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BN: So it's October 9, I believe it's October 9, 2023, and we're interviewing today Kathy Masaoka at her home in the Silver Lake area near Griffith Park. My name is Brian Niiya, and I'll be co-interviewing with Issay Matsumoto, who will take over at certain points, and Evan Kodani is doing the videography. So let's go ahead and get started.
KM: Okay.
BN: Thanks so much for sitting with us. And what we often do is we start by asking about your family first, and we'll start with them. I thought maybe we'd start with your mom's family. So you could start by telling us her name and when she was born, and a little bit about her family.
KM: Okay. My mother's name was Chizu Kadota, and she was born in Santa Maria, California. She was the oldest daughter, and the first citizen child of ten kids. She had an older brother that had been born in Japan, her parents were Toshi and Soshi Kadota, and her father actually -- and I always thought that this was a myth -- but he had gone to law school and medical school in Japan, had come to the United States and was here for ten years, just working, went back in 1916, got married, and then my oldest uncle was born there and they returned in 1918 into the Santa Maria area. My mother -- how much do you want me to say about my mother? More?
BN: Yeah, definitely.
KM: So she was, because she was the oldest daughter, she sort of looked out for the rest of the family, and learned some of the skills like cooking food and sewing, and did a lot of the American things like cooking American food. So introduced that to the family, and so her family was very, very important to her, always, the most important thing to her in her whole life. She would do anything for them. When camp came, she had gone to, I think, sewing school in San Francisco for a bit. She was working at the Santa Maria gun club, but her family was sent to Gila. But her father was picked up by FBI, from what I learned, on February 19, 1942, along with a couple of hundred other Issei folks from the Santa Barbara county. So that was pretty huge, since there were only like over two thousand people that lived in that county, over two hundred and fifty of them were rounded up in a matter of a few days. Family didn't know where he went, so they just knew that he ended up in Bismarck. I guess he never told them that he had been in Griffith Park for a few days, or Tuna Canyon. So he joined them, I believe, at Gila, eventually.
BN: Okay.
[Interruption]
BN: I know you mentioned that later you went back and actually did some research on this, on your father's or grandfather's internment story. Was there anything in the records that indicated why he was arrested?
KM: I'm trying to remember. He was a member of the... what was it called, the Japanese organization.
BN: Uh-huh, the Japanese Association.
KM: Japanese Association. But from what I gather, almost everyone was. The family would say things like, I had heard that he was the president of the Japanese school. And when I brought that up to them, said, "Oh, nah, it wasn't anything important." That's what they said. But I do know from some little tidbits, that he did have company from Japan, like writers and other folks that stopped by their home. My grandfather was actually not much of a laborer. They would always talk about how he didn't work much, he rode around on the horse and just sort of oversaw the people that were working, and then he'd go to the library and read. So I think that he was pretty much into reading and that kind of stuff, so it would make sense that they would have people like that stop by. So maybe that was what it was, he had a lot of association with Japanese people coming.
BN: I mean, any of those things would do it. And then was it your sense that they were fairly well-off economically?
KM: They talk about boom years and years that were horrible, and it was all farmers.
BN: Farmers, yeah.
KM: They'd have shoes one year and then put cardboard in the shoes the next year. They have a car one year and things like that. So I think... they moved a lot, which I think is pretty typical because they couldn't own the land. I think the lease was put in my mother's name because she was a citizen.
BN: But they stayed in the same Santa Maria...
KM: Santa Maria, Arroyo Grande.
BN: And then just for clarification, the uncle that was born in Japan, he came with the family?
KM: Yes.
BN: Did he eventually naturalize?
KM: I believe he did. I mean, I really never thought of him as having been born in Japan.
BN: It's like a technicality, really.
KM: I mean, he was a year old when we came.
BN: Right, kind of like Mitsuye Yamada, culturally basically Nisei, but just...
KM: Very Nisei.
BN: ...by paperwork, Issei.
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BN: And so how old was your mom now?
KM: I'm sorry, she was born in 1920. So she was very much, had come of age, yeah, in 1941, she was twenty-one. I think she was engaged to be married, and so she was just really beginning her career at that point.
BN: Thrown into camp at that point. Okay. Did you know your grandparents, the Kadota side grandparents?
KM: I did. We didn't know them that well because the settled in Chicago, and they didn't come to the West Coast until I was about fifteen. So they returned after three of their children moved out to the Santa Maria area, and so they came back and they lived in Nipomo for a while. We would go every weekend, and in my imagination, I felt like we were going every weekend to Nipomo to spend time with them. But I didn't speak Japanese, and so I could never really have a conversation with them. My grandmother would just be smiling and saying things like, "This is wonderful," her English was "Grand, grand." And then my grandfather would just be sitting in his easy chair watching sports, and later on, they lived with us for a time, a few years later they came, we had a little space below our house, which we rented, but they lived below. And I saw them more often, but my grandfather by that time was a little senile, and so he would just, again, no conversation, never really got to know what he was thinking.
BN: Do you know about how long your mom was in camp?
KM: She wasn't in that long. I believe she was in for about six months, and then was sponsored by a Jewish family in Chicago.
BN: And then she left. Did she go to school or did she leave for work?
KM: She was sponsored by this Jewish family and then she went to the Chicago Masters School of Design, to finish her studies on design. And again, my mother would tell us these stories. I actually didn't believe a lot of the things she said, because --
[Interruption]
BN: So we were talking about your mother leaving camp and kind of what she was doing in Chicago.
KM: So she was sponsored by a Jewish family, the Kaune family, that was associated with the Anheuser-Busch brewery. And she loved working for them and they loved her. Two of my other aunts ended up actually working there, too, sponsored by them, and she must have had a really good relationship, because the child that she took care of, who was ten years old, looked her up later on when he moved to L.A. and put an ad in the Rafu looking for her. But he always said my mother brought a lot of happiness into his house because his father was very strict. And then he said when she met my father, he knew that she was going to be leaving, so it was kind of sad for him. So she went to the Masters School of Design, finished the design school there, had intentions of actually probably going to New York or something to do more fashion. But before that, she actually had a fianc�, I mentioned earlier, that was drafted, or volunteered, drafted and was in the 442nd. And I think she mentioned that she tried to go down to see him off, to Camp Shelby, and she took a train down there but missed him, and then eventually he was killed. He died in Cassino. So you hear these stories and you think, "Is that true?" I think it is true, but I can't even remember his name, Mas. Which he eventually, my father, who was stationed at Fort Snelling, and he was in the Military Intelligence Service, and they met in Chicago.
BN: Okay, and we'll return to that, we'll talk a little about your dad's side in a minute. But to finish with your mom's side, it sounds like most or all of them also, siblings, also ended up going to Chicago?
KM: All of them did. The only family members that were left at Gila was my grandparents and the three youngest children who were fifteen, ten and three, something like that. All of them drifted over to Chicago following the oldest ones, and found a place for the family to live, and they all lived in this one, this three-story building eventually.
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BN: Okay, and so, yeah, let's leave your mom there for the moment, and let's go back to your dad's side. So what was your dad's name?
KM: My dad's name was Yoshio Nishimoto. He took the name Dick later on because he liked the name, and so he was Dick Y. Nishimoto. So Dick became his first name and Yoshio became his middle name, and he went by Dick. So he was born in Visalia, California, and his mother passed away when his brother was born, I think. She had asthma, so my grandfather took my father and his brother, who was a baby, my father was two. Took them on a ship back to Japan, to Hiroshima, to be raised by the mother's side. And so my father lived with his grandparents until he was about seventeen or eighteen, and he and his brother came back. His brother might have come back sooner. My father came back, he talked about really loving going to Belmont High School and learning English, or being in a classroom with people that were much younger than he was, and learning to speak English. But he really wanted to stay in America. But his father, when he was going on a ship, on his way to Long Beach to go back to Japan, he asked his father, "Can I stay?" and his father said, "No, it's not a good time." And so he never, I said, "Did you ask him why?" and he said no, it's just, he went back. So I think at that time, I don't know if he ever thought he was going to come back. So he stayed in Japan 'til he was, I think another ten years, until he was like twenty-eight. And at that time, he was kind of into more spiritual things, so he was always into different religions. There was even some talk that he was, not a monk, but something like that. He was so much into religion and things like that. But his uncle told him that, "You need to go back to America because you'll be drafted by the Japanese army, and you'll lose your citizenship. So you need to go back now."
