them when we were little kids in L.A. But yeah, it's so easy here. So I think that's why we have two boys, Michael, who's seven, and then Daniel, who was born here during the beginning of our second year here. And they've grown up here, and I think they are turning into folks that are people that they may or not be necessarily this way, but I feel like they're better people having grown up in a culture where they're accepted, where they don't always have to be on the defensive the way I always felt like. I think Karen Ishizuka's book mentions me once about how I was always very reactive about being called any kind of racial epithet.

The one that comes to mind is when I was, we lived in Sunland, of all places. Our first townhouse, which we bought, when I was a teacher, was in Sunland. It was kind of like the armpit of the San Fernando Valley. So you have all these retired policemen buying their small horse ranches out there and stuff, the Aryan Brotherhood, the Ku Klux Klan, and some other racist group wanted to have a combined cross burning celebration during the Fourth of July parade that they were leading down the street. And so it was that kind of a community, which we had no idea at the time that we purchased the place. So Jeri is at the supermarket out there, and then these two haole biker types come sidling up on either side of her, and they're talking over her head at each other saying things like, "I feel like having Oriental food tonight. How about you?" and she just rolled her eyes and left, that kind of racist bullshit going on out there. But you know, this car drives by and I'm walking my dog, and there was this carload of high school kids, and they're throwing oranges. I couldn't believe it. Navel oranges, perfectly good, by the way, navel oranges. But they go whizzing past my head and so they're yelling something at me, and of course that just triggers my reaction, because it's just like in that movie with Steve Martin, Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, when he hears "cleaning woman," it just triggers this reaction where he goes into an uncontrollable rage, and that's me whenever anybody yells anything my way about, "You fucking chink," "fucking gook," "zipperhead," all these other things that they yell. And then I just flew into a rage and I'm yelling my head off at nobody, because they drove past and it's just me and my dog, that happened. But yeah. So over here, nothing. It's like, okay, this is something I could get used to. I think it added years to my life, because man, the way I was going, I was going to be nuts. I mean, flying off the handle at any time, it's not a healthy way to live. So, yeah, it was a good decision on our part.

<Begin Segment 15>

BN: How did you get out here? What was... I mean, all those things you mentioned, but was there like a...

JF: Deciding incident?

BN: Yeah, or like a job, or was there...

JF: At the time, I was, well, let's see, I ended my teaching career and started taking night classes to become a programmer. Because this is in 1981, '82 -- [coughs] excuse me -- when data processing was becoming a big thing, and they needed a lot of COBOL programmers. So I took these night classes and then wound up contacting Ken Shintaku, who was the director at A&M Records, IT Director at A&M Records. So he said, "Yeah, give me a call when you finish your coursework." I was taking this stuff at Computer Learning Center and then after that at UCLA night school. So he said, "Yeah, when you finish up over there, just give me a call." Which I did, and he gave me a programming job, and the school year didn't even end and I left. Felt kind of bad for the kids. But I went back on the last day of school just to hand out these little gifts to the kids, and tell them how I was doing, and then I really thanked them for pushing me out of the classroom. [Laughs] No, I didn't say that. For everything that they taught me. It wasn't wasted time, those six years as a teacher. But wow, was it different being a programmer at A&M Records where I had my own office, it was nice and quiet, I could close the door if I wanted to, and be even quieter, and the focus was just on building these systems that supported the record company. It was a great place to work.

BN: Did you actually meet Herb Alpert?

JF: Yes. They would have an annual Christmas bash for employees and their significant others in the A&M Sound Stage, which used to be the old Charlie Chaplin Studios, and where later Soul Train, I guess, at that time, currently Soul Train was shot. So it was kind of nice. I remember one time we entered in and the place is all dark, which is kind of unusual. And then right overhead, it's almost like he had to duck, were these lasers going back and forth in like a spiderweb design, and there was loud music going, and then they had food stations in the corners of the room, and they had asked the Griffith Park Observatory to do their laser light show. Lasers were, like, wow, this big deal back then. Now you can do it on a little stick pen. So they were doing their laser light show over our heads, and then it's funny because when we moved a few years later, here, I was talking with one of the people at the workplace where I was at. I mentioned, they asked me where I used to work, and I told them about this A&M Records and this laser light show, and they said, "Yeah, the Griffith Park Observatory?" I said, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, same thing." They came out to the Shell once. Is it Shell? Or maybe it was Diamond Head crater? Maybe it was Diamond Head crater. And they did their light show during a concert, and because the air is so clear here, it was a big dud. [Laughs] Because no one, they were waiting for it to start, and it was going, and the recorded music was playing, but it was like, nothing's happening because the air is too clean.

