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BN: So we're back with interview number two with Nick Nagatani in his home in Culver City, California. This is June 27, 2023, and I'm Brian Niiya, and I'll be doing the interviewing, and Yuka Murakami is doing the videography. So thanks again for sitting with us, and last time, we ended up essentially as you're leaving Vietnam, so I thought we'd start this interview with what you returned to. But I thought maybe the first question I wanted to ask is how were you, how did you feel you had changed? How different a person were you after having gone through that experience as you're coming back?

NN: Let's see. That would have been '69, perhaps maybe about in June, perhaps this month. When I came back, it was somewhat like a numb feeling where I was just glad to be back in what we could call, the military term was "the world." So when you're in Vietnam, we always talk about getting back to the world. So I just was glad to get back to the world, I had no expectations except that I'm home. So everything was relatively new to me, and within a period of like thirteen months that I was overseas, that it was shocking the changes that I felt and I saw. And I guess it was during the time where people of color were finding their, searching for identity, finding their identity, standing up for years, decades, centuries of oppression. There was like a hippie movement at the time, the slang, the dress, and the appearances, and mainly the attitudes were some, very counterculture. So this was like, wow, what's happening? But everything that I saw or felt and I experienced at the time when I was, I came back home, was I dug the vibe. Because when I enlisted at that time, just within my own community, it was pretty much uptight. And so I remember back then, like the '60s, actually growing up, there was always hostility between Japanese Americans from the west side, from the east side, like the Gardena kind of thing over there, and there would be a lot of, "Where are you from?" kind of bullshit. But I didn't sense any of that, which was, felt really good. Because I guess people were, some people that were, I guess, quote/unquote part of a movement that they were strongly putting out messages of unity, things of that nature. And so that's what, kind of like, I came home to, and I think I adjusted okay.

BN: What was the first thing that you did when you got back?

NN: I think I went shopping for some clothes. And what I was going to do is, I had it planned out, one of the first things I was going to do was I was going to go to Playa del Rey, and they have some fire pits over there. When I came home, I came home with all my military stuff, fatigues and boots and all this crap. And what I was going to do was I was going to go down to Playa del Rey and I was going to burn it. And I think when I got home, I have a younger brother who's like eight years younger, and him and his friends, they were all wearing fatigues, so he wanted them. Saved me a trip to the beach, so I remember that.

BN: Was that just a fashion thing with your brother's generation?

NN: Yeah. For some reason, everybody was anti-war, but it was cool to wear these fatigues kind of thing, at least for, I think he was in junior high. They call it, now it's middle school, but he was in junior high at Audubon. So I gave it to him and I think it kind of supplied the whole neighborhood of his friends.

BN: Did you keep in touch with the friends you had made while you were in the military?

NN: No. One disadvantage in the Vietnam military era is that we were kind of picked off one by one. So when we went to, overseas, we did not go as a unit. And this is the first time that the military didn't send units together, they just sent us individually. So you went by yourself and you came home by yourself, and we all were sent back when we completed our overseas tour separately. So I think previously, like all other military units, they trained together, they went overseas together, they came back home together, and actually I think it was a lot healthier, where you're orientated together and you're debriefed together at the end and you have this long history of camaraderie. And yes, you know what, I did meet people in Vietnam from all different walks of life. But I think it was somewhat different when, "I'm glad to see you're getting out of here, have a good life," kind of thing. And there was this one Asian, a Buddhahead guy, that I got tight with in Vietnam because we were in the same unit. He was from Azusa, and after we kind of broke ice and got to know each other, I wish I would have kept in contact with him. And I've kind of looked up his name a few times, but there was no hits on him.

BN: And when while you were there, how much were you aware of what was going on back home or when you came back, was it all kind of new and something you didn't know was going on?

NN: Yes, I didn't know what was going on. To be honest, when I enlisted, I didn't know what was going on either, so it was a continuation. I mean, I was just kind of going through the motions.

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<Begin Segment 2>

BN: You mentioned, when we did our pre-interview, that in addition to this excitement about what was going on in terms of the Asian American Movement and so forth, you also saw some problems in the community as well with regard to youth alienation and drug use and so forth.

NN: Yes. I mean, it was during... to take a step back, I just didn't come back and develop any type of political awareness. It was a process, and it still is, but when I came back, it was kind of a feeling of self-liberation feeling, too, like "free at last." And like I said, that I didn't feel any kind of hostilities or bad vibes between, within the community, also within the city. I think, at that time, I felt like I could I could go anywhere in the city and feel safe. It was a good feeling, and I figured I had all this behind me, I finally got discharged and just trying to enjoy myself in which I did, and I had friends, I still dabbled in some sports, I was going to school, collecting the GI Bill, I had me a little car right there. There was always some type of activity or party to go to. I wasn't heavily into drugs anymore, but I still would smoke a little bit or drink some, but nothing out of control. And so life was good.

And I stumbled, I went to this, I think I mentioned the name Pat Sumi, so I guess it was during, it was during that time when I was a student at Cal State L.A., I was doing very well in school, that one of my friends took me to Long Beach State where Pat Sumi was speaking, and she kind of talked about her, not trip, but her delegation to North Vietnam, and I think it was with a progressive group, they had Panthers, they had people from the Red Guard in San Francisco, so just a delegation of activists or revolutionaries from the United States, and she was talking about what was happening in Vietnam from a liberation perspective. So provisionary revolutionary government to Vietnam and what was going on over there and their commitment to rid their country of any foreign invasions, meaning that there was a history of, I think, hundreds and hundreds of years of foreign intervention, and the U.S. was the last ones to try to colonize the country. So anyway, after I learned more within listening to Pat Sumi, that I probably learned more in twelve years of education at L.A. Unified just about, things about what's going on in the world. And it's kind of like it was an epiphany in a sense where, what was I even doing there? Because before, I never really questioned it. I never really questioned it, but when I kind of saw it from the outside looking in, it was like what we were doing there not only was nothing to be proud of, and this is what we're doing. I mean, it kind of struck home, and in some ways, that I was glad that I didn't have the understanding when I was there, because who knows?

So I became a little bit more aware of things that were happening, and I actually saw, like before I would see people that were involved in politics, I guess they would call themselves movement people, whatever that's supposed to mean, that it was cool as far as what they were doing, but it ain't got nothing to do with me. So any kind of movement person would move aside. But I kind of saw that in a different perspective, and I don't know how I ended up at this Japanese American Community Service, the JACS office over at Weller Street in J-Town. But when I went there, there was a lot of energy, and it was basically like a young Sansei organization. And the people there that were doing what they call community work, it's kind of like what's up over here, and they were very serious and they were welcoming, but they were pretty get down too. So it was something that was, interested me in terms of, like, what was going on. And I ended up becoming a regular over there at the JACS office, which probably I spent a majority --

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<Begin Segment 3>

NN: So I was talking about the JACS office.

BN: Right.

NN: And at the JACS office, I was fortunate and privileged to meet mentors like Mo Nishida, Miya Iwataki, I think there was a Ray Tasaki there, Carol Hatanaka, she was with the Nisei Welfare Rights program. But anyway, there were a lot of dedicated revolutionaries there, and the JACS office had different programs. One of the programs that I participated in was Youth and Drugs. And it started off as, like, an Asian American hotline, where if some young person was going through an overdose, that they would have access to call this hotline, and you'd walk 'em through until you'd get the medical attention that they needed, but just to take them step by step. "Don't go to sleep, fill your tub with ice." There was a drug problem within the community, and we were receiving phone calls, and a lot of times it was from concerned parents, so we would meet with families and young kids and whatnot. We were doing counseling, there was, what they call it, neighborhood youth, NYC corps program, and that they would, I guess the government at that time, that because there was so much uprising in the summers, meaning like cities burning down, because of, like, lack of jobs, oppression, overall conditions, and just unrest, and mainly in the people of color communities, that to placate that, they started this NYC program to give young people jobs in the summertime. So the JACS office happened to be one of the organizations for the Japanese American community to get slots. So we would hire young people to come in, and actually we had a summer to work with them and to try to politicize them, create bonds. And there was a summertime of activity.