So he went back, he came back to the United States. And he opened a little produce stand over in Hoover Boulevard, apparently, and of course lost out when the curfew was issued. But he was drafted, actually, in January of 1942, after Pearl Harbor, which I find very odd, but I did see the draft card. But he was the oldest child. His father had remarried and had two more children. So there were four boys, two brothers and then two half brothers. And they had a market in Boyle Heights, the Silver Moon Market across from Roosevelt High School. And so they were into that kind of business. I think my grandfather originally in Visalia, had run a boarding house with his wife, and I don't really know what he did after he came back without my dad. That family, I don't know much about that grandfather. And he really disassociated himself with his family in Japan, so my father was raised by his mother's family, there was no contact with the father's family. So that's kind of a mystery.
BN: Did your father talk much about growing up in Japan as a Nisei?
KM: You know, not really. He talked about he and his brother, they always compared. They said my father, when he got any kind of money, would run off and buy something for himself. His brother would buy something and bring it back for everybody. So it was sort of this, I mean, I don't know what those stories mean, but I'm sure it was not, the pictures don't look very happy, but that might be Japanese photos, they all look very serious, you know.
BN: Japanese style.
KM: Yeah, Japanese style. But I don't think it was maybe the happiest time of his life, although later on, he talked about his grandparents, and they were really his parents. So I think he was thinking more about what they did for him, and so appreciating. But I think the fact that he kind of went into religion, which is very solitary, I feel like he probably was more of that, had that kind of existence, was not real, he really didn't talk about fun times in Japan. It may not have been fun, I don't know.
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BN: And then you mentioned that he came to the U.S. when he was seventeen. Do you know how long that was?
KM: I don't really know, but I don't know. But I do know that I think the time that he was going back, was about 1929, it was like '29, '30. So understandably, it was the Depression, so when his father told him it's not a good time, that might have been the reason why. I don't think he was here that long, maybe a year or two, and he was really trying to learn English.
BN: Right, so he must have picked up some if he's...
KM: He picked up some, but I know that he really loved being here.
BN: Right, right. And then he goes back to Japan for a number of years and comes back, I guess, for good.
KM: For good.
BN: This would have been in the late '30s.
KM: Late '30s, yeah.
BN: So he's, when the war breaks out, he still has the market.
KM: He has a little produce stand. I guess he had produce stands on the street. So on Hoover, they talked about it.
BN: It was a big Nisei occupation.
KM: Yeah, it was a big occupation, but I didn't know they had these stands that were on streets. So anyway, so he lost that, which was when the curfew occurred, and then was drafted in January. So very much, it's kind of interesting because even though he had been raised by his father and stepmother, and then the market was actually named, I think, after his brother, Tom, because he was the oldest citizen child here, my father was in Japan, so they named it Tom's Market. So my father was kind of like, I feel like, the outsider in that family because he wasn't raised with them, but he came later, like a few years before the war. But when he was drafted, he sent all of his money to them. He followed what they told him to do, and I think he did say something about... anyway. Whatever they told him to do, he did, even though he really didn't have a family, close family relationship with him. And he visited them at Manzanar.
BN: I was going to ask, so he's drafted, and then with the rest of his family, or U.S. family who goes...
KM: To Manzanar.
BN: Is he able to keep in touch with the grandparents that raised him in Japan during the war, or what happens?
KM: You know, I don't know. Because my father was Kibei, his Japanese was better than his English. And because my mother was Nisei and a dominant presence in our family, both culturally and otherwise, he really didn't have a chance to say that much, or share that much. It was kind of like, well, his stories were Japanese. It's not what we want to know here. Even his religion was over there, kind of strange. So we didn't really find out that much about my father, what he was doing. I'm sure he wrote home; I'm sure he did. But maybe he didn't, because in those later years, he was looking at photos of his grandparents and reminiscing. And I know one of the uncles that did tell him to come back, died after the bombing of Hiroshima. Because they lived in a town that was outside of the city, but he happened to be in the city, and was exposed to radiation, so he died a few days, I think, what I understand, a few days later, so he passed away. The grandparents, I never talked about them.
BN: Do you know much about his experience in the army, I assume? And then he ended up in MIS?
KM: Well, he ended up in MIS. Did he go there directly? He might have. I mean, it's kind of odd. He was drafted in 1942, and he definitely was Kibei. I mean, why, I don't know, maybe were they already thinking about the MIS? I don't know when the MIS was set up. He didn't really talk about what happened before that, I just know that we have seen photos of him very happy with the other soldiers, and some of the Anglo officers, people like that. All I know is that he was a cook at the MIS headquarters, talked about some shenanigans or oversleeping one time, and they had one hour to get all the food ready for the soldiers, and talked about some guy named Turk (Ogimachi). Anyway, another Japanese Nisei guy that said, "Okay, we're going to put all the bacon under the burner, under the broiler, and so they're racing around. And so these are the stories my father told. He never talked about classes, teaching, any of that. Did he do it? I don't know. I would imagine they would have taken advantage of his skills, at last his Japanese speaking skills, and even if his English wasn't that great, he knew some but he never talked about that. Maybe he was told not to. And my father was probably one that followed orders like that.
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<Begin Segment 5>
BN: So how does he end up in Chicago?
KM: Well, my father was very social. So for one that was being raised as a somewhat, I envisioned is a lonely childhood, and not real happy, he was actually a pretty upbeat kind of guy, so he really liked to have fun. So he would go to Chicago for the dances, and I think he was introduced to my mother by her circle of friends. So they met... they met, and I think they were engaged, like, after three months. So it was a very quick, my mother would always say that they were engaged, and they had a wedding date set, and she said, "I cancelled it three times." She made it sound like she didn't want to marry him. So she'd always tell him, "Hmm," that's why we didn't believe a lot of her stories. And so then I was actually very relieved or whatever when I found their wedding album, and there was a card that expressed something different, like a card between them, from her to him, was like their first Thanksgiving, their first Easter, but it was like seeing something very endearing. I thought, okay, it's not true. She made it sound like she was forced to marry him or something.
BN: They could both be true, I mean, who knows?
KM: Well, she did feel a little pressure because her younger sister wanted to get married, and she was the oldest, right? But her younger sister got married before she did. I mean, she was supposed to have been married before.
BN: Yeah, I mean, from what you've written and how you describe them, they seem like a little bit of an odd couple.
KM: Yeah. And in my experience growing up, my sister and I always, that was actually the dominant theme, was that clash between my mother and my father. It was very confusing because she would always be correcting him, his manners, and reprimanding him for not saying the right thing. And he was, indeed, always like, never take it. So my sister and I, because we always felt bad for him, so we would end up later on defending him, sticking up for him, because she was always correcting him. But that's also not just a Nisei-Kibei thing, but my mother's family is very, very strict, very stoic, very tough. They were tough on their kids, like us. I think if I told you some of the punishments my mother inflicted upon us, people would be shocked. She did things like threatening to send us to the orphanage. And literally, I was put on the porch, and she said, "I'm calling the orphanage now." And my sister would be inside the door saying, "She's not really calling." But I thought she was. And then I'd have to wait 'til my father came home from his produce job, and he'd come in and she says, "Well, it's either her or me." It's like, what did I do that was so horrible? I think I broke something. I was really clumsy, so I'd always break things. And I think because of the economics, and her punishments were like, I don't know if you know what these things are, shoe trees, I mean, no, shoe horns. But there's a wooden end and I a wire thing that's really, we'd get ten of those, minimum ten. And then we started to cry, which we usually did before she even started, because we knew how painful it was. She said, "I'll give you something to cry about." And so I asked my cousin, said, "We all heard that. Every single one of her siblings were like that." So that's how we were raised. So my mother was strict with us, and she was hard on my dad. And so this whole Nisei-Kibei thing was really confusing for us.
And even though we looked up to my father, he never punished, never laid a finger on us, almost never raised his voice except one time when we were running around crazy. But he took us to the beach, he's the one that played games with us at night, card games, all kinds of stuff like that. My mother baked with us, we did those things, but she was cleaning and checking out... so she was the disciplinarian. So we looked at my father like, well, he was a fun person, he didn't punish us, but he wasn't really that American, his English wasn't very good. He sang shigin, we didn't like it, and he had this odd religion that he would pour tea over these sticks, I think it was gedatsu or something, and he would chant. And we were just like, that's very odd. My sister even told him, "Dad, can you sing outside? You sound like a dying cow," or something. So we were really horrible. So we were not very kind to my father, we felt bad for him. So a lot of our cues we took from my mother in terms of how to act, aspirations, she wanted us to be totally American, and of course, her aspirations of going to New York and fashion and that whole living, appearance. So we'd go shopping, she would make clothes for us that we would see at the stores, because things like that. And she really wanted us to be, to succeed. So their whole life was about us, education, they never bought a home, they rented, everything went into it.
BN: Did you have a sense, talking about your mom, the sense of, I don't know if frustration is the right word, but regret that she wasn't able to pursue this kind of life that she had envisioned apparently when she was younger before the war?