BN: You need smog.

JF: Yeah, you need smog and dust and all this other stuff, and it isn't in the air here, so hello. [Laughs]

<Begin Segment 16>

BN: So what year did you actually move?

JF: I moved here in 1990. It was a coin flip. Because at the time, I was seriously corresponding with this guy up in Astoria, I think it's along the Idaho-Oregon border. He owned a tofu factory, and along with a three-bedroom, two and a half bath house, from which his wife ran a bento, little bento pickup thing. Anyway, so he had ten thousand clients, so he said, for his tofu business, and he was looking for an apprentice to train to take over how to make tofu and continue delivering to his clients. Because he had to leave to help his father, who ran three restaurants in Portland, but needed his help. And so that kind of intrigued me, we had correspondence, he sent me photographs, he made this great offer that would include the business and the house. I was real close to pulling the trigger on that until I asked Jeri, finally, "What do you think of this?" This is the deal, this is the price, we could do it now, and it would be a way for me to escape from this, at the time, I was a software consultant, and I had to be at the airport between four and six on Sunday, and I wouldn't see the family until I came back home at ten p.m., usually after ten p.m. on Friday. So we only had Saturdays together, which Jeri, by the way, loved. Anyway, I asked her, "What do you think?" and she said, "You know, if we move there," and she showed me on the map where it is, "no one's going to visit us. We're going to lose track of everybody." So I said, "Okay, then we won't do this." And instead, we'll fall back on an original plan that had fallen through to move to Kauai where a friend and now pastor of hers was working, and I forgot the name of the church. There was a job opportunity there at the community college, but I had kind of a Calabash uncle, George Sasaki, who had Sasaki Jewelers, George Sasaki Jewelers, which is still in operation on Fort Street, downtown Honolulu, and his son, Hans, and I were the same age. So we kind of knew each other, didn't really stay in touch regularly, but kind of knew each other. Anyway, at least we knew somebody here, and so we decided we would make the move here because we felt comfortable here and we thought, yeah, for Michael growing up, it's way better than him being the only face of color in his first grade classroom picture. It's like, okay, there's Michael. [Laughs] It was easy to pick him out in that class. So, yeah, we thought it would better, and it was, and it has been. So we've never looked back, never thought about moving back.

BN: And then the Oregon story, is it Astoria or Ontario?

JF: I thought it was Astoria.

BN: Because Astoria, I think, is on the 5, isn't it? Ontario is the one on the Oregon-Idaho border.

JF: Oh, really?

BN: And it actually has a substantial Japanese community.

JF: It does?

BN: Yeah. But maybe I'm getting... I'm actually writing about it now. It was a destination for many people avoiding incarceration from the Pacific Northwest. They had a friendly mayor, so there was a substantial community there. So if there's a tofu business, it's got to be in a place where there's...

JF: Is there an Owyhee River there?

BN: There are rivers, I don't know the names of them though.

JF: Okay. I don't know why that stands out.

BN: Anyway, off topic, but I was just wondering if that was Ontario, maybe. But anyway...

JF: I've got to remember that.

<Begin Segment 17>

BN: As someone who kind of did the same thing, you moved to, as a kotonk, moved to Hawaii in the '90s, how... were you viewed as...

JF: Different?

BN: Yeah.

JF: Yes. So it wasn't like a seamless, you know, I slipped in surreptitiously, "Yeah, I'm one of you guys," no, it was clearly evident that I wasn't from there, here. I remember my first staff meeting, I worked at HMSA, big medical insurance company, and we're up on the roof of the building. They have their own building on Keeaumoku Street. And so we're up on the roof, and so we're up on the roof, this is like Monday, September 4, 1990, and my boss, Ed China, introduces me to the staff members, there's about ten of us. And so he says, "So, you have any questions for us?" And I said, "Yeah. I went to, over the weekend, we found the Chinatown, we walked around there, but we couldn't find a J-Town. Where's the J-Town around here?" He starts looking at everybody else, and they're cracking up, and they're all looking at each other, cracking up, and then he finally says, "J-Town, this whole state's a J-Town." [Laughs] Says, okay, that's good to know. Easy to find then. And then every time I'd open my mouth and start talking, even kind of still today, they'll turn their head and then they'll say, "You not from heah." I say, "No, I'm part of the kotonk invasion and we're taking over." I'm just joking, they know I'm joking because it's just me.

BN: There's a group of us.

JF: There's quite a few. I won't divulge their names, but we are infiltrating. [Laughs]

BN: Many of them are trying to pass, which I think is the wrong strategy.