So anyway, I was at the JACS office probably a few years. And during that time, I was living at home still with my folks from Crenshaw, but there were issues going on in Crenshaw. And there was like, when I was in the service, there was an organization that ended up being called the Yellow Brotherhood, that it was originated by a cadre of ex-gang individuals that were in this gang called the Ministers back in the early '60s. And I guess their story is that they had a big blowout at one point right at the end, it was like a shootout at this bowling alley. And I guess it's like Mid-Wilshire Shatto Bowl that resulted in everyone having to get out of Dodge, so a lot of them joined the service, some of them got arrested, went to the joint. They all scattered, and years later, they're older than me, so when all this is going on, I'm doing my thing in school. But I guess when they came back together, I was in the service, and what they saw was young people still trying to emulate them, they're calling themselves the Ministers III. So they organized these young thugs from the same Crenshaw community, and was very intent that we don't want them to go through what we experienced, and they had street credibility, so the youngsters were listening to the message. And they were influenced somewhat by the Black Panther party who was doing similar things within the community. So it was still a little bit like self-help and militant, and with a purpose of community control, serving the people.

But within a year's time, and I'm still in the service, that when they were working with the, I'm going to call it the at-risk kids within Crenshaw, that prior to that, that the Japanese American community at large refused to acknowledge that, you know what, there were a lot of fuck-ups in the neighborhood. And I went through that, and whole generations have gone through that, but you're never acknowledged as even existing. Because it's a shame to say that we've got kids out there overdosing on drugs or dying, and that's a shame not only on the family, but on the community in which we're the "model minorities." So you get to a point, "Well, fuck you," you know. This isn't cool. Your kids are dying, and as far as we're concerned, they're my younger brothers' age, and no longer are we just talking about a handful of rebellious seven samurai types, but we're talking about hordes of, you know, your next-door neighbor kind of kids, like dropping these barbiturates. But anyway, within like a years' time, the organization could not be ignored because of the numbers, and they were doing the study halls, they were participating in the Japanese volleyball leagues, and kids that would never participate in all this kind of stuff were like, they were getting empowered.

So finally, I think there was a paper, there was an article in the Rafu kind of like admonishing the community about "shame on you." They're doing what we're all supposed to be doing, and the Japanese American Business Association that they got together and did this massive fundraiser, and as a result, they purchased a Yellow Brotherhood house up on Crenshaw and Pico. And it was like a beautiful crib, two-story garage, big center. And I say this because the Chairman Mao once said, "A single spark could create a prairie fire." And within one year, I think I'm going to give him credit, it was like Victor Shibata, Gary Asamura, David Yanagi, Lawrence Lee, Art Ishi and Ats Sasaki, I think even Mike Yamaki, that, to their credit, that within one year, there was a Yellow Brotherhood House. And unfortunately, they were doers but not administrators. And they're like young men themselves, because I'm, like families and whatnot, so I guess as the younger membership got older and did okay, and in the meantime, there were still problems going on, overdoses and stuff, let's see. So eventually the Yellow Brotherhood House became a halfway house, meaning that there were still, let's see, JA youth that were incarcerated or either like at a youth camp or the county jail with no place to go. So the �Yellow Brotherhood House became somewhat of a safe haven in the sense where there were strict rules or mandates, no drugs, no parties, daytime, you go to go out and look for a job, you report back to one of the persons in charge over here, so they had a person in charge. And like the membership, the leadership of the YB, they had the respect of the people that were living there or benefiting from this opportunity. So they knew that if you stepped out of line and you crossed the line, then you're out or you get your ass whipped, so it was kind of an understanding.

So everything went okay, that unfortunately that was an incident where one of the people staying at Yellow Brotherhood House at that time had a fight at the local gas station and beat this cat down. And it was probably deserving, but he came back to the house, no big thing as far as everybody there was concerned, and then the guy that was at the gas station got his friends at the gas station and they came down to the Yellow Brotherhood House to settle a score. And I think they were, they had no business being there. But I guess they figured they had their honor protect, that kind of crap. And one of them was leery enough to bring a rifle. So he ended up shooting a brother by the name of Tony that was trying to be the peacemaker at the time. And I guess Tony had a rep of knocking suckers out, so I guess when this guy saw Tony approaching him, said, "Hey, you didn't need to bring that, let's talk about it." I think he got scared and he just killed Tony on the spot in the house. And so the YB House was closed, and I guess I'm bringing all this up because I'm out of the service now and I remember when Tony got killed, the YB House just got shut down.

And it was never really a real good, the word now is match, but a marriage between the Yellow Brotherhood and the Japanese American community. Because a lot of them always saw the Yellow Brotherhood as, these are thugs kind of thing. And the people that, the element that they're working with, not losers, but they're misfits. I think the story is that right after the fundraiser to build, to get the Yellow Brotherhood House, that the Japanese American business community, just severed all ties with the Yellow Brotherhood, and partially because the Yellow Brotherhood leadership was following the lines of autonomy, and not believing in electoral politics, or basically being anti-government. That the JA Business Association to do this fundraiser invited the then-mayor of L.A., Sam Yorty, to be like a speaker there. And the YB said, "No, he can't speak." These people are the problem, why we have a Yellow Brotherhood thing, right? The leadership of the businesspeople were saying they can't uninvite 'em because he's been accepted. So came to a stalemate, well, all of a sudden there was going to be a fundraiser. Well, if they still had it, the YB said, "We're going to picket our own fundraiser." So it got kind of, big clash.

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<Begin Segment 4>

BN: So I wanted to just step back for a minute, just to clarify the chronology. What you're talking about was the YB House. Are you here when that happens or is this going on while you're...

NN: The YB House was purchased when I was in Vietnam.

BN: Oh, okay.

NN: And when I returned from Vietnam, I was gone for two years, so the YB House was starting to wind down because the younger membership of the YB House at that time, they were graduating high school, and there were no influx of new membership, younger membership in the leadership of the Yellow Brotherhood was somewhat getting burnt out because we're talking about three years down the line and they're young men themselves. So when I was discharged, probably the Yellow Brotherhood House was in a transition phase where it became somewhat of a halfway house for Asian Americans to have a place to stay post-incarceration.

BN: And then did you have a connection with that directly?

NN: I guess my connection would be that I'm living in Crenshaw, and I know the cast of characters that's involved within the organization. And I got to know some of the organizers of the Yellow Brotherhood, some of the ex-Ministers, especially like Victor Shibata, who I guess was involved in community work at that time, I think he was working for the, him and Warren Furutani were part of the junior JACL, they were doing national organizing. So I knew Victor, and I knew the status of what was going on at the house, and I knew the brothers that were staying there as part of the halfway house, they were people that I knew and I grew up with, so I was connected in that way. But my primary, I'm going to call it concentration work area, was in Little Tokyo at the JACS office.

BN: And then when you were at the JACS office, were you being paid, were you a staffperson, or was this kind of a side thing?

NN: You know, I was part of the core body of membership there. But I guess how the JACS office worked at that time was that the JACS board, I don't know if they purchased the Sun Building or how that came about, but they gave the top floor, the section, the fifth floor to the Japanese American Community Service - Asian Involvement people, and I think they put Miya Iwataki and Ray Tasaki on payroll to run this Sansei community-based serve the people type programs, and what Miya and Ray did is that they collectivized their check, so everyone that was working there, including me, had a piece. And it wasn't a lot, but we called it, at that time, survival money, buy some cigarettes and get the Tokyo Gardens special on Friday, the char siu, siu mai, anyway, so you got some gas money and survival money and stuff, which was appreciated. Because there was obviously no economic incentive for being there, from Jump Street, because we were there to try to change all that anyway.

