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IM: So around this time was also when Mo comes up again, right? Because you had met him first during these meetings.

KM: But actually, Shinya was, I was actually with Shinya first, and my parents really liked him, because he was Japanese, and he was very polite and stuff. And his interest in terms of his mental health and stuff like that was something I was interested in, too. So I actually went into the collective more tied together with Shinya, although you weren't supposed to go to the collective because of a relationship. You were supposed to join because of your own politics, which I did, but I happened to be in a relationship.

IM: Oh, so this kind of rule about what is the proper way to get in, where did that come from?

KM: It was part of the men. I mean, there was so much male dominance. And that collective, we had meetings twice a week from ten-thirty to twelve-thirty, and then there was, the development at East Wind, but it was mostly the ideas of Mo and Shinya, they'd be talking.

IM: It would just be like the two of them, basically?

KM: Well, I mean, they had the most developed thinking about stuff. I mean, I was very ignorant, and so a lot of these things kind of, sometimes flew past me. But Mo was always talking about -- especially when he was high -- talking all about stuff, writers and ideas and things like that. And Shinya, too, because he liked acid. But Shinya was on a different plane, he'd be talking more about not so much theory, but actually ideas. Like Asian Nation and relationships, he was exploring everything. That's what he was like, just wild. Not wild, but very, anything, his thoughts were not limited to politics. He was really wanting to think outside ideas. And Mo was very much international, but the politics of things.

IM: So while Mo and Shinya are having these kinds of wide ranging discussions, are there...

KM: No, they weren't high during these meetings, this is like outside.

IM: Okay, outside of meetings. So outside of meetings, what are the women in the collective talking about?

KM: Well, you know, we were quite involved in the work. I feel like the reason we had the meetings from ten-thirty to twelve-thirty is because we were doing work from day to, we had evening meetings. So we didn't even get home until nine-thirty or ten, that's why we had to meet at ten-thirty. So we were like meeting, meeting, meeting, every day, because some people were involved with Gidra, not me. I did write a poem for Gidra. I was involved in the JACS office, and in Boyle Heights eventually. So we were doing a lot of that kind of stuff, picking up people to go to meetings, organizing stuff in the daytime in Little Tokyo, so we didn't have time. There was very little, I recall, of free time. And of course the collectives got together, we'd have all these exchanges because we were young, and we'd have parties and stuff. But as far as just hanging out, I don't remember a lot of hanging out. I mean, there was some, of course, what would we talk about? I feel like we talked about what we were doing in the work.

IM: So you were really committed to community...

KM: It was our life. When we went into the collective, it was like your life. This was your life, and we were, the goal was to change ourselves to become socialist men and women, transform ourselves. It was a living and political collective to transform ourselves to become socialist men and women. So we were about changing ourselves, changing the world, and doing that together collectively. So criticism, self-criticism was also important. But our whole life was that, that's what it was. And I do have to admit that, because I think I had more of a... I don't want to say metaphysical, but somewhat of a, came out of a hippie background sort of thing.

IM: Naturalist.

KM: From Berkeley, I had more like, to me, sometimes intuition, feelings, and spiritual stuff. And more, I felt that was missing in our work, and I missed it, and I felt like it was something that was, I needed. And it wasn't there, and I felt like there was something wrong with that. It was too much of one thing. There was no room for the other, of the spiritual, and I felt there wasn't room for spiritual stuff, but that was not what we were talking about. It was very material.

<End Segment 30> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.