KM: You know, we must have, because I think we might have heard that. Like, "I didn't want to marry your father." "I love Chicago," "I was gonna be, I was engaged before," all these regrets. "I was going to go to New York." She had apparently thirty pairs of matching shoes and purses. She was totally fashioned like that. And then to come and live in Boyle Heights, didn't really have many new clothes, it must have been really hard. So I think she was frustrated, and he wasn't quite, perhaps, he was not a... he wasn't like her brothers. Her brothers could do anything. They would put on a roof. I said, "Who taught you how to do that?" "Nobody taught us, we just did it." And I thought, "Wow." My father couldn't paint anything, couldn't fix anything, and she would be very frustrated by that. So I think a lot of things frustrated her. She was always quite angry about things. And so she would, you sensed that. So it was sort of like, in our family, my mother's emotions were always dominant. It was like you'd always feel whatever she was feeling. My sister, fortunately, had a very strong personality. So it at least balanced the family in that way, because I was less that way, I was more like my father.
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<Begin Segment 6>
BN: So your sister's the elder, so she was born in Chicago?
KM: She was born in Chicago in 1946, and then in 1947, they leave Chicago and she's the first one to come back to the West Coast. So she comes to, or they take a train and they end up in Boyle Heights, living in, I think my father's parents' home that they had. I think my uncle Tom lived there, too, his brother.
BN: Your father's brother?
KM: My father's brother.
BN: What drew them to L.A. and/or led them to leave Chicago? Was it something that drew them here, or did they want to get away?
KM: I'm not really sure, but I think it was more my father. Because his family was here, and I think on the GI Bill, he went to a training class, I found some of his books of how to fix refrigerators or something. And I thought to myself, "My father?" He couldn't fix anything. So he went to this school, and I think my mother said the first job he got, he was going to have to get up at six o'clock in the morning, and he didn't want to do that. So then I thought, okay, so she was probably frustrated by the fact that he wasn't probably very good, and then he didn't want to get up to go this job. So it was like, okay, he's got family in L.A., they have a market, let's go back. She's got something there. So I think that's why they came back. Again, I don't know why I never asked him. I might have, but you know, you get weird answers sometimes.
BN: And then you were born?
KM: Then I was born in 1948 in the Japanese Hospital in Boyle Heights.
BN: And then you first, like until you're a teenager, you're in Boyle Heights?
KM: Yeah, and I think that's significant because the street that we lived on was a semi-cul de sac, and at one end was a Molokan Russian church, and I didn't know what the Molokans were at the time, but we'd see them marching over, procession, into the church. But the whole block was, so many different ethnicities, German family across the street, Jewish family, Russian family, of course, Mexican American, couple of them, we were the only Japanese Americans. And so my mother was very outgoing, in spite of her, well, personality, she was a strong personality, but she was also very outgoing and very friendly. And she loved to cook, so she learned all the different foods of the neighborhood, and we would eat German food. People in those days, because everybody was poor, they'd help each other out, babysitting, taking care of us, giving each other permanents or whatever was needed in exchange. So whatever was needed, they'd exchange, kind of like that, picking fruit trees and stuff like that, so making tables for each other. So we got very close with the neighbors and we knew everyone, we went inside each other's homes. They stayed close to people even after we left Boyle Heights.
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<Begin Segment 7>
BN: Were there a lot of kids your age in the neighborhood?
KM: A few, a few kids, not very many. Mostly older people and maybe one other family. The Russian family had kids that were our age or a little older, and we were always in their house. They were kind of a crazy family.
BN: But then you didn't go to school in the neighborhood, right?
KM: No, we didn't.
BN: What's the story behind...
KM: We weren't Catholic, and we would have gone to public schools, but my grandmother, my father's mother, stepmother, said, "Oh, no, the schools are not good here, you have to go to Maryknoll." So we went to Maryknoll, and the bus picked us up. So we both went there all the way from kindergarten to eighth grade, and eventually became Catholic only because my sister, who was nine years old, decided that she wanted to become Catholic. So my mother and I, my mother went to catechism and I guess I already was in catechism, because I was in the school. I became Catholic at seven years old, and my name was changed to Mary Kathryn. So from then on, age seven to the time I left Maryknoll, everybody called me Mary Kathryn. And I remember the feeling I got when I was brought to the front of the room by the nun, and she told the class, "From now on, all of you, this is Mary Kathryn," and this is what everybody called me. I had no choice. I just remember feeling, ugh, kind of this suffocation. And then because I was the new convert, I was given the honor of crowning Mary, the statue of Mary, I think, in the church. And that was a heavy burden for a seven year old, I had to walk down the aisle or whatever it is, aisle of the church, and they had rehearsal, and at the rehearsal I threw up in the middle. It was so much pressure, I thought, oh my god.
BN: But your dad didn't?
KM: No, he never did. He maintained his religion, and he always searched out different religions. He eventually became Perfect Liberty which is another little offshoot religion. There was always this little Perfect Liberty church myth, I don't know, just kind of odd things, just seeking.
BN: Looking back, I mean, how do you feel that experience, the conversion and going to the Catholic school kind of influenced you later in life?
KM: Well, it was not a... it was not a happy experience, it was very suffocating. You know, it always felt very alien. We never learned about what being Japanese was, even though all of us were Japanese. And I was a good student, my sister and I were both good students. So my mother was like, "Always do what you're told, do your best," so that's what we did. And I don't think we were competitive, but we both ended up being at the top of our classes. But my sister, because she was so expressive and not compliant, she often got in trouble. So she was, my mother was called in a couple times because of my sister reacting or challenging other classmates. And I was really closer to my sister's class friends than my own classmates. Because I think what happened at Maryknoll was that it sort of intensified all of the negative Japanese aspects, which was like very cliquish, kind of bullying, and that was, really impacted me in terms of how I looked at Japanese Americans. I felt like I couldn't trust Japanese Americans. Not that I was the victim, but it was like you're always fearing that you might be the next victim, right? So what do you do to protect yourself? So my goal was, I'm going to be better than, so outside of the box that they can't even touch me. So yeah, I ended up being the smartest kid in the class, the person that the teacher, I don't know, maybe teacher's pet, but someone that they really couldn't isolate like that. And I didn't really try to be in that group, but people were really horribly picked on to the point of families coming in when you saw it, and then we also, there was a new kid that came from Japan, nice guy, and he took it. People would make fun of him because he was from Japan. And then people that were not all Japanese, hapa kids, and it was always like, I'd always be thinking to myself, "What is going on, why is this happening?" Loretta, I remember this girl Loretta on the bus, and she always looked kind of sad, and then she'd get off the bus. She eventually left the school, and I met her sister many, many years, like a few years later, happened to meet her at JANM. And she said, "Oh, you must have been in my sister's class." I said, "Yeah, who is your sister?" She said, "Loretta." I said, "I always wondered what happened to her." She said, yeah, she never talked about Maryknoll after that. It's like, yeah, I can understand why. It was not a happy time, and the nuns were, they were strict.
BN: Were the nuns all Japanese also?
KM: No, no. We had one Japanese nun, Sister Bernadette, that was not even a teaching nun. She was there, she went to Manzanar, she was older. And no, most of the nuns were white. The younger ones were really nice, but they came when I was leaving, and we really loved the younger ones because they were kind. The older ones were like, I mean, seven years old, we had the worst nun in the world. And in that class you had kids throwing up, peeing in the classroom, everybody was so traumatized. She locked somebody in the closet overnight, they had to come and get their kid, but people wanted their kids at Maryknoll so you put up with it. Or one kid was chased around the yard with a belt by one of the brothers. So physical punishment was okay. We'd stand there holding books like that, that was the kind of punishment you got. Again, so here I am, you got to protect yourself from the nuns, protect yourself from the other kids, it was like constant.
BN: But from the parents' perspective, they liked Maryknoll because, presumably, it's a good school academically?
KM: It was probably a good school academically because even average students were probably better. They knew more than the public school. And we are Japanese, that was taught by an Issei lady, Mrs. Chujo, whom we didn't take seriously.
BN: Did you have to go to Japanese school outside of that?
KM: No, no.
BN: In part because of that, you were actually learning Japanese, presumably?
KM: Presumably we were learning Japanese, but I think that my mother would not have wanted us to go to Japanese school. She had gone to Japanese school. But no, I wish we had, but no.
BN: Okay. Most Sansei wished they hadn't, I feel like.
KM: Wish they hadn't gone?
BN: Or at the time, didn't like going. Maybe looking back, you regret you didn't learn more, but there were only a handful of Sansei who actually liked going to Japanese school.
KM: I might have felt the same way.
<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.
<Begin Segment 8>
BN: Were you involved in any kinds of outside community activities? Girl Scouts and the JA sports leagues?