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<Begin Segment 5>

BN: And then is this the time period when, we talked about earlier, you were also using the GI Bill also to fund your living expenses and kind of going to school?

NN: Once I got, became active, I guess you could call it the movement or the revolution, that all this other stuff that I was going through the motions with the doing, like going to school and all that, it became not even secondary, became somewhat irrelevant. Because I actually viewed everything that, mostly, but I've looked, what they tried to teach me, especially history, as any relevant education. And there's things like math and all that, very relevant, that I never was a good student to start, a willing student to start with, but I just kind of totally shut off to all that, and wanted to learn, more or less, things that were meaningful to me. And there was a lot of information out there that was available, that I was finally interested in learning, with my train of thought, the GI Bill. I used the GI Bill to help with my expenses. And I guess how the GI Bill worked was every month you get a check for going to school, and you get more for being like a full-time student. So I guess the statute of limitations is run, so I enrolled and signed up for twelve units, and get the max, and somewhere along past the halfway point where you're still able to drop out without getting penalized that I submit my resignation, or I would just tell the teacher, "I'm not coming to class." And, "I'm not coming to class, and I need the money," and, "Are you willing to carry me as a student?" and a lot of the classes are based upon enrollment. So a lot of them were open to that arrangement. So they would just say, "I don't know how I'm going to grade you," I really didn't care at the time. I would just say, "Well, how about you just give me an incomplete?" Okay, so I was able to do that at different schools.

So I think I went to Cal State L.A., Long Beach State, there were teachers there. I went to, maybe back to LACC, but I also did some Trade Tech, but I was doing this for a few years. I would also, they would have unemployment at that time where if you worked for so many months, and then if you got laid off, they called it, maybe that's, meaning fired, but if you got laid off, that you were eligible for unemployment. And this may have been during the Reagan era, or whoever was president, that they didn't want to flush people out there without no money, so they kept extending the unemployment. So sometimes it could last for like eighteen months, and then you'd get... you want to hear all this?

BN: Yeah.

NN: Okay. So you get a job at a liquor store, and then you'd get fired or you'd get laid off. You get laid off, and you filed for your unemployment, and you'd get an unemployment check for like eighteen months or whatever. And then in the meantime, there's the GI Bill. So I don't know if that's double dipping, but I guess you have welfare queens, you have the welfare king. [Laughs] And at the time that my, the way I looked at it was it's coming from the government, and "fuck you very much."

BN: But that was sort of funding your activities at JACS and the other stuff that you were doing?

NN: Yes.

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<Begin Segment 6>

BN: One thing I wanted to ask you about this period is, how were you viewed by the community, by these different organizations, as a veteran, given this growing antiwar sentiment? I mean, I've heard stories from other veterans who were treated badly, for instance. Did you get any of that, or how were you seen or how were you viewed as someone who had actually been in Vietnam?

NN: When I came home, it wasn't... for me, it wasn't like people had questions. Kind of like the camp kind of thing, where you just don't talk about it. So I'm still with people that I grew up with or knew me closely or association, that I'm still Nick, and it wasn't like what happened over there.

BN: Because I just asked you about how you were seen as a veteran returning, you were talking about how it was almost like camp where people didn't really want to talk about that.

NN: Right. And politically, it was very antiwar at the time, and this was like, I guess, in the early '70s, I guess the reality was that there was, those of us who participated in the Vietnam War were basically like people of color, undereducated, probably lower income, and more or less viewed as throwaway kids. And we were all pretty young, in fact, I was, I think I turned twenty-one when I was in Vietnam. And I was probably a little bit older than all the other fellow recruits. So it's not like you see on the movies where you see these, back in the day, the John Wayne movies, and you see all these men fighting. We were kids, well, kids out there, and so getting back to, when I came back, that the emphasis about, taking a position, stand against war, that the political groups wanted to hear what was going on from vets. And so they did have things like, they called that the "winter soldier," in Detroit, and some of my friends, like, Mike Nakayama and Scott Shimabukuro went as an Asian delegation to talk, give their testimony over there, and they were able to hook up with other veterans of color over there and form some type of collective such as understanding and bond within the community organizations that they wanted to hear about what... like our training and our experience in this war, we're trained to fight and kill people that look like us. So they were very interested in speaking to us, interviewing, having us speak to other temples, kids, that may consider enlisting. And it wasn't like we were being used, but we possessed an experience that, I guess, that they felt should be shared. Like one of my good friends to this day, in fact, we went in and enlisted at the same time, Mike Nakayama, that he's a combat vet with a silver star, a couple of Purple Hearts that... so he didn't have to ship.

So he started an organization, and he ran it out of the JACS office called AMMO. Yeah, the acronym was AMMO, so it stands for Asian Movement for Military Outreach. And one of the things that we did was we had some veterans counseling, so other brothers that were coming out, and like I said, we came out individually, that we understood some isolation and issues, the confusion, the lack of any type of, being able to put things into perspective about why we were there, what we were forced to do, the power structure that put us in this predicament. We had, we got together with other veterans, and a lot of them were, after discussion, and within the community, we know just about everybody, too, that they were part of the group. So we did things where we actually had a guerrilla theater, and there were other veterans organizations like the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, which was a pretty progressive white militant veterans, that they cooperated with us and we did things like I remember we'd go to Senshin Temple, and they would have a teach-in with all the members of the temple who were there to hear about our experience in Vietnam, and basically one of the things that we did is that when we were, I think we were out in the courtyard and we were sitting, and this was called guerilla theater. And what happened is that we were sitting up there and we're talking, that the Vietnam vets, the white guys, progressive, that they came in, marching with uniforms, and they came in as if they were a grunt unit in Vietnam, just coming in and acting crazy. "Get up, get up, you motherfucker, da-da-da, get up and lay down here." And everybody was pretty freaked out watching this stuff, right? And we went along with it, so we were prisoners and did, facing atrocities and all that. And the whole intent was to say this is happening right now in villages in Vietnam. And I think it has a lot greater impact than just saying you went in and you put a match to this hooch. Might have been people inside.

So I mean, there was, I think what our position was is we weren't... our intent was not like "war is bad and we need to bring the boys home," which we didn't need to do. But more than that, it's like, "Look at what we're doing to the Vietnamese people." So it's a whole different intent. So you bring the boys home, but what are you going to do now, bomb? Which is worse, right, kind of thing? So it was always pro-Vietnam government, or people, and we have no business being in there, and all they're doing is they're fighting for their freedom, the same thing that the patriots did here in America. I mean, that was basically like our stance and our contribution to the antiwar movement.

BN: So in a sense, your veteran status gave you a greater, not license, but a greater authority in some ways, to speak on this.

