<Begin Segment 29>

IM: So moving forward to your time working at the JACS office, so with that it was, were you a stipended worker, were you paid a yearly salary or was it volunteer? He tells more about that arrangement.

KM: Nobody was really paid. From what I understand, this is how little we paid attention to money. There were two people that were salaried, and they divided their money among all the people that were volunteering there. So it was like twenty-five dollars a week that people got. I don't remember getting money in my hand, but I must have gotten some money. Also about that time, the collective, CWC, Community Workers Collective, started. It started earlier with the men from Hardcore, and then women came in in about July, so there were like four or five of us women that joined the collective. Evelyn, myself, Candace Murata, Janice Yasuda, and Shar, I don't remember her last name. Oh, did I say Miya? So we joined the collective about that time, so the collective provided. We put all of our assets in, whatever we had, a car, most of us didn't have money. So we put everything in, and we also, then the collective provided everything back. So we were all supposed to get jobs eventually to help sustain the collective. So many of us worked at the JACS office, so we got twenty-five dollars a week, I think. And we were able to eat at Tokyo Gardens for lunch. I don't know how we did it, but we did, because we didn't bring food, I know, we ate out, and often had meetings or talks there with people. So the JACS office, that was how we functioned. Money was not something we worried about much.

IM: Wow, okay. So it wasn't really a concern that, like you didn't have any wants or needs beyond kind of what you had?

KM: Yeah, that's right.

IM: Okay.

KM: We somehow managed, and I think because my mother also probably gave me, gee, I must have wanted clothes and bought clothes, I think I was able to buy clothes or get clothes, or maybe my mother sent me clothes. But my mother also was very, very angry that I was in the collective. Oh, that's right. The women's group did meet. Maybe this is one of our, maybe it didn't last that long because the women's group met with our mothers right before the collective stuff was happening. So this is '71, and many people were talking about collective. CWC was the first collective to start, and I remember meeting at Wendy Sahara, Wendy Mori now, at her mother's house in West L.A., and my mother was there. And all I remember is my mother, because my mother is outspoken, and she was totally against the collective. And everybody else was being very nice, so oh, guess we have some concerns, what it's going to be like. But I don't remember any of that conversation, I just remember my mom saying, "I'm totally against the collectives," people like that. What else happened, I don't remember, but my mother was very scared. She wouldn't say scared, angry, and she would say how she was very aware of the Manson family at that time, and I think she kind of compared it to that, like that's going to be... well, that's what it is, and she thought that was what a collective might have been. She wasn't really hearing what it was. She also, because of appearances, thought other people might think it's that, and she was very mortified by that idea.

IM: I guess just to backtrack, why did people organize this mother's meeting in the first place?

KM: Because they were concerned about how their mothers were going to react to it. People wanted their mother's support, because we were women going into these collectives, right? And they were both going to be men and women. And it was, try to get our mom's support and try to talk about it together. I don't know how that got organized, and I'm surprised my mother came, actually.

IM: So do you remember how many women and their mothers were at this one?

KM: It wasn't huge. It may have been about a dozen. I'd have to ask somebody else about that. I don't remember the other mothers except of course for Wendy's mother, because I was at her place. I was probably totally focused on my own mother.

IM: So there was no concern about, "Maybe we should have a dad's meeting"?

KM: No.

IM: This was really about the mothers?

KM: Yeah. Funny, huh?

IM: That's interesting. So you really just don't remember what the other mothers' concerns were? Did the Manson family thing come up ever?

KM: I don't even know if my mother said Manson family, but she just said she was totally against it. But I just remember, I don't remember the words, but I just remember a lot of talking around it. Nobody really said how they felt about it, the mothers. And so my mother was very blunt, and just said how she felt, which sort of surprised everybody. But that was my mother, she was very, she did stuff like that.

IM: So was there concern, or how did people feel about living together in a co-ed situation in this collective?

KM: The mothers or us?

IM: Both.

KM: I don't know how the mothers felt. I think we felt all fine with it, we all wanted to do it, right? I mean, it was like, this is the time to do things. The atmosphere was, we could do anything, we are going to do things, and we were going to, not experiment, but it was like the whole idea of monogamy was even being questioned. So it was sort of like we were ready to explore anything, and it was liberation, liberating, time to be liberated.

IM: Were there women in your group in particular who were questioning the monogamy principle?

KM: Yeah, it was general. It was more general, I think everybody questioned monogamy. Whether they acted on it or not was a question. But it was like, yeah, we don't need to be monogamous.

IM: Free love.

KM: Yeah. Not exactly that, but...

<End Segment 29> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.