KM: You know, it's so funny. The sports thing was totally out of my realm of reality. My mother was actually kind of athletic, or so she claimed. She said she played hockey or something. But we never went outside Maryknoll in terms of sports. So we actually had fairly good sports teams, we played softball and baseball. Not volleyball so much or basketball, but Girl Scouts, the Catholic organization, Sodality, went to Little Tokyo to do service stuff, and Miyako Hotel was still around to reach out to the Japanese that were there. But yeah, the Girl Scouts, my mother was involved, my father was involved. When we had camping trips, they usually drove. So my mother was very engaged. She was one of the few mothers, she was engaged with the Fujinkai at the school or the church, Junior Ladies Guild. So we knew a lot of the Nisei parents and women, they would always be talking because my mother is very social, so she knew everybody and they knew her.
BN: So, wait, this is a Catholic Fujinkai?
KM: Yeah.
BN: Did they call it that?
KM: They called it Fujinkai, though. They did call it Fujinkai, but more so Junior Ladies Guild. But I remember Fujinkai, too. And then I remember my mother picking up doughnuts at Cooper's Doughnuts in skid row, fifth and... I think it's People's Market now.
BN: And then so you were there 'til, you said, eighth grade?
KM: Yeah. So eighth grade, and we're in Boyle Heights 'til then. And we move out of Boyle Heights again, totally for my sister and myself. My sister had already started Immaculate Heart, so traveling from Boyle Heights to Silver Lake on the bus for two years. I can't even imagine that, but she did that for two years. But when I graduated, they looked for a house in Silver Lake or J-Flats, and we moved out here in 1962.
BN: Yeah, so you were fourteen-ish.
KM: Yeah.
BN: Was the community, the J-Flats area, was it more Japanese at that point?
KM: To me, I think it was. Because we knew people that had businesses on Virgil and families that were living along Hoover and also Melrose, because we would, old Maryknoll friends were there, old friends from Boyle Heights were living in Silver Lake. So we knew that there were quite a few Japanese around that area, and on our block there were a number of Japanese families, too, on Lucille Avenue.
BN: And is this the house that you mentioned your mother's parents had moved in with you. Was it that house?
KM: Well, we lived in two houses on the same street.
BN: Oh, okay.
KM: So we lived in a duplex first, because they needed to find a place fast, because it wasn't in the best condition, but we lived in a duplex and we actually had our own bedrooms, my sister and myself. And then that place we moved three doors down, and then that house down below had a little unit where my grandparents lived while I was in high school, maybe two or three years. And they went to the church, the Japanese Christian church nearby.
<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.
<Begin Segment 9>
BN: And then you said your sister had kind of already started Immaculate Heart Before you moved, and then the family moved before you started?
KM: No. When I graduated from Maryknoll, that's when they looked for housing and we moved in.
BN: And then did you go to the same school, then?
KM: Yes. So I went to Immaculate Heart. Like my sister, we kind of followed each other. So I went to Immaculate Heart and she had already been there. Again, had big personality, outgoing, and she never seemed to be, lack confidence. So for her, being in an all-white, mostly all-white environment, it phased her, but I never, she never shared that, and she was very popular, because she was not shy. And she would do things that were a little outlandish. She had an idiosyncrasy of falling down when a loud noise happened or screaming, loud noise just scared her. So she'd either scream or fall down, and no inhibitions. It would always be like, I would be like, can we not react? If a pigeon would poop on her shoulder when we were walking, it'd be like... me, I would be like, okay, let me just wipe that away quietly so nobody saw that. She's, like, screaming out loud, so everybody looks and sees this poop, it's like, "Why would you want to do that?" But that was how she was. My mother would say, "Watch out for your sister because she might get into some trouble."
BN: And then so now you're in, I mean, before Maryknoll's kind of a Japanese environment, and now you're in a distinct minority, I gather.
KM: Yes. And there were about three of us from Maryknoll that went to Immaculate Heart. But it's so funny because, I don't know, I guess I wasn't really listening to my sister about whatever she was going through, even though we were very close. But I remember my mind telling myself when I got there, and I could see the environment, I said, "Okay, I cannot stick around with the Japanese friends that I came with. In order to succeed, I've got to get away, I've got to fit in, I've got to be like everybody else here, and not be any of that, disassociate," so that's what I did, that was my goal. Do everything that was, whatever was going in, join all the clubs, try to be, get elected to section president, whatever, this kind of stuff. You know, I worked at it, and I succeeded for a time. And I think in my senior year, it was like, "Why am I doing this?" "What is this for?" It's not working. I'm not really fitting in, I'm not white, and I remember just sort of closing in. It's like, "I don't want to do any of this." And I almost feel like that senior year, I was kind of in a different zone, like the solitary zone, I don't know. I mean, I'm sure I was mixing with people and doing whatever I had to do, but I would go up to a college and take a class, or go to their film screenings and just do stuff on my own. And it's funny, because Alan Nishio talks about this film, Japanese film called Ikiru, and I saw that film when I was a senior in high school, 1966, and I remember the impression. And Sister Corita was the one that was leading these discussions on the film, and here I am, a lone high school student in this group. It was kind of like, all these other folks there. But it really had a kind of impact on me.
BN: That was the one with the salaryman?
KM: Yes. It was the first Japanese film I think I saw. But it was very vivid. But I would go up there a lot.
BN: Did you continue to get good grades and all of that?
KM: Yes, I did. My forte was math and science, actually, but also a little bit of art. We had very good art classes at Immaculate Heart, because of Sister Corea, who was very art oriented. So Judy, my sister, went to USC first, and I was a senior, I think I was a senior. And I would see her going through all of these contortions getting ready for school, trying to dress a certain way, and I felt, wow, even borrowing clothes that were sort of special clothes for school every day, and she was trying to get into a sorority. And this is the first time I saw her really sort of not confident. And I thought, "This is nutty," and she was miserable. So of course she didn't succeed, because really, she's not that type. She's not the JA, super JA, and we weren't. We lived in a rented house in J-Flats Silver Lake, and she drove this car that was, she needed a car ride, so it was really a junk car that she had to drive to USC at that time, when the Sansei were, that went to SC, we're a certain level, right? We were not that level. So she's going to SC for, I think a semester, taking Russian, and she hangs out mostly now with the South Asian folks, like Thai and Laotian. And so I meet these folks, too, but it was a totally miserable time for her. So she left USC and went to (Immaculate Heart) for, I think, maybe another semester, was much happier there.
BN: Which college?
KM: (Immaculate Heart). It doesn't exist now, it became the film school. So that was really like, wow. I saw what she was going through. And so she goes to Berkeley, and she's very happy at Berkeley. And she's the one that, she lives in a co-op, and she gets a job, she really decided she's going to put herself through college.
BN: And this happens while you're still in high school, so you're seeing this.
KM: Yeah, so my senior, I guess that was my junior when she was at SC. So my last year, she's gone, she's up at Berkeley, we drop her off. So I'm with the family and she's not at home, and that was a very different kind of year.
BN: At that point, is there the expectation that you're going to go to college?
KM: You know what? It was never a question.
BN: Yeah, right.
KM: It never was a question that we would not go to college. Yes, we would go to college. Did my parents know anything about kinds of colleges? No. We had no advice from there. And I don't even think we had advice from our high school, frankly. I just remember looking at different literature thinking about going to a women's college in the east, thinking about oceanography because I liked the ocean. And then when I went to visit my sister Judy at Berkeley, I really, really loved it. So then I decided to apply to Berkeley and Stanford. I kind of wanted to go to Stanford, actually, that was my first choice. But to be honest, I got an interview, but I was interviewed by this old white man, an here I know nothing. I'm like this very shy person, and I don't even know what he asked me, and I don't know what I said, but I'm sure I bombed the interview. But we had to drive up there for this interview. It was not pleasant. So I had gotten a scholarship. If I had gone to Stanford, financial aid would have paid for it. But because I went to Berkeley, my parents had to pay for it. So we didn't get financial aid, it was sad. That would be the only reason.
<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.
<Begin Segment 10>
BN: What were your parents doing in terms of occupation as you were growing up?