NN: You know, it's kind of like the 442 to say that we fought, and this is how it should be. I mean, not quite the same, but we were given a whole different message. And in terms of relationships with other organizations, like when we came back, we weren't talking like patriotism, we're not waving the flag. If anything we were like, "Burn this thing," because it's not representative of what we believe in. So our message to a lot of youth that may have been inclined because of whatever situation, just trying to get away from something like how we were doing to enlist, was to share with him our experience and more or less discourage him. Which I recall also there were chapters of the 442, there was one chapter that somehow we ended up having a round table discussion with them. So we went out, I think we got out in Orange County. Because I think one of the things that, in hindsight growing up, that there was never any older generation pulling us aside. I take that back, there were. I had coaches that were really instrumental in my life, looking out for me and keeping me somewhat, minimizing my trouble by having me participate in the JA sports community. They were angels to me, guardian angels. But in terms of other things, like you know what, "say no to drugs," and you should consider this and that, there was nothing like that for us, nor during the Vietnam era, there was no one stating anything about, "Maybe you ought to think about this." Because maybe as a veteran of my time, it was different, and this was the honorable thing to do. This is a little bit different. I mean, there was actually nothing like that. So in terms of meeting with the 442, that at least the members that we spoke with, they're like my parents' age and stuff, they're very entrenched into their status, where we were just like butting heads, saying, "This is different." This is not an audible thing that's going on right now, and as an organization, that you should say you'd appreciate it if you would join us and say something in support of saving Asian lives. And we couldn't make headway, but I think one of their members just says, at the end of the day, heatedly going back and forth for a couple hours, I mean, we couldn't even agree to disagree. It would just be like, "Well, you know what? War is hell. Bye."

BN: Did you ever encounter any of the Nisei vet groups that were supportive of what you were doing, or was it pretty uniformly...

NN: Well, you know what? In hindsight now, there's... we talk about this thing, PTSD, that it's like a recent diagnostic, mental health issue right now. But it was like post-Vietnam. And I'm thinking about PTSD for these World War II vets, and that shit's off the chart, man. I mean, kind of hand to hand and like I got all due respect for their service. But in terms of politically, that I think we have a lot in common, more so than not in common, but I'm talking about the average GI or member of the 442 that is not there to make a name for themselves or to be the spokesperson for the community and say what, this is what you should do. And I say that in terms of, like, when they were trying to build the museum, I mean, I'm sorry, the gym over on First Street North by the Japanese American Museum. And then I guess they had that MOCA there, and they said, "No, we don't want a gym there," which was public land and we could have got, built it for free, that the elitist museum MOCA types saying, "No, that's not good, we don't want a bunch of kids running around and all that," fuck with a wine and cheese ambiance. They actually enlisted the 442 hierarchy to say that, no, we don't want the museum there because it's going to mess with our monument that we have over there. And you know what? No one even knows the monument's there, it's in the parking lot. But wouldn't it be great to have a gym there in case we come by and, "What is this?" "Hey, I see, my dad said that was his uncle's name on there." And that was not, and they were talking against the kids, against the community, and this was the 442 hierarchy. And I know that if you could have got the individual members that... because they were grand jiichans by now, and say, "You know what? You got any problem with building a gym right there next to this monument and here's the Korean vets and all that," we'd have a gym there. So there's a real difference between the muckety mucks and the heart and soul, in my opinion, anyway.

BN: Yeah, sure. I remember that.

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<Begin Segment 7>

BN: So I wanted to also ask about... and I learned this, actually, from Karen Ishizuka's book. That it was the big mobilization in Nisei Week, the '72 Nisei Week where there was the protests against the war. And I didn't know, she mentioned that you were one of the folks who worked on that comic that was distributed and that was also published in Gidra, I believe.

NN: The group that I was working with, and we were talking about it's time for a wakeup call within the Japanese American community because we have always just kind of buried our head in the sand as a community, so we're going to use Nisei Week as a shock effect to maybe start a dialogue within the community, good or bad. And one of the things I contributed to was we're going to have a Van Troi Youth Brigade that was going to march in the Nisei Week parade. I think their thing was go left, go right, now pick up the gun, along with all kimono dancers and everything else, NLF headband.

[Interruption]

NN: A meeting with Greg Fukuda, which is my homie, and Bruce Iwasaki who was Mr. Brains, and myself, who's Mr. Irrelevant. The three of us put together, it's almost like a comic strip thing, comic book, it's called "Is That Right?" or, "Say What?" or whatever. And it was talking about being a youth in the community in relationship to the Vietnam War. And it was used for, I guess they had political education classes for young people that wanted to participate in the demonstration. So that was one of the committees that we had. I guess during that time, we had study groups, and I think as veterans, that we could share our experiences. And I think for myself, one of the things that was dear to me was that my youngest brother, that I got him to sign up and be part of the NYC program, and he chose to work at Gidra. My brother's a piano player, so they loved him because he could type, he could do that typesetting quick, man. They loved him over there. So he was one of the, him and Eddie Kochiyama, they were, along with Herman Lew and I guess Chiemi Tabata and Gary Fujimoto, and a host of others, they were part of the young leadership for the Van Troi Youth Brigade. We basically took instructions from them. My brother was my boss, my younger brother was my boss, so they basically organized themselves and taught themselves, and it was a really great summer. Because not only they were working, but they were making connections and developing their own value system. They partied hard, too.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 8>

BN: I'm going to kind of shift subjects for a minute. This may not lead anywhere, but there's this famous photo of you with, I think it's a health fair, carrying the older man. I actually bought that poster, I actually had that hanging on a wall. What's the story behind that?

NN: That was Mr. Nishioka, Nishioka-san, and he was part of the... he was, I guess, a member of the Issei Welfare Rights organization at the JACS office. And Nishioka-san lived out in Boyle Heights, and he had, I guess it was like arthritis of the knees and the hips, where he had a very difficult time walking. And he needed, he had no transportation, and I think public transportation was really hard because his steps were, you can't see my feet right now, but they were taking maybe like five-inch steps. So it was real laborious, and he was, like Isseis look, because of their life, the life that they lived, they looked a lot older than they were. So Mr. Nishioka must have been in his eighties or so, but I ain't even in my prime then, I'm a young stud, right? So he was like a grandpa to me. So I was asked one day by Carol Hatanaka who was working with Reverend Sayama in the Issei Welfare Rights. She was asking me, because I'm working on the floor above at the JACS office, saying, "Nick, would you take one of our members shopping?" Because he shopped at Grand Central Market but he has no transportation. So I said, "Sure." I go to his tenement in Boyle Heights, he lived in an apartment, and I guess the story is that I go to his apartment and I knock, and then he has one of those peep-throughs looking through, and I introduced myself, and, "I'm here to take you shopping?" And he was educated, I think he graduated in the university. So he was educated, so he said, "Just a minute." So when he came out very plainly dressed in a plaid shirt, plaid flannel shirt with, kind of like an old sweater. And he started walking down the hall, and I couldn't follow him, he's walking so slow, so I'm kind of stepping slowly in front of him But we got out to the front, he got to maneuver down some steps to get to my car. And I could tell that he's struggling, so I'm thinking he's asking me, "You want me to carry you?" And he responded, "Oh, thank you." He was real light. So I carried him and put him in the car, and then went to Grand Central Market. Same thing when he got out the car, we had to walk in. "I don't mind, want me to carry you?" "Oh, okay." So we went shopping, and same thing, brought him back. And when we drive back, I think we start talking. So I'm asking him some questions, and I was learning a lot. I even asked him about, might have asked him about, questions about camp and stuff. But he was kind of telling me about how kids used to throw rocks at him and the white kids would call him out of his name and stuff. But the whole time, it's kind of amazing, because I never detected any kind of anger or resentment. I mean, it's kind of like, damn, wish I could be like that. So when I got him back, I says, "You want me to help you take the stuff?" and he said, "No, that's okay," thanked me. So I asked him, "Do you want me to take you, get you next week?" "Okay." So that became a routine. So we developed a relationship.