JF: You know how I remember, who was it... the sportscaster guy on HBO who has his own sports show? Gumbel.

BN: Oh, Bryant Gumbel.

JF: Bryant Gumbel. His father told him, he said, "You don't want to speak any other way than you speak. Don't try to fit in by imitating the local dialect or whatever," he said, "because you dishonor them as well as yourself by trying to do that. So just be yourself." I always remember that. Said, yeah, I'm not going to try to speak pidgin when I can't, so I don't. And people, I mean, it's going to take them like two seconds to figure I'm a kotonk, so why hide it? And so yeah, it's so much easier living here, and people accept my "kotonkness." [Laughs]

BN: This is, clearly you kind of kept in touch with your friends from back in L.A. Some of them are, at least a couple of them are here. But was that a conscious effort to try to maintain those ties?

JF: No. In fact, we stumbled across, like the first couple that we met were totally by accident. We were at the year-end celebration in Chinatown, or maybe it was Chinese New Year, so it must have been early '91. And we happened to see Kenny and Chizuko. Had been in Japan for over a decade, and we thought...

BN: Did you know them from before in L.A.?

JF: Yeah. I knew Chizuko, who, her English name is Jeannie Nishimura.

BN: She contributed to Gidra, right?

JF: Oh, yeah. She's in that famous Women's Day issue where, yeah, that's Mary Uyematsu giving the Trump salute there. And yeah, she was a big part of the staff for a long time. And then she went up to Humbolt University to finish her education. But yeah, all of a sudden, I see now Chizuko and Kenny Endo, who is from the east side, and Jeri, my wife, Jeri, and is convinced soon or later they'll find a connection. But first research didn't turn up anything. Yeah, so they're still here, and they were happy to see us, we were happy to see them. We get together or are getting together next Wednesday. And since then, we've come across more and more folks, and I think hopefully there will be more and more folks joining the kotonk invasion.

BN: At some point I will definitely want to interview Kenny and Chizuko.

JF: Oh, good, good.

BN: How do you think living here for thirty-something years now has changed you? Are you still, are you still triggered by racism, or has that changed?

JF: Yeah, I don't think that part of me will ever change. It never has happened here, though. I mean, that's...

BN: Here, they're more likely to be the racists.

JF: And that I'm trying hard not to be. Because I think I grew up that way, and it's kind of easy when you're living in L.A. to do that, to become kind of racist yourself.

<Begin Segment 18>

BN: I think what I'd asked you is how you felt you have changed from living in Hawaii all these years. And specifically I asked you about your reaction to racist...

JF: Yeah, my hair trigger reaction to being called any kind of a racial epithet. Yeah, that still exists, and I don't think it'll ever go away. When I fly back to the mainland, it's not that I'm on high alert, but all these, you drive past places, say, "Yeah, that was where that jerk called me a... whatever." And oh, that was where this other thing happened. And so it all comes rushing back, you kind of become a little bit defensive, but it's very different at the places that we visited, or tend to visit over there now, which includes parts of Orange County like Irvine. It's very different from pre-1990 Irvine. So yeah, I'm on guard, but it never happens there either, now. Like we were mentioning before I grew up, like, sorry, but hating white folks, and holding them personally responsible for all these horrific things that they've done throughout everyone's past in this country. And so that's the flip side of that hair trigger reaction. And so living here for the past thirty-some odd years, yeah, the hair trigger part has dissipated a little bit, but that racist attitude towards white folks is now refined. So there's more delineation that I learned. And it's people and it's not just haole folks, but it's anybody who disrespects the local culture or who doesn't respect local folks. And I include my dad in that, because he is the most discriminatory person when it comes to, you know, speaking English the King's English, he would call it. He would roll his eyes whenever he would hear, like Gary Furuno or David Cho or other friends, still had that west side accent. "Are they speaking English?" "Dad, come on." I mean, he'd be half joking, but half not. So it's like he was so prejudiced in that way. And so he would come out here to visit us, and we'd be at Zippy's or something and he'd overhear the people behind us talk, and he'd lean over and in a loud enough voice for everybody to hear, "Is he speaking English?" Oh, my god, Dad. [Laughs] So yeah, it's changed. And I'm much more discerning now in how I dish out my anger.

<Begin Segment 19>

BN: I just wanted to circle back now to Gidra. And as you know, Densho put it online a few years ago, it's been, if not the most, one of the most popular collections in terms of people downloading it. And all these articles written about it, we get all these college students and ethnic studies students who are fascinated by it. Because they didn't know anything like this existed all these years ago. So, yeah, I'm just wondering how you feel about now, literally fifty years later, that there's this real interest, fascination with it, especially by younger Asian Americans, this thing that was doing things that are meaningful to me today.