KM: Good question. My mother always worked. So because she had been a seamstress or went to school sewing school, she took in sewing when we were little, when we lived in Boyle Heights, and she made all of our clothes. So she took in sewing. They called it naishoku, taking work in. And then I remember this white guy would come and pick up the bundle, and she would sometimes be frantically working at night trying to finish the job. Yeah, I remember that was very stressful. And she got a job working at a, sort of a department store in East L.A. called the First Street store. So she was working there when we were in elementary school. And then she got, then she was working downtown in the factories, and so we would get a lot of the sample clothing, like some of the dresses that were made as samples. And so she got a job there through another Nisei friend, and I would have to wear the sample clothes. She would bring it home and say... oh, and I was actually very, I was very particular. I was probably not a very easy child. I was stubborn, and I liked dolls, of all things. Cooking, baking set, all that kind of stuff. And so if the dress wasn't, if I didn't think I liked it, I said, "I don't," I would really put up a fuss. Even though it was economically, I needed to wear that dress. But I gave her a hard time. So she did sewing, and then later on, to another friend, she got a job in the wholesale jewelry business downtown. A lot of Nisei women, because they were trustworthy, worked for this diamond, wholesale diamond guy, and he had no children of his own, no. So there were like six or seven Nisei women that worked in this place, and you're dealing with diamonds, so you've got to have people you trust. So she ended up working there until she passed. And my father, he was always into produce. So he worked at different markets, took the bus, had two jobs, apparently, took one to one job and another, and then eventually got, started working at markets that had union jobs. So ended up at Gelson's Market, which is...
BN: High end.
KM: High end, yeah. So we always had the best produce, because when he came home, he could gather whatever he wanted, say, "This is how much it is," and so he'd bring it home. And again, another job, we had a lot of Nisei men, and so he had a lot of friends that were Nisei men even though he was keeping... he never wanted to be a supervisor, I think he might have been asked to be, though. I can't quite imagine my father, but he never wanted to be supervisor, but he had wonderful calligraphy. So when they needed signs for some of the jobs, they'd make these handwritten numbers and boards, I remember him always painting these things. So I guess in the early days, maybe some of the markets had butcher paper signs. I don't think Gelson's did. I can't imagine Gelson doing that. So these were these other markets, like Market Basket.
BN: Right, right. Now that you mention it, I do remember always seeing Nisei men as produce clerks in all these markets growing up. It was a, kind of another little occupational niche.
KM: Very much so, yeah. And then my father would say people would ask him to pick out a watermelon, he didn't know it. "This is a good one," yeah.
BN: Natural Japanese, you know...
KM: Skill.
BN: Skill, yeah. Part of the myth of the Japanese gardener, this inherent ability with produce and plants.
<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.
<Begin Segment 11>
BN: And before we get to college, and then I'll see if Issay has any questions, but before college, were you influenced at all -- I mean, you're growing up in the '60s, the Civil Rights Movement is going on, the Kennedy assassination, all the stuff that's happening in Vietnam. Are you cognizant of that, or is there any influence, any kind of political consciousness coming before college?
KM: Before college, okay. So I graduate high school in '66. So I kind of was aware of the Watts uprising, but we're a little far away from it, right? So I do hear about it, but it's not touching me much. I think I was more influenced by Immaculate Heart, by two things. One is that because the nuns were more progressive, they're the one that left or were kicked out by the cardinal when they wanted to be independent. So I was more influenced by them. They would bring in people like Father Daniel Barrigan of the Jesuits, and he would talk, I don't know what he talked about, but we would just be fascinated by whatever he was talking about. And then some of the women from the college, Immaculate Heart College, had gone to the South either as part of voter registration, I'm not sure which. But I remember hearing them and they were speaking to a large crowd of us, and I just remember thinking, wow, this is amazing, what they were talking about. It was all new to me, '65 probably. But I would just put it away in my head, and just remember that. I don't remember thinking about too much else. I was more involved probably with going to the first Beatles concert, the first Rolling Stones concert at the Shrine Hollywood Bowl for the Beatles.
BN: You saw the Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl?
KM: Uh-huh.
BN: Wow.
KM: I saw them, I didn't hear them, because everybody was screaming.
BN: Yes, yes.
KM: Yeah. So I had a friend that wanted to do all that stuff, and said, "Okay, we'll go." Then Rolling Stones at the Shrine, I think that was their first concert there, too. And then we followed them around, doing stuff like that, going to a few dances, the social thing. Yeah.
BN: At that time, was the Japanese American dance band scene...
KM: You mean like Roger (Young Auditorium) and all that?
BN: Yeah.
KM: Yeah, yeah. That was, but I was not into, as I said, I think, having gone to Maryknoll sort of really turned me off to the Japanese community. And I don't think we even spent much time in Little Tokyo. I mean, I went to Maryknoll, I think, for church, but I probably spent more time with high school things, because I was kind of involved with high school stuff at Immaculate Heart. I did go to a few dances, I never felt comfortable there. So I did not look back on it fondly like a lot of people do. Said, "Oh, they were so much fun." No, they were not fun.
BN: You don't go to the, not reenactments, but Sansei dances like now that...
KM: No, I don't enjoy them.
BN: ...that some folks do. Karen goes to some of those.
KM: No. They bring back really kind of like bad memories, frankly. I almost get a feeling like, the way people were, the way you had to be, and feeling like, "I can't relate to this." Maybe it was my bad attitude, I don't know. Maybe I just, I had something stuck in my head and I didn't let it go. I picked up a friend who was Chinese, and she had to tell her mother that my name was Kathy Chan because they hated the Japanese. But she and I went to the dance together. I could count the number of times I went. I would say, "I went," to be honest. My sister and I were just not quite... if she had a good number of Japanese American friends, but she was very un-Japanese. And even though I was probably more Japanese, I was not that kind of Japanese. It was painful, to be honest.
<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.
<Begin Segment 12>
IM: You mentioned that your father started working for grocery stores that had unionized employees. Did he ever mention anything about activities within the union?
KM: No, but my father, you know, he's such a funny guy. He never had any issues with the union. I mean, I think he appreciated a lot, because he'd often say he was going into the retail clerk's office. I don't know why he went so often. He'd say, "I'm going down to the Local 77 or what is it. He was going down to the office, and then the fact that that we had health care, and I was a real sickly child, I forgot to mention that I had asthma as a child, whooping cough, which was very hard on the family, economically, again. So when he got the unionized job, they were totally happy because we had Kaiser. And I had a lot of things that I had to go to Kaiser for, a lot of stuff. No, he never complained about it. I don't even remember him being on strike, but I don't...
IM: So he never complained, but did he have anything that he shared with you about how he... did he have any positive things other than just the material things, like fun with other of his coworkers, union activities like leisure activities?
KM: You know, I don't know if they did that. He had leisure activities with the Nisei guys. Well, and then when he worked for Gelson's, because Gelson's was owned at the time by the Gelson brothers, they treated everybody like family. And Gelson's is always been to the, settle first with the union, but they always had big parties for the workers, because that's not really union. But he had a good relationship with his fellow workers, but you know those Nisei guys? I'd always wonder, my father would go in at least a half hour before, or maybe an hour. I said, "Why are you going so early?" He'd drive in, and then they would work half an hour before they would clock in, be like, "Why are they doing that?" That's what they did. They worked off the clock.
IM: Do you remember any of the particular guys that he was friends with among the grocers?
KM: Yeah. One of them was, his name was Inouye, and I can't remember his first name. He was a small guy, wiry guy. Yeah, the Inouye family, they were close friends. We'd go to the beach with them and stuff like that.
<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.
<Begin Segment 13>
IM: My other question is just about, generally about this earlier time period. Do you remember particular friends that you had that, I guess, who were your friends at the time and what kind of an impact did they have on you?
KM: At Maryknoll?
IM: At Maryknoll, and then at Immaculate Heart.
KM: Oh, okay. Well, yeah, friends have always been kind of a little issue there. No, I had a best friend when I was little, Diane. And she lived a block away, and we would spend all our time together. And then her mother said, "You see each other at school, why do you need to see each other after school?" And so I think that kind of dampened the friendship a little bit. Then I had another friend that lived a couple blocks away, and I would spend time there. Then my sister would say, "Why are you friends with them? They're just taking advantage of you. They just want you to help them with their homework." And I'd be like, "Really?" So that was my sister's running thing, "We'll they're just taking advantage of you." So I always had a best friend, and my best friend then became this woman named Amy, Emi, actually. Her father was Kibei, too, surprisingly. There were very few people that had Kibei parents, so we kind of felt some affinity, I think, and we were also not your typical, I guess. We didn't fit in with that little group, the cliquey group. So we kind of hung out together with another person, and she was fairly bright. She spoke Japanese, she was actually very good. So we were friends for quite a while. And she went to the same high school I went to, Immaculate Heart. So we continued to be friends at Immaculate Heart, and it's funny, because even though I decided to hang out with, not the Japanese, I eventually ended up with a group that was sort of mixed. It was the Japanese friends I came with, African American, Latino, two Latino women, and a couple of, two or three white folks that were from La Crescenta didn't quite fit into the, into the mainstream of Immaculate Heart, which was these children of Hollywood people. We had the daughter of Nat King Cole up there, Lucille Ball's daughter went there, so I know, kind of high powered, a little intimidating. And my mother really loved that kind of environment, it was like, ooh.