So I got to know Nishioka-san pretty well, and I think I didn't see him for a few weeks. And I think... no, no, no. What happened was that they had this street fair, and it was put on by Miya Iwataki's committee, the medical committee at the JACS office, and they got all these organizations and young Sansei professionals to set up booths on Weller Street Court. They closed it off for the Isseis to give 'em advice, x-rays, passing out things that they could use. And one of the stations there was a TB clinic. So I picked up Nishioka-san to take him there, and to do the TB test. There were steps, I had to carry him up the steps, and someone took a picture of that, so that's me and Nishioka-san. And the thing is, when he had his test results, it turned out that he had TB. So he was taken to Keiro. And this is when we had Keiro, so we had a hospital so he was at Keiro, and when he was in Keiro, when I saw him, I went there to see him, he's bedridden now, and he asked me if I could go to his apartment and get his radio, his reading material, and he gave me the key. So I went to get it, so when I went into his apartment, it was like a single, one room, I think he had a toilet, but he had one of them beds that you push up against the wall, it comes down, but the bed was down. And I found his radio and I found the books, and then on the bed that was down, that it was made, but underneath the sheet and the blanket, that you give some space and there was a pillow right there, that there were some doll figures. I think there were three, like a little Barbie-sized doll and two little ones on the pillow. And I'm just, what's going on, right? Then anyway, I took back his reading and his listening materials, so the next time I saw Carol at the JACS office, I just kind of mentioned that to her. So I got his stuff, but you know, I saw these dolls and stuff, it was kind of different. So she started almost tearing up, and she kind of explained to me about how when they came, Isseis, they had miscegeny laws, you couldn't marry outside your race kind of thing. So that was basically his family.

BN: Yeah, I remember seeing that poster and just being... because they made it into a poster. Something about it just really captured something that was very powerful. Thanks for sharing that story. During this period also, when you had the first Manzanar pilgrimage, the beginnings of a greater consciousness about camp that leads eventually to the whole redress movement, I'm wondering if that had any impact on you in this time period? Or even later as redress becomes a bigger thing?

NN: It was very important to my parents. And you know, my parents, they didn't participate in the redress testimonies or anything, but they needed that congressional, presidential apology, and I think they framed that letter, and I think that was probably like, to them, more important than the money. But I think they actually went to Japan, they both took a trip to Japan with the redress money. For myself, during that time that I went yearly to the Manzanar pilgrimages, and that was before they became what they are, before what they are right now. But there were so many different weather conditions, I mean, freezing, the wind blowing, nice hot day. It was always on the same day of the month, it was always like opening day of trout season. So we camp out, and as years went by, we used to always take the Yellow Brotherhood membership out there for the pilgrimage, and then we'd camp out, and then it was really good, like a firsthand education. Because I mean otherwise they would have known nothing about the concentration camps and hardships, different ordeals.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 9>

BN: Then I want to kind of go back a little bit, and have you tell me about your, kind of the journey that eventually led to your career in going to law school, and how that came about.

NN: Where do you want me to start?

BN: Maybe just how you got to law school, how you discovered this program?

NN: Let's see. I graduated law school in '80, so during the '70s, when I was working full time at the Yellow Brotherhood House, that one of the kids at the house, that he got arrested at the Crenshaw Square Carnival. Yeah, he was arrested at the Crenshaw Square Carnival, and what happened was that at the Crenshaw Square, there was an alley between Crenshaw, to get to the parking lot, and to get to the parking lot, you have to go through this alley where there used to be Tag's Liquor there, Yoko Sushi, there's a real small alleyway, about the size of this right here, ten feet or whatever. And he' not supposed to be driving because he's a minor, and he has his younger sister there who's even a minor to him, right? And they're both little kids from the 'hood, so he's driving. And he's driving through the alley, like the Nisei Week, the Asian Task Force were providing security for the carnival, and they saw -- his name was Carl -- they saw Carl behind the wheel, and then one of the task force members who was wearing one of these happi coats, they go up to the driver's side window, which, Carl's sister is sitting there. And he's banging on the window, "Hey, open up, what's going on?" And then the sister says, "Keep going, keep going." So Carl keeps going slowly. And then the task force guys put his hand on the door handle trying to open it up. And when he does that, he kind of opens up his happi coat and then the sister, her name's Iris, sees a gun. And she says, "He's packing, book!" And Carl steps on it and he takes off, and then this guy, task force guy, he's holding on, he can't release his hand from the handle, and he's kind of being dragged. And all the other task for guys that are there, they're seeing that, and I think they start shooting. And then anyway, finally, the guy releases his hand, and Carl gets away, right? And then I guess the kids come to the YB House maybe the next day, and they're kind of telling us what happened. And the word is that the task force is looking for this guy driving this car. So we're going, oh, shit. So I think one of my... anyway, it'd be like, you know what? We kind of know these task force people, because they're all, like a lot of 'em, from the neighborhood. So we'll just straighten this out.

So we called the guy that they knew, we knew, and he went down to Carl's house over there in the 'hood, on the avenues. And you came in real friendly, and said, "Okay, don't worry about it, thanks for letting me know, everything's going to be okay." And then the next minute, they come by to arrest Carl. And they didn't handcuff him and all that, but also Carl has a court date, and figure we better get Carl a lawyer. So we take Carl to the... they had an Asian Law Caucus at that time, and it was people like Mike Murase, Tom Ono, Tom Takenuchi, Marion Faye, I think... I can't remember her first name, but Lily Kurahashi's sister, Lily Yanagita now, Eileen, I think. Anyway, so we kind of explained to him what happened, and Carl needed some representation. And Marion Faye, who just passed the bar, she was married to Mike Murase at the time, that she said that she represented Carl. So I think their office was on Temple Street. So on the day of the trial, anyway, I hooked Carl up with Marion and Marion included me in everything, so I get to listen to her preparing a defense. And everything that she did, she really did it like, in a very caring way, but professional.

The day of the trial comes, that we go down to Eastlake Juvenile Hall and you have all the Asian Task Force, they're sitting in the hall, and then we'd go in. And then I guess Marion has to judge, because it's supposed to be a closed hearing, if it's okay if I stay in the court, I was an investigator or whatever, right? So I go. So I'm getting to watch the trial, and then the Asian Task Force goes up to testify, and they were so terrible that they contradicted each other. They should have been out there getting their stories straight, right? But by the third witness, I guess after Marion was doing her cross examination, that the judge said, "I heard enough," and he dismissed the case. So, "Oh, cool." So we go back to the Temple Street Law Office, and I'm thanking Marion, and then I'm kind of like, well, you know, "How can I do what you're doing?" And she's kind of like, "You know what? I know a school, and it's a non-accredited law school called People's College of Law. And what you need is you need a AA, and that's like ninety units. And I had that when I went to junior college in Fresno or Visalia, that I got enough where I got an AA.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 10>

NN: So I said, well, I got that, so I went there later on, and then the People's College of Law was founded by the Bar Sinister, and the Bar Sinister, I guess, they prided themselves on being like a progressive liberal organization, Bar Association, and they created this school on this, it was like a two-story old business or whatever. It was right across the street from MacArthur Park that I met the, her name was Lee Salomon and she was like the administrator there. And she was really happy to see me because they were just starting and they wanted Third World students. And the whole thing was they didn't want to produce, manufacture corporate attorneys, but people's attorneys, whatever that might be, like Barefoot Doctors, kind of thing. And then I was telling her, I'm in these organizations, I can't come to school all the time. But she said, she explained, well, "As a student, you've got to pass the baby bar." Because being a nontraditional school, it means that you have to, instead of three years, you have to go, like the first year you go, and you can't continue on to get accredited to take the bar exam as a law student until you pass the national exam called the baby bar examination. So you've got to pass that before you could even continue to progress, to get a license if you pass the bar. So, you know, okay. And it was very affordable, I think it was like, to go to law school, three hundred and eighty dollars. And if you can't afford the books, they would Xerox printouts of stuff for you. But the first year you've got to take contracts, torts, criminal law, and civil procedure, or criminal procedure, yeah. There's four classes that you had to take that you got tested on for the baby bar exam. It's just like the bar exam, but it's four subjects instead of twelve. So I signed up, and lo and behold, I was able to pass the baby bar exam, so now I'm an accredited student. And they loved me over there because they wanted, I think I was the only Asian, but they had a couple more came in, right? But same deal, I let 'em know I can't always come to class, but I pay my dues and all that. And they said, "You know what? We don't flunk anybody," we understand. So, I mean, it was perfect, literally perfect.

