<Begin Segment 31>

IM: So you were committed 24/7 basically, to this kind of life, politics. Did this take a toll on you at all beyond, or including missing out on spiritual things, but also just your health?

KM: Well, my sister would say... my sister. Her voice is always there. She said, "You're putting everything else first but the family," and she was very family-oriented. So she would say, "You're putting all the people first besides your family." And then because my mother was so against the collective and she was not well, her health was bad, and she said, "I will never step foot inside that collective." And she made it very hard, very, very hard. I would have conversations where I would end up crying all the time, because she would just be saying all kinds of terrible things. I don't know what I was saying, but I was trying to apologize, trying to explain. My father came to the collective. My father was totally an open guy. He was like, didn't bother him what people thought. I'd always say, "Dad, how do we do this? What's the Japanese custom for koden?" He said, "Ah, it doesn't matter." And he said his brother would always get mad at him because he's the older brother, and he would not be the one that took care of things for the parents, like their religious stuff, going to the cemetery. My father never did that. He didn't care, it didn't matter. So he didn't care what people thought, really, he didn't. So he would come, he was just kind of interested. So I took my mother to the doctor's, I said, "I have to do something for my mother because she's not well." So I would take her to different kinds of medical treatments, and gradually things kind of got better. And I think she came to the collective one time eventually. But on top of that, she was not well, she was suffering, too, so what can you say?

IM: So you kind of felt like you owe it to your mom?

KM: I was trying to figure out a way to make up. I felt really guilty, but I still did it, I still was in the collective. I guess I didn't feel guilty enough. And it's true, I probably always did what I really wanted to do anyway, and I don't know why or what motivated me to not think about the impact, always. So I didn't share my mother, I remember Evelyn and Henry Omori, we went to my house to pick up a bed, and my mother just totally ignored them. Totally un-Japanese, it's like no matter how you feel, totally ignored them. And I remember feeling really bad about that, but she was very blunt, true to what she felt.

IM: So all the while Judy is also taking care of your mom?

KM: Well, she didn't need care then, but Judy was living at home. But eventually she moves to Breed Street, which is a few blocks away, and she's involved, too. She becomes very involved, actually, eventually. But she's still very close to the family. My mother never felt like she had to alienate my sister, but she never lived in the collective, she lived on her own, and then she went to law school, too. So she did things that they were happy about.

IM: But you never, that didn't leave you to think, like, "Oh, I'm the black sheep of the family," or anything like that?

KM: No. I just knew I probably disappointed them. But I was probably one that they expected to do something different, because I kind of wasn't... I probably appeared to be someone that could be successful in fitting in. I mean, Judy was so loud that... I mean, not loud, but outgoing, that she would always be a little bit offbeat in terms of that. But could also be successful in that way. But I think my mother had other aspirations like more of a, I don't know what to say, different kind of image kind of thing. I don't know how to describe it, acceptable, not maybe an independent kind of thing, but a standout in some other way, kind of like more fitting into society kind of thing, perhaps. So maybe that's what was more disappointing for her.

IM: Was there also, I guess... what was I going to ask? There wasn't anything, any one thing that kind of mended your relationship with your mother about the collective? Or was it just kind of the accretion of time gradually, she didn't really care as much about it?

KM: Well, I mean, I even added to this alienation by marrying Mo. Like when I married Mo in '72, again, we were working on our vows, this is kind of silly. But the day before, and I remember everybody characterized our relationship as a "unity of the community." That's what I think we called it and people called it, and Ellen Endo wrote an article about it. Then I said to Mo, I said -- my sister was there -- and I said, "Mo, what are we going to say to each other in terms of person to person?" He said, "Oh, we don't need any of that stuff." And I think I was like, slightly stunned, and I didn't really know what to say or do, and then I think my sister and I were kind of by ourselves, she said, "Oh, this is not good." She said, "This should not happen."

IM: She's always looking out for you in terms of your partner.

KM: She sees. She sees the essence of it, she said, "Oh, no. This is not going to work out, this is bad." It was the day before, so what could we do?

IM: But she liked Shinya?

KM: I mean, yeah, she liked Shinya. She liked Mo, too, but it was like, no, this was not going to work, knowing that. And my mother wore black at the wedding. It wasn't totally black, it was dotted Swiss, so it was black with a little bit of white dots on it, but mostly black. But she did have a nice suit for my father, my mother made sure my father looked good. And we got married -- I was actually upset with this, too -- because there was supposed to be a stage, an actual platform. So this is all the collective people. Mike Nakayama was in charge of it. He comes up to Elysian Park in this flatbed truck. I said, "Okay, this is not going to go over. This is not what we wanted." So I was not happy either, but we got married on a flatbed truck, and my parents were standing there, and it's like my mother's looking down with sunglasses, so people can't see what your expression is. And my father's fine. So it was not a happy day. My family all came, and they came for the ceremony, and they all left and got together at my mother's house.

IM: So they didn't stay for the festivities after?

KM: No. There was, Hiroshima played, Sachiye, whatever, Nakamura danced, all kinds of things happened. I missed it because we were walking around, probably five hundred people there.

<End Segment 31> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.