IM: So the more mixed group that you had at Immaculate Heart, it was mostly women, correct?
KM: Well, it was a women's school.
IM: Oh.
KM: It was all girls, thankfully.
<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.
<Begin Segment 14>
IM: So in terms of being in this group of diverse young ladies, could you talk a little bit about maybe if you had interactions with other boys at the time?
KM: Well, not a lot. Because our schools actually aligned with this boys school called Loyola, which was like, these were the two top. If you were like the Catholic school system, these would be the two academically highest schools you'd go to, Immaculate Heart or Ramona Convent on the east side, but Loyola for boys. So they would always do things like, in terms of drama, I was in the Genesian, the drama group, they would have exchanges or they would have actors that would exchange with each other. But that wasn't something I felt, I wouldn't say it was mostly white, but it was mostly white, I think. But there were other minorities that went there, too. So, no, I didn't mix in socially like that. I think I gravitated more towards oddballs, the people that were offbeat, like in my senior year when I really felt disconnected, I kind of drifted more towards people that were considered sort of like, not the bad kids, but they were like the disgruntled ones. You know, they acted like they didn't care about anything. So I gravitated more towards those kind of folks.
IM: So dating wasn't something that was highly, I don't know, encouraged within your social group at Immaculate Heart?
KM: Not within the social group. I did end up dating somebody, but it was a JA person, for my last year. But if I'm honest with myself, I think I only did it because I felt like I had to have a boyfriend. [Laughs] It was like, oh gee, I better have a boyfriend at least once, and do something different, and get that under my belt, something that you should have. So I think that was the only reason I did, sadly.
IM: If you're comfortable, can you tell me a little bit more about how you got to meet this person in your last year?
KM: Oh, which is rather embarrassing, it was at one of those dances. [Laughs] Ironically, and then that's probably why I stopped going is because then I had a boyfriend. But I don't know how comfortable... actually, that's funny you'd pick on that question that I'm probably the least comfortable talking about. Because it wasn't really, I was probably just wanting a boyfriend, but not really into really caring that much about that person, which is kind of a selfish, sad to say, selfish mode of...
IM: So just, you were in it for the personal gain?
KM: Yeah, exactly. Just to say I had a boyfriend.
IM: Did your circle see that and be like, "Oh, wow, Kathy, this is so amazing?"
KM: No. Because actually, none of them had boyfriends except for one of them who was really into that scene, because her boyfriend was a band player for those dances. But she was outside of that circle. She was in the circle but she was different because of that. Everybody else was kind of "dateless," to put it that way.
IM: So, I guess, just one last question and I'll stop the dating thing. What did your parents think at the time of that, or were you old enough at that point where they didn't really care that much that you were dating someone?
KM: No, I think they cared, because I think if I was out late, there was a curfew, and then we'd be sitting outside talking when my father would come out and say it's time to come in. They were very hyper alert about stuff like that, but I was like, I got to do what I got to do.
IM: And so it was mostly your father who was mindful of this rather than your mother?
KM: I think so. But they always waited up. They didn't go to bed 'til I was home, and that was the year that my sister was gone, too, so unfortunately, if my sister had been, might have helped if there was some distraction, but it was just me.
IM: So your sister never told you about what dating was like or anything like that?
KM: Well, she did, because she was dating a Laotian guy from, when she was at SC. And so she was... and I think I went out a couple of times with her friends, not the most fun experience. Yeah, so she was dating this guy. So I observed, and we would talk a lot, except I'm not sure...
IM: One last question then. What did you kind of observe from your sister? Like what are the things that you learned from her when you saw her doing that kind of thing?
KM: That's an interesting question. Well, she was very happy. And I think she often... see, my sister was kind of a funny person. When she liked somebody, they would become the most wonderful person in the world, everything about them was wonderful. So she really, almost everything became like this great person. So that's what I saw from her, they became like bigger than life, kind of like that. But I didn't find that to be case from the people I've met. I didn't glorify them. To me they were not like that. But on the other hand, the people I dated later, she found fault with every single one of them, and she would tear them apart, and they'd always say, "Man, your sister," I'd say, "Yeah, that's my sister."
IM: So she was very protective?
KM: She was protective, "Yeah, they're taking advantage of you, they're not so good."
<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.
<Begin Segment 15>
BN: So we'll now move to Berkeley, you graduate and you're starting, I gather, in the fall of '66, and Judy is already, is there as well. As you're entering, do you have a sense of what you're going to major in? Do you have a sense of what you want to be when you grow up at that point?
KM: Well, my major was going to be math. And so, full of confidence, I enrolled in an honors math class, one of three women in the entire class. But I'm not so concerned about that as more of the, just being at Berkeley and living in the dorm at that time. Judy was living in the co-op across campus, north side, I was on the south side. And just wanted to get to know people, be in the place. It was like, to me, the world, Berkeley was the world. And so I have a roommate that's Japanese American, not a person who I expected to be a roommate with. She was a pharmacy major coming from Tracy, California, very orderly, organized, and disciplined. And I was not very organized and disciplined, I was there to enjoy myself. So on my floor, there was a room next to us, and they had some folks that were a year older than we were. And so I was just trying to check out and find people that I can relate to, really. So the math class turned out to be overwhelming. I learned very quickly that I was not the smartest person in the world, and that maybe honors math was over my head. And so the three women, three of us kind of grouped together to help each other. I think we almost all lived at the same dorm, actually. And our TA really helped us a lot, so that was rough. That was a rude awakening. I think I took some classes that I don't know why I took it. So honors math, and I think I took a class, it wasn't Hindi, Urdu, but it was something related to that, some esoteric thing, and some other class. So it was really rough that first quarter, and then I got to know my classmates or dorm mates next door and became friends with them. And so I was always relating to people that were a little older than me, not my same age, and they told me when they first saw me, they thought I was from Japan, which I found kind of interesting. Said, whoa, okay, because they were observing all the people, all the new kids. But anyway, so they told me that and that always stuck in my brain. But I hung out with them a lot and just sort of enjoyed myself the first quarter, but managed to pass.
BN: So did that change your trajectory in terms of major and so forth?
KM: It threw everything off. It was like, here I thought I had a path, and so then it was like, okay, I am just going to start taking classes I like, so I took comparative literature, French literature, took French, took Spanish, and my sister and I were in the same French class together. And then since she lived in the co-op, they had to work for everything. They had to clean their own dorms, cook their own food, central kitchen. So then at the dorm, we had these great lunches and everything in the cafeteria. So I grabbed two lunches, I think I grabbed two, maybe one, but it was enough for two. So then we sometimes, I shared my lunch with her. I always felt kind of bad for Judy because she, I don't think she felt bad for herself, but she was always working, and she felt she had to do that. And I hadn't worked at all, and I was living in a dorm, but my parents were paying for this. And so I think back, it's like I don't know why I didn't feel more responsible, but I didn't. So I continued to help her out, and I visited her at the co-op and we were close that way, and I was part of all her traumas, as Issay may want to know, her relationships became my relationships because she talked to me about it every day on the phone. So that was part of that. So I was just searching, I was searching for a different interest, which was probably a good thing because it opened up a lot of stuff for me, although at one point I said, "Wait a minute, I shouldn't just reject the sciences because of math." I remember my father saying, "You should become a nurse, a school nurse," because it's a good job. He never said, "Why don't you become a doctor?" So I never had that in my mind, but then I said, "I think I'm just as good as these guys here." I could take the math, physics class that these med students or pre-meds take, so I took it. And I got a B or whatever in it, but then I never went out beyond that. I just said I could do it, that's all. Then I got into psychology, and I said, okay, these are kind of interesting classes, I'll just take them for a while. And that's what I ended up with.
BN: Now, the co-op that Judy lived in, was it a school sponsored thing or is it a totally outside...
KM: No. Berkeley had dorms and they had co-ops.
BN: So it was a school sponsored or...
KM: Yeah, there were at least three or four co-ops. And if I recall, a lot of the Nisei lived in the co-ops when they went to Berkeley, and they remember some of these. They didn't have as many, so she lived at Stebbins, which was the women's co-op, there were women's and men's co-ops at that time. And then later on, they built Ridge House, and then she moved into that one, which was co-ed, and that's where she met her boyfriend.
BN: And then in choosing to live in a co-op, is there a, primarily ideological kind of motive or is there an economic motive?
KM: For her, I think it was economics. She was very aware of our family's financial situation, I guess I was less aware.
BN: So you explicitly chose not to live in the co-op.
KM: Well, I remember when we dropped her off at Stebbins, which was a really old building, and we moved her in, and then we were driving away and we could see her on the street waving goodbye to us. I remember my mother and myself and maybe my cousin, we were like, it was such a, kind of a sad, run-down place, and I thought, oh, this is terrible. So I think in my mind, I thought I was never gonna live there.