BN: Who were the professors there? Were they, is that what they did or was it a side...

NN: No, it was like they were attorneys. They were attorneys, and they were, they wanted to chip in.

BN: So in that respect, you might have gotten a better education than at a traditional law school in some way, because these are people that are actually out there doing the work.

NN: I mean, yes and no. Like I remember my immigration law attorney, that she got deported or something like that. I mean, it was like...

BN: It was your final exam?

NN: You know what? I don't even think I ever took a final there. Very loose, I mean, it was like you kind of make it up as you go along. And I was a willing participant. And I had no... you know, I'm going to step back a little bit. Like my mom, bless her heart, she had this ESP kind of quality, right? And when I was, got out of the service and everything, I was doing okay for a while, then I started to get involved in the revolution, for a while I'm still living at home, and then she's telling me that, "I want you to take the LSAT test." I'm going, "Why?" So she signed me up, and then I'm living under my parents' roof, I said, okay. So Saturday morning at SC, so Friday night, I'm partying, then you got to get up early Saturday to take this test, which I didn't even know what an LSAT was. And I went there, I'm looking up all this stuff, so I take this test with no prep. And then I get the results, and it's terrible. I thought, okay, I got that out the way, and then maybe the next year she re-signs me up again, same results. And I say this because I'm up in my room Sunday, and I'm cleaning up some stuff, and I find this old memorabilia box. And I look at these, I got these scores from my LSAT exam, and then I'm looking at it, and I think they had two different dates, the first time I took it and the second day. The first time I took it, I got 340, and then the second time, I got the same score, 340. And then they have a writing part, and looking at that, I got twenty-nine, and then the next time I got twenty-eight. And I'm going, "What does that mean?" And I flipped it over and they give a chart, and I guess a hundred is perfect. Anything like ninety-five, you're ninety-nine percent, and you go all the way down, and 340 is like fifteen percent, and then twenty-nine, in terms of writing, from 100, that's like seventeen percent, right? So I'm going, you know what? This ain't going to get me into no law school. But somehow, like my mom saw it in me, and it kind of turned out that way that she had this way of doing stuff like that. Because growing up, back when I'm real young, I got arrested. Like I got pulled into the police station two times as a youth. And each time, that it was at nighttime, and before I got picked up from my friends to go out, we're going to do whatever we're going to do, that this part of the dancing, kind of shit. But whatever that... or a party, but whatever that happened, that that night, right before I got picked up, twice, my mom looked at me and she asked me, "You'd better stay home tonight." I swear, said, "You better stay home tonight," and she gave me this look. I said, "Why?" She said, "No, I want you to stay home." And I said, no, no, I know what you're talking about, right? And I get arrested that night. And then the second time, same thing, she's telling me, "Nick, don't go out tonight." She put the bachi on me. [Laughs] Anyway, that's my law school story.

BN: Yeah, kind of predicted it.

NN: But I lasted four years, and I think some of my mentors at that time was Marion Fay, Mike Murase, and then this other brother by the name of Steven Nozaki, right at the end of my fourth year, that I didn't even take all the classes that were required to take the exam, like Wills and Trusts, and a bunch of stuff, Real Property. So this guy gave me some study books, because they have these bar exam courses, so he gave me the books, what they do for a bar review course. So I studied those things really hard, I mean, really hard. And through that, second time I was able to pass. So I got my bar card and became a public defender for about five years. And I think that was probably one of the hardest things that I ever had to do within the working environment was to defend someone in the jury trial. It was quite an experience, and I kind of learned a lot, because I think what it came down to was that I would summon the DAs that were kind of using their DA's office like a stepping stone to practice and all that. That they come from pretty good schools, like Duke law school and all this shit. And here I am, but then I kind of learned, too, when you're talking to, like they call "twelve in the box" that they're more or less talking at them, trying to show how smart they are, where it's a whole big difference when you either talk with or talk to people. You try to just connect, and I think like most, what you have to do is, because you're basically selling something, so it's very, very, very important that whoever you're representing, they see that person as a human, and then you've got a chance. And it really doesn't matter whether they did it or not, it's more or less did they prove it, did the other side prove it? Anyway, so I did that for about five years in the public defender's office.

BN: And then most of your legal career, though, was in another area.

NN: Right, it was called Dependency Court. And what my job there was to represent abused and neglected kids that were a lot of times removed from their families for abuse or neglect issues. And they were removed by Children and Family Services, a social service agency, and we had court hearings onto, everything from, at the end of the day, whether they should be adopted or whether they should return home or placed with a relative or put in foster care, and everything else in between. And like the kid, the children that I represented, was like all the way from a newborn baby that had a positive toxicology for drugs, so a newborn all the way up to twenty-one years old, so everything in between.

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

<Begin Segment 11>

BN: So I may come back to this in a minute, but I want to go back a little again now because I want to get to the basketball stuff, too. So how did you meet Wendy, and when did you get married?

NN: I met Wendy at the Long Beach Potluck, and it was like an annual Thanksgiving potluck they used to do on Thanksgiving Eve, and it was put on by the, let's see, the Long Beach State Asian American Alliance. And so, let's see, I was going to them, that's where Hiroshima first started, too, they used to jam out there. So I'd go there very Thanksgiving Eve and we all party. So I guess I don't know what year it was, how far after, but when I went there, everybody'd be there, right? So I remember, I don't know who was playing, but I felt like boogying, I felt like dancing. So I went up to Wendy, who I didn't know, I said, "You want to dance?" She says, "No." So I don't know if I went up there and danced by myself or what, or whatever, but no biggie. So then later, I think I'm outside smoking a joint or whatever, and then she comes up to me and she starts talking, like, oh, I didn't... I mean, just whatever. "I'm not stuck up," or whatever, blah, blah, blah. And then so we started talking and I got to know her, and I guess the next time I saw her was when her and her roommate threw a party in Gardena. And then I saw her again, and then like mine, Wendy liked to talk a lot, and then I guess I don't. So I was kind of like, what's going on? Yeah, so it wasn't like a dialogue kind of thing.

But I guess we start seeing each other, and all during this time, I guess we met when I was probably, it was post JACS, but I was at the Yellow Brotherhood house. And she likes kids, because she's a PE teacher, she was a PE teacher. So she'd come down to the house, and the kids really liked her, because she was likable. So she started to do Manzanar and participate in YB activities and everything. So I guess fast forward, maybe seven years later, she never pressured me, like "shit or get off the pot," kind of thing. So never anything like that. But after the second time I took the bar, that I passed the test, or maybe it was the first time, yeah, the first time I took the bar, to pass the test, I learned all these subjects, that I had to fully commit myself, I mean, totally commit myself because I had to learn shit, right? So I put aside three months out of my life just to study, and I had it down to a routine where I'd maybe get an hour exercise, I'd eat, I'd read and I'd write, and I'd read some more and then I'd write, so it was like real Spartan kind of thing, and that lasted for like three months. But at the end of three months, I think I said, I just wanted then to cut loose, I don't want to be in no relationship or anything, I just need more time. So at the end of three months, I took the bar, and then I'm ready to go out there and enjoy myself. And I went out that weekend, I think it was a Saturday night, and it was terrible. Like I went to this club and it was like, "This is what I was looking forward to?" [Laughs] Oh, man, I built everything up so much in my mind, and it was like, damn. So the guy that I worked there with, I think it was about two o'clock in the morning, I told him, "Will you drop me off at Wendy's house?" Because she was living with her parents at the time, and her parents were in Portland or something visiting relatives. So I'm going to her house, and I kind of knock on the window, and oh, she sees me. I just asked, "Do you want to get married?" So we got married that night.