JF: Well, I hope they find it meaningful today. That's good. I don't know. I guess on the one hand, what I read about and see, they're like celebrations of recognition and it doesn't matter what their politics are. They could be the most racist whatever or reactionary, right-wing whatever, as long as they're Asian and they're in the media, and they're an actor or actress and stuff. It's like, okay, that counts, but that's not what... I hope that wasn't what Gidra was inspiring to promote. People that stood up for each other, yes, but not simply for their being a famous actress or because they got in this movie role. Yeah, it's a reason to celebrate, but let's not go nuts over it. [Laughs]

[Interruption]

JF: Yeah, I don't think that was the reason why Gidra existed. Yeah, we would probably have articles about it, and then like secretly Bruce Lee was probably a hero to a lot of us. In fact, when that series Kung Fu came out with David Carradine, who should have been Bruce Lee, a lot of us got background roles in there, including me. Because we just happened to be studying under Kam Yuen, who served as the technical advisor in the later series. So, yeah, it's not that we denigrate that kind of recognition, but that's not all there is, I think, for us "Gidra-istas." You can't celebrate on the one hand and then on the other, ignore the stuff that's happening today within the Black community. So if we don't actively support that, I think nearly a hundred percent of us are internally supporting that. Spiritually aligned, or whatever. We see the purpose behind those street demonstrations if we're not actively a part of them. And in that way, I could almost hear my dad talking that we support those kind of street actions. And I guess that's something that's always going to be there.

<Begin Segment 20>

BN: Is there anything that, if you could talk to a twenty-year-old college student who was writing something about Gidra or discovering it in their Asian American Studies class? What would you want them to know, if anything?

JF: Yeah. That I kind of wish there was another Gidra happening now. I'm sure it'd be a lot different than ours. I think ours was progressive for its time, but maybe wasn't as inclusive as it would be now if it were resurrected. Today, the conditions are a lot different. There are similarities, of course, but I think that term, "Asian American" is used, so widespread, I guess back when the paper was there, we felt it represented a statement against, kind of a stance against the status quo. It wasn't so much that ethnically you're an Asian American, you share this history of the way minority people are treated in the United States. And because of that, that makes you Asian American. You have to understand that historical mistreatment your peoples in order to be called an Asian American, you just don't get it because you have to be Chinese, Japanese, Korean, whatever. It's more of an understanding, the knowledge of your people's history that makes you Asian American. So in that way, it's changed. It's become much looser.

BN: Right, it's lost the political meaning, the descriptive term.

JF: Yes. It did have a political impact.

BN: Absolutely.

JF: Because before, we were "Oriental," right? Which I don't know where that came from. Yeah, yeah, that aspect, I think, is missing, and I would like to see a new Gidra start to bring it back. Who knows? Maybe Michael or Daniel. [Laughs]

BN: There have been attempts, periodic attempts to revive Gidra. There was a 2001, and there is one, there is a Gidra now.

JF: Oh, wow.

BN: I think Mike was saying they have the tacit approval to use the name.

JF: Okay. Did you know, speaking of current events involving Gidra, Richard Tokunaga, who is famous for doing his self-portrait, which we used on a cover, and it's being used, I think, by the Asian American Pacific Islander Film Festival a couple of years ago, has their main logo, and now the Puma shoe company, or athletic clothing company, they have a designer, I can't remember his name, Jeff something -- that's the only reason why I remember the designer -- he contacted Mike, and Mike contacted a few of us to come to an agreement about this relationship with Puma athletic clothing company. So Richard Tokunaga just two days ago sent me an email that showed some of the print publications featuring his self-portrait, which is on, I think, a March '73 issue, something like that. And some of the other designs of Gidra origin that are appearing on tennis shoes and t-shirts by Puma, unbelievable.

BN: Who would have thought?

JF: Yeah. So we wanted to make sure that we weren't going to be seen as sellouts, because that would be terrible.

BN: Probably not going to be the last. But anyway...

JF: So I just wanted to add, no money was exchanged in that relationship, except to go to, I think, a fund that will be drawn from and directed to different Asian American community organizations. At least that's what Mike told us, so right on Mike. So our conscience was sated so we can sleep.

BN: Okay, well, that's the main things I wanted to cover. So thank you very much. Is there anything you would like to mention that we haven't covered?

JF: No, not really.

BN: Great, thank you.

JF: Okay, thank you, Brian.