BN: Right. So her experiences almost discouraged you from going that route.
KM: I don't think I wanted to do all that stuff. You had to clean your buildings, you had to go to a central kitchen and cook, that didn't attract me, no, at that time. Maybe now I would, but not then.
<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.
<Begin Segment 16>
BN: Now you also spent a year in Japan, so how did that come about?
KM: It came about because, again, it's kind of like this whole, for many of us Sansei, I think, that whole search for identity, never feeling quite comfortable. So never feeling comfortable at Maryknoll, never feeling comfortable at Immaculate Heart, going to Berkeley thinking this is the world, I'm going to find my place, and then feeling like I'm observing these JAs that are hanging out on the third floor of the library, and people that are in the sororities, and I'm thinking, "Who are these people?" and almost feeling a dislike. Fair or unfair, I just said, "I'm not like them, and I don't want to be like them. I don't need to be grouping together, what's wrong with them?" That was all my thinking. And that I'm not like these sorority types that are fitting in with the white, preppy and all that. And I'm not going to try to be any of this stuff, but where do I fit in? But I had my friends that were Chinese, white, African American, JA, but you're older than me. And one of them had gone to Germany, a year abroad. And then we lived in a house together, JA and a couple of white roommates, and that felt very comfortable with my friends. And that was the year that Kennedy and Martin Luther King were assassinated. And my friend's boyfriend was very involved with the Kennedy campaign, I remember he was really crushed. He was Chinese, he was pre-med. And it was a kind of a somber year, and my really good friend was in Germany, but she was going to come back the next year, I thought, oh, year abroad, should think about that. And there was a group of guys that lived upstairs, and one of them was JA, and I really liked him. Issay wants to know. I really liked him, but nothing was really clicking in terms of relationships, things like that, or just friends were good, that was all good. This is funny, because someone set me up with this JA guy, and this other person's boyfriend was a PhD in physics. And so this guy was a PhD in physics, and it turns out to be, maybe I won't say his name, because it's so embarrassing. Anyway, he turns out to be this pretty well-known guy now, physics guy. But at the time, I thought I was too, anyway... So nothing was clicking relationship-wise, and I didn't really, I said, "Where do I belong, where do I fit in?" And I think, I remember my friends saying, "Well, we thought you were from Japan." And I always felt more like my father anyway, so I said, "You know, maybe Japan is it." I will apply for the year abroad to go to Japan or France, because France had a lot of appeal, too.
So I don't think I got in right away, but then I waited and then I got into the Japan year abroad program. So there were about thirty of us from the different UC campuses, and we all had only once choice, and that school was ICU, International Christian University, Kokusai Kirisutokyo Daigaku, in Tokyo. And the really wonderful thing about this program was that it took all of us on a three-week orientation program, I don't know if they do that now. So we traveled around Japan to all these different places, and just learned about different things. Went to Koyasan, Kyoto, I can't even remember, so many different things that got us settled into Japan, and it was autumn that we arrived, August or September, and that was just a great time to arrive in Japan. I think nashi were in season. Anyway, I just remember thinking, whoa, this is a whole different feel and smell. Everything was so small. But I just felt really happy to be there, and I lived in the dorm on the campus, most of us did. But then I learned right away that I was not Japanese again. Well, I was told by the Japanese there, they called all of... me and everybody that came there were "non-Japa." And I said, "Oh, wait a minute. Maybe the white people are "non-Japa," but I am, too. So they considered us all "non-Japa," "non-Japa." And then I don't know if you want me to talk about that year?
<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.
<Begin Segment 17>
BN: Yeah, because it's fall of '68?
KM: Fall of 1968, a really eventful year. Yeah, really eventful year. And so I live in the dorm, and there's a lot of stuff going on. I don't know if I lived in the dorm where the women were most political, but we had a lot of meetings that we had to attend. And they were talking about issues on the campus, we all smoked like crazy.
BN: These are Japanese...
KM: Yeah, Japanese women, I never saw Japanese women like (Koriyama). So they were talking about the campus, and I don't know if I quite understood the issues, but there were some issues with, I think, the entrance examination. And ICU was a school that was hard to get into, because I think your English primarily was people that were studying language and good in English. I had an uncle, actually, my mother's cousin, taught there. I think he taught history, which was interesting, so he was on the campus. My roommates, they had all four years, we had four of us, each of us was a different year, freshman. I was a junior, and then I became very good friends with the sophomore, and she was from Koriyama up in Fukushima, and she was very, I learned so much from her because she was country and very down to earth, and had no airs about her, was just a very simple human being. And at first she said she kind of stayed away from me because, "Oh, American, American Japanese." But we became very good friends, and so I learned a lot culturally from her because at Christmas time, I went to my relatives in Kobe, because my uncle, mother's cousin that taught at ICU arranged for me to go down to his mother's, my grandmother's sister lived in Japan, married to a doctor. So they had a house in Kobe with two other homes, like a complex, which was very interesting. So they had three homes in this area, so I stayed with them for like two weeks during the holiday season and got to know them and another aunt, we called her Aunt Muta, who had lived in the United States before the war and during the war in Texas, Galveston. They apparently had some kind of Oriental goods products, items, in Galveston, and they were the family, I think, that my mother's family had wanted to go to, relocate, before the war if they could have, but they couldn't get it together, they had too many kids, so they couldn't get down to Texas. So that was the aunt, and we had met Aunt Muta before, and she had gone back to Japan after having been in the United States, so she could speak a little English, and so I talked to her a lot. And she always was considered, she never felt comfortable in Japan again, and people treated her like she was odd because she had been in the United States. And she was a person, I noticed, that she had a little notebook around her neck, and she'd always write down things she wanted to remember in that little notebook, I thought, "Oh, how interesting." Now I know the value of that. So from the aunt and uncle, my grandmother's sister and husband, it was very peaceful, it was very quiet, and I enjoyed being there. But she always wore a kimono, they're very formal. So I'd come down for dinner, then they'd sit under the kotatsu, which everybody did, and they'd heat the sticks. And I had a date with somebody that I'd met on the train, okay. So I met somebody on the train coming down, and I said, we started a conversation, and, "Oh, he lives in Kobe, let's meet up." And so I had arranged to meet with him somewhere and go up to Mount Aso or something. And my aunt was like, "No, you can't do this,� you can't go to..." "I have to meet him first." So she rode with me to meet him, and met him, and I guess approved, that he was a student at Keio. And so it was like, I met him, I think I met him later in Tokyo, too, but it was such an odd situation. And I think I actually did something else that probably scared the hell out of them, because I think I had, somebody else I had met, I don't know, anyway. Maybe that's a different story for a different time. Anyway, she was very protective, very old fashioned, of course.
<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.
<Begin Segment 18>
And
then I was going, from their house, I was going for New Year's up to my
friend's in Koriyama, Fukushima. And that really was the most amazing experience
because, again, they were very old-fashioned. Her mother made kimonos,
made
And I spent a good week or two there, it felt like we spent a long time there, and it would snow, of course. And I did the traditional thing of going to different homes, we'd visit some of her friends, we visited and had the Japanese new year's food. So I became very close to their family, we'd go there for the holidays, go skiing there up in that area, and then actually participated in her brother's wedding when he got married, I was the person that poured the tea, or sake, that was sake. Yeah. And I've stayed close to her. I don't know if I'd say close to her, but whenever I go to Japan, I see her, even though it may have been years between. Like the second time I went to Japan was really twenty years later, and we still got together. And we lived together in my last quarter in Japan when the school closed. So like here, in the spring of 1969, the school closed down and we were given a choice: come back, you won't lose anything, you stay, you won't lose anything, it's your choice. You're still a student. If you choose to stay, you lose out a quarter, which I did, and I had to do an extra quarter at Berkeley. I said I'm staying, I'm not going to go home yet. So I stayed in Japan, lived with my friend in a six-and-a-half tatami mat room, and I was teaching English, so I did learn some responsibility. I was aware of my parents, it was not cheap being in Japan. So I taught English all through. So I taught a young woman that was working at Sony, I would go there and her mother would cook dinner for me and so I had nice, good food. I taught Keio students, I taught a couple businessmen, had conversations with them. So I had different jobs teaching English throughout the time I was there.
And then with my friend, we traveled about three weeks to Kyushu on a hundred dollars. I always like to say this because she didn't have a lot of money, nor did I. So we said if we can do it on a hundred dollars, we will do, we will travel around Kyushu. So got our backpacks, we made musubis, we got on the train that was not the shinkansen. A lot of stops, by the time we got to Beppu, we were sick and tired of musubis so we threw them all away. Said, "We have to eat some real food." So we traveled around Kyushu, all the way around, and that was another great experience. But I also learned that, because I was so damn... not shy, I wouldn't say the word... well, I guess I was shy. But because I was Japanese American, I didn't speak Japanese. So then I'm the fish out of water in Japan, and because I looked Japanese, very Japanese, and I could kind of get away with acting Japanese, but I couldn't speak, so I really hesitated to speak much. And so I would rather be lost for two hours in the train station at Shinjuku than ask for directions. Because every time I opened my mouth to ask, it'd be like, either, "What's the matter with you?" Like either being yelled at, or, "Oh, you're American," then it'd be like a different kind of reaction. But either way, it was so uncomfortable. So I didn't really learn as much Japanese as I probably could have, because I didn't speak as much as I should have. So I listened a lot, so it's kind of like children, babies, how you learn language. You listen a lot, so I listened a lot, and I think I picked up how people use it. So my Japanese sometimes is more like rough. I'd be thinking about my, "Oh, yeah, that's what they would say, 'ikuzo,'" stuff like that. So I would kind of think I'd want to say that, be like, "That's not quite a proper thing to say," but in my mind, I'm thinking these things. So I think I actually learned a lot, just that I didn't speak it.
BN: And then you mentioned the school closed down in the spring? Why did it close down?
KN: They went on strike. So there were strikes all over Japan, and I would see like Nippon Daigaku, they'd jump on the train with all their banners and stuff, and then they'd jump off at Nihonbashi or whatever it was, the stop, and it'd be like... but I was not into politics. I was writing back and forth to my friends that were in Berkeley, and I have to look back at these letters, because they were telling me what was going on. I mean, I left Berkeley at a time that there weren't a lot of political... well, maybe there was, I didn't see it. My world was pretty tame. So they were writing about this stuff, was like, I don't even know if it even registered what was going on. I know they were involved in some of the stuff and had differences. I know when I came back, it was like they had been alienated. There was some alienation among my friends because of what had gone at Berkeley, because one, it was rather conservative, and their friends were very more political. So I know that there was that going on. So they were telling me a lot was happening at Berkeley. So yeah, there were strikes. And then I was supposed to come back in June, so I was all ready to go back about a week before, and I said, "No, I want to stay a little longer." That was actually when we did the trip to Kyushu. I just wasn't quite ready to come back, so I stayed a full year. It was like September to August, and my sister would always say, she always accused me of being very self-centered. Because my family was waiting for me to come back, and eager for me, and I said, "No, not coming back."
<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.
<Begin Segment 19>
BN: So you came back and then you went right back to...
KN: Okay. So I came back, and another trauma, because I wasn't really ready to come back, but I came back. But I came back with, again, no answers to the question of "where do I belong?" And I know I didn't belong in Japan, because I tried every way to be Japanese, except for speaking. I acted, tried to act Japanese, I was bringing home things. You try to do the Japanese thing, I lost like fifteen pounds, had ulcers when I got back, because I had been trying so hard, it was like a lot of stress. And when I got back, I went back to the doctors, I think, and I asked, I think they had to prescribe sedatives. So I think I took it for a bit, and it wasn't good, and then when I came back, and I would look at American people or white folks, basically, they looked really grotesque, literally, really, features were grotesque. It was like, "Oh, my god, they're so alien, like alien creatures." And I said to myself, then I said, "Why aren't people walking more?" My parents had bought a house while I was gone because they had to leave. They were evicted from their home because the convalescent home bought the house, so they had a very short time to buy a house, and my sister helped them buy it because she was a social worker, so she had the down payment, and her boss, my mother's boss. So they bought a home not too far away in Silver Lake on Benton Way. So I came back to a different home, and I said, "I'm going to walk to downtown, I'm going to go downtown." They said, "You're going to walk?" I said, "Yeah, I'm going to walk, we walk all the time." Forty-five minutes is nothing. So I'm walking downtown, I don't know where I was going, but everything was just very different. And I had a hard time shaking loose, or getting back into American culture, and I didn't feel like I again belonged, and I was not ready to go back to Berkeley and I thought, I was actually really, really depressed. And I think I said, "What is the point?" I don't belong here, I don't belong there, there's really nothing.
And I don't know what clicked, I don't know what changed, but at some point, I just said, "Okay, I'll go back to Berkeley," it was time to go back. So maybe I didn't have much time to think about it, because it was already August. So I did go back, and from pictures, I look pretty happy. My friends had a house, and this house, oddly enough, on Channing Way, became the first J-Sei place, so odd to me, across from the Buddhist Temple. But that was where my friends were living, and I lived there, and my roommates were, my good friend had gotten married, the political ones, but I saw them before they left. They had gotten married, and he was going to go to med school in New York. So they left, and my other friends came in and we had another roommate. But it was an African American friend, and so we were, it was great. It was a great year coming back, and I found Asian American Studies. And I want to say that I took the first Asian American Studies class, because I think '69 might have been the first class, but you'd know better than me. Because I don't know how I got there, somebody told me that there were these classes. Did I see a flier, or was it somebody telling me? Nobody went with me, but I went to... I recall, might have been the theater building. And people were gathered there, and they were talking about these classes, and all these different choices, and I just was like, okay, this is it. And I signed up for the first class and met all these people, all these Japanese Americans or maybe Asian Americans, that were totally not like the Japanese Americans that I had known before. And they were probably some of the same people, but they were not like the people I'd known before. It was like, "This is really it." So it was sort of like I found the answer.
<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.
<Begin Segment 20>
BN: Who taught that first class?
KM: Well, how I ended up in this little grouping of people that were talking about a community class. Neil Gotanda was one of the people, and I think he taught it because he was around. I really don't know who taught it, frankly, because I think it was a joint class. It's so vague to me, I don't know where my head was at. But it was like we had San Francisco State people in the class. I remember Rich Wada was in the class and became kind of good friends with him. And Kaz Maniwa, I feel like he was teaching the class, because he was kind of one that was talking the most. But it was all really kind of semi-student taught, right? And we were going to San Francisco, we went to San Francisco State, we heard different people speak, visited different community events, organizations. And I remember Mo came up and talked to our class, and I remember looking at his shoes, I don't know why I was looking at his shoes, but just everything was so new for me.
BN: You're talking about Mo Nishida?
KM: Mo Nishida, yeah, he came up with another person, and they were, like, so different. But it was an exciting year, or exciting quarter, I should say, because there were sensitivity groups going that I went to, and that's the first time I felt like, I guess I like these people now. They're okay, they're not like... even though some of them, in fact, that same guy that I had a blind date with, he was in this sensitivity thing, and I thought, you know what? I have compassion for him, he's okay. Even he was okay. So it was like, it was great. It was great because I finally started to feel like I liked Japanese Americans, and I liked being Japanese American. Even though I didn't really learn much history, except through the community stuff, nothing was written, we didn't have a book, we met in each other's apartments, I cooked, we cooked for each other, stuff like that. So Asian American Studies was really good. I met a lot of people that I still, from Northern Cal especially.
But I kind of drifted away from that grouping, because I ran into a guy that I liked -- Issay will love this story -- that I had gone to Japan with. And I really liked him even then, sort of like a far-off kind of thing. A Chinese American, he was kind of an artist guy. So he actually, driving up the street, I was going to sell some books or something, I was driving down, he's walking up Telegraph, "Oh my god, there's that guy, hey." And then we reconnected. And that took me away from Asian American Studies. But it was always in my mind, it had done its work. And then I think because my sister was a social worker, she met some people that were Japanese American, they were organizing Asian American social workers, so she was part of that group with Jim Miyano and other folks that were organizing people. So she told me about that, and she told me about the JACS office. So in the springtime, I came home, and I went down to Little Tokyo to the JACS office that I met Ray Tasaki, who was originally part of Hardcore, I think. He said, "Come on in," and he had an afro, "sign up." And I said okay, I signed up to be a volunteer, and never heard from again, but I signed up. And so I said, "Okay, I'm going to come back here when I graduate."
BN: And this was spring of '70s?
KM: It's the spring of '70, and because that was Cambodia, invasion of Cambodia. So we were shut down, so Berkeley was shut down. I stayed in Berkeley, but I got involved. Because the whole campus was involved. I wasn't necessarily involved in Asian American Studies, I was involved more through my psych class because we had a really progressive professor. So we were doing everything around antiwar, war stuff. The demonstrations on campus, the first time we were being face to face with machine guns, and the national guard, stuff like that. Even if you weren't political, you became political. But we were doing stuff in our psych class, like organized people did leaflet at Fort Bragg, for example. I think I signed up, but I never ended up going. I ended up making "peace pretzels" all night long. I made it for, like, two hundred people in my psych class. I can't imagine who that person was, but you know, passing it out in the class. But that was the atmosphere, and everybody was fine with it. So just remembered the demonstrations and being part of