BN: That night?

NN: That night, or we had to wait 'til the next, really the next morning kind of thing, yeah. So a lot of decisions that I made, major decisions in my life were very spontaneous, and maybe this is one of the ones that worked out. [Laughs]

BN: Yeah, that does seem to be a pattern.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 12>

BN: So I want to jump ahead a few years and ask you about the basketball and how the YB team came about.

NN: I guess we could talk basketball, right? And I think you're probably like me, where you kind of grew up with it? So like I grew up with sports, and I think that's one thing that me and my pop had...

[Interruption]

NN: We didn't ever talk a lot, but we would watch sports stuff together. And he took me to the Rams game, free football for kids, and I think he took me to the Coliseum to see the Dodgers, and we went to the sports arena to watch the Lakers kind of thing when we first got out here. And then I like sports, because it was like a release for me. So I guess playing basketball was fun, and I played on the school team and so forth. I guess I got older when I went to College of Visalia when I started to get healthy. Mentally and physically, I played on the team, the junior college team up there.

[Interruption]

BN: So you were talking about your dad and Rams and Lakers games.

NN: So sports has been part of my makeup. And like when I was working sometimes in the summertime, that I got a job with Youth Services to work at a playground, right around different communities and stuff, like I'm working with kids, or supervising kids in the summertime during activities and stuff, so I would prefer working with young people than old people because young people really don't have no hidden agendas more or less. So there's some purity to it, and then teaching... like one thing that I probably know about internally, instinctively, would be like sports things. So I think through sports, you could not only teach certain skills, transferable skills, but also different concepts like teamwork, brotherhood, sisterhood, things that could actually translate to something larger than just a win or a loss kind of thing. And I guess you could do that in art and theater or a whole lot of different endeavors, that maybe sports is one of the ways for me to provide that to younger people. So part of working with young people like the Yellow Brotherhood basketball things, and especially when you're working with families of like minds, that when we started a Yellow Brotherhood basketball team, because I think at that time like when my oldest was like five years old, that it would be good for him to get the opportunity to play. And a lot of my former comrades and friends and movement-minded people, that they all have kids, families the same age. So it was kind of like a perfect storm. Like you had, Sandy and Kenwood lives over there, Bob and Karen Nakamura lives over there. So, I mean, it was a really good fit. I had friends in Gardena, that's where we were living in initially at the time. And there was no thing about, you know what? We got to win, playing time. But we won. [Laughs] We won, but more than that, I think we kind of won in life. So on that end, for my firstborn son, Brett, it was from five years old all the way to high school that we grew together. We grew together, and no longer did we have a strong geographic community. But it was a good sense of community.

BN: So how many years in total did you... and you were coaching this team. So was it pretty much just that span from like age five to high school?

NN: Well, you know, before I even had kids, I was coaching other kids for this Tiger organization.

BN: Okay, so you've been doing this a long time.

NN: Yeah.

BN: Maybe you don't want to answer this, but of course, Tad, Nakamura's son, becomes a filmmaker, and one of his first projects is a film on the team. What was your reaction to that or what did that make you feel?

NN: It was a good movie. Yeah, it was a good movie, and that was Tad's initial chops. Yeah, he did a very outstanding... it was a really good film, and I thought it was a good story and Tad did his research. I'm like a proud parent, it was good.

BN: And it did launch his career.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 13>

BN: So I also wanted to ask you about Buddhahead Trilogy. How did that come about, and obviously there's a lot of your own experiences in there. And, I guess, what made you decide to take that approach as opposed to writing a memoir or some other format?

NN: Well, if I wanted to make it interesting, just about me, that I would have to lie a lot, right? So when I put together a compilation about my experiences with people that I know, and combining that with their experiences into a single character or characters, that that's what this was about. So part of it is me, but the other part is lifetime relationships and lifetime experiences, and what more or less inspired me to write something, was that partially it was like, I remember having this conversation with Yuji Ishioka. And Yuji used to write historical books, well-documented, like in 1825, like, "Kichigaro, da-da-da." And then Yuji would always give me his books, right? And then one day, I said, "Yuji, why don't you write a story about just a person?" And then I remember Yuji said, "That's your job to do that, Nick." I remember him saying that a long time ago. And that kind of made sense to me in this context, that I've always learned a lot just be reading. I mean, more so than going to school, I used to read about people. Like I say, like as a kid, I used to read the Sports Illustrated or sports magazine, or read about these sports people, their lives and all that. And I've always, you get older, the Autobiography of Malcolm X, but there's always some interesting stuff out there. And whenever I would go to the bookstore to look for something, or even the library, you could find everything under the sun on African Americans. And there was a little smaller section on the Latinx community. There's even like a, probably like a whole bookshelf on the Indians, Native Americans, but when it came down to, at least during that time, about Asian Americans, that it was almost like we didn't exist.

So after seeing... I read Roots by Alex Haley. I said you know, what? I'm going to write something about the Great Japanese American Novel. So that's always been like a trip on my mind. And when my parents' health started to decline, or maybe a little bit before then, I started to, I guess my kids were grown, and then when my parents, especially my pop, because we never talked, I started asking him questions about, because his family was poor, like they were sharecroppers like in Central Cal. No running water kind of stuff, electricity, so I'm going to ask him questions. So he started sharing with me certain things. But I was learning, picking up and all that, and I think one day I just put pen on paper and then I just got this thing about... and I think through learning about our culture, talking to Isseis, learning about, being part of the Asian American Movement or participating in it, that I knew enough to actually put together the Issei experience, the Nisei thing, then especially our thing, the Sansei were no problem. And then I started to try to do everything like in a first-person perspective. And then when I started with this Issei thing, I got to a point where I can't do this, because there was no way that I could portray what they were feeling. So I did that kind of like in a third-person style, and a little bit on the Nisei thing, but when it came to the Sansei thing, I could make it more real. So it kind of changes.

But I was able to finish it really quick, I was able to finish it real quick, but it was on the shelf maybe a couple of years. Because like I told you, I got like twenty-nine on my writing skills, I'm terrible. But I have a friend who's great, and she actually, I turned Harry Manaka on to her, and also Warren. Her name is Candice Ota, she's the best. So she cleaned my thing up. And you know what? She did it out of the goodness of her heart. And then Candice gets it, so she didn't try to make it her story. And she always says, "Less is more," so she, you know, dotted the "I"s and got rid of all the extra language and everything. So when she finished, I said, "You know what? That's pretty good." So not only that, she did the cover. [Laughs]

BN: Are you going to do another one?

NN: No. [Laughs] Your turn.

BN: I've got some things in mind. What was the reaction? Because I bet a lot of people that you know probably saw themselves in it.

NN: Oh, yeah. Like people that I know that they would know that I'm talking about their thing, is that I gave them all at least copies of the chapters or whatever that they're in just to see what they say. I don't want no one gunning for me later. And everybody was cool with it.

BN: No, I really enjoyed reading it.

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

<Begin Segment 14>

BN: I did want to go back and ask one question about family. I try not to ask too much about people's kids and stuff, they can tell their own story. But one thing I did want to ask you is, growing up as you did, with your parents, how did you as a parent do things similarly or differently from how you were raised, whether consciously or unconsciously?

NN: Well, I had reverent fear of my father. I mean, to his credit, he never laid a hand on me, but I had that reverent fear, and a lot of it was respect. With my kids, I was more friendly, but not to an extent where we were buddies. But we had a good enough relationship where if I saw something that needed, what I thought needed correction, that I would have that talk with them. But to their credit, that I rarely didn't have to have, I never had to have a talk with my oldest one, Brett. And I think with my youngest, Sean, there was a few times. And a lot of it, too, was given credit to their mom, because she spent more time with them. And I have a daughter, and she has some disabilities, so Remy was, I think was, I still am very protective of Remy, that I think overall, that we have a pretty tight bond, a family bond where there's no issues or underlying issues of things that would get in the way of a loving relationship. And honestly, my wife Wendy has more to do with that than me, obviously, because both the boys, to this day, still maybe call her up, I mean, Brett daily, he's now living in Torrance, and then call in, every time he's on his way home from work, just to kill that driving time. And Remy comes home whenever... it was kind of hard through the pandemic, she's at a group home, but she will be home more lately now. So I don't know if that answers your question, but as a family, I think we're pretty close.

BN: In ways probably that are different than your growing up, the family growing up.

NN: Yes. Well, one thing, like my family was at... my mom raised us, and my dad just brought home the bacon. And like my dad was so into my mother, that, I mean, he loved us, but not like he loved my mom at all. But he took care of us and did all the basic necessities, but, I mean, I know he could hardly wait until we grew up and got out of the house so it was just, them two to be together. And I know my mom didn't like to be suffocated like that, but so be it.

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

<Begin Segment 15>

BN: And then I wanted to go back to after you retired, you're telling us a story about... what was his name? Ronnie.

NN: Ronnie.

BN: So I wonder if you could go back to that, because that's a really interesting story.

NN: Okay.

BN: Ronnie was a member of the first Yellow Brotherhood, he was a gangbanger, part of the Ministers III, and Ronnie was always bigger than everybody else. He was always like a wannabe gangster. And I guess Ronnie ended up like, he did like Youth Authority time, but there's a real basic niceness to Ronnie. And I don't know if people... but like a gentleness. But I guess Ronnie, like everybody else growing up, wanted to kind of be a tough guy. Ronnie, back in the mid-'70s, got on a drug run. And he ended up shooting someone at the liquor store that he was holding up. Just like a quick story to talk about, like Ronnie's character, that Ronnie was on this drug binge that one of the founding members of the Yellow Brotherhood, with the Yellow Brotherhoods, all this history, like different stages of YB was named Victor Shibata. Anyway, Ronnie hit Victor up for, I think, twenty dollars, and Victor gave it to him. So when Ronnie was locked up at County Jail facing a trial, it was probably going to put him away for maybe life, Victor says one morning that Ronnie's father is at his doorstep, and then Victor greeted him, and Ronnie's dead, says, "You know, my son wanted me to give you this, pay you back." And so he gives Victor the twenty dollars. And we're all going, damn, he's locked up right now, he's thinking about, "I owe Victor twenty dollars." So that's basically part of the neighborhood creed of who we are. So Ronnie gets locked up, I forget what his sentence is, but it's long. We hear back maybe some years later that we know he's in Folsom where he's acquitted, yeah, he's acquitted. We hear that, you know what, Ronnie died of a stroke. And I think this might have been in the late '70s or early '80s. So that's it.

Fast forward to maybe twelve or ten years ago, at Nisei Week, that the Yellow Brotherhood and the Asian American Hardcore, the Asian American drug abuse program, were both being honored by the Nisei Week committee for whatever, that they have this dinner, and Victor and myself are there on behalf of the YB. Mike Watanabe, who's the director of the Asian American Drug Abuse Program, he's sitting across from me at the table, and he's asking me, "Hey, Nick, do you know a Ronnie Nakashima?" "Yeah." And he says, "He wrote a letter." "I thought he was dead." He says, "No, he wrote us a letter and I wanted to give it to you." So he gives me the letter, and Ronnie wrote a letter to AADAP saying that, "He's up for parole, and he's up for parole, and he's been denied parole something like twelve times," and it's because he can't show any place of residence when he gets released. So he wanted to know if, like AADAP could provide him with some residency if released. And I'm looking it as, "Damn," right? So Victor thinks Ronnie's dead, too, and then he mentioned in his letter Art Ishii, who was a member of the YB's. And I remember Art Ishii and Danny Wong, he drops their names. And I guess Art's part of the Nisei Week Committee now. So we all look at this thing, and we're going, "Let's go check him out." And Ronnie is at, I guess it's the same place where they put Manson, it's one of these, not a psychiatric, but maybe it's a... see, Ronnie's in a wheelchair now because of the stroke. So he didn't die, but he got in a stroke, so he's wheelchair-bound.

So we went up to the institution up there, and it's the Tracy or something up north, so we take a day trip, and we don't know what to expect. But Ronnie comes out and, I mean, he's in a wheelchair, and we didn't know if we're going to see this hard-assed convict, don't know what to expect. But I guess through the stroke he's pretty soft-spoken right now, and he got his head shaved. He just has basically use of his right side, but he came up, but he was so happy to see us. And then when we just started to spend time and talk, that if you've been around long enough, around the block, you could tell if someone's bullshitting or trying to game you, that there was absolutely nothing like that. And then he had really good color, he had no wrinkles, and we're saying, "Man, you look better than us, what's the secret, man?" And then he kind of plays chess in the daytime, and then he was real happy to see us because he has not had a visitor since the '80s. So this is the first time he got to use the vending machines. So you know, he was eating Skittles and everything, he was real happy then. So we were asking him about his legal situation, and he was telling us about, well, he's been denied like twelve times, but he has this thing coming up. And on the way home, we just start talking, we said, man, "You know what? Let's try to support him." And then we got together with the AADAP thing, because AADAP was then on board to give him shelter, housing when he got out. And so we formed a committee to help him, to support him. And so he reconnected him to the community, some people were writing him letters and sending him care --

[Interruption]

NN: Started to do some research on the parole hearings and whatnot, and we got him an attorney, Scott Hadleman, who was based in San Francisco, his really good brother. That he took the case, that he went up and met Ronnie, we were telling Ronnie things that, how he should present himself. But he should also maybe take these classes and stuff, Ronnie's still kind of a knucklehead, too. And he says, "You know what, I don't like school." He could help a kid out, he said, "Man, I ain't done no drugs since I had my stroke. And I know right from wrong now." That may not be good enough because they're going to want to hear, "I'm sorry," and all this kind of stuff. But Ronnie just basically wouldn't kiss their ass or whatever. "Gee, I've been thirty-something years, man." So came down to it, on that parole hearing, prior to that, we had a fundraiser at AADAP, big turnout, a lot of support letters. I think Yuri Kochiyama came out from the Bay Area, she's very active in political prisoners. We submitted to the parole board, Rodney submitted on the parole board about a hundred letters from people from the community. So we did everything on this end. End of the day, that he was denied, and then our committee that we met probably weekly, like we were all dejected, because the next hearing is like three years down the line. So said, "We're going to keep doing this for three years?" and we continued to meet for like three years. Went up and periodically, people would go up there to see Ronnie. Scott the attorney says, "You know what? I don't think I could handle the next one, so did the research and found this other attorney. And Ronnie still was taking classes, that was driving us crazy, right? But through this whole time, people really got to know Ronnie, just through the correspondence and everything else, visits and all that stuff. But the second time he got out. He got out, and that was about six years ago, and AADAP, to their credit, they're still putting 'em up in one of their homes that they have. Ronnie is well-versed in public transportation, he has one of them cards that he can get on and off the bus, that he's kind of out and about, really a success story. So periodically, you know what, we have lunch with him together.

BN: What other things have you been involved with in your retirement phase of life?

NN: I got grandkids. So they're good medicine, so I spend a lot of time with the grandkids, grow stuff in the backyard. I try to stay somewhat on top of and try to contribute whatever that I can, and certain issues like the gentrification of people of color communities, mainly like Crenshaw, support organizations like West Adams Community Council. I support reparations for Blacks, but I'm not involved in the congressional aspect of that, because that's way beyond my pay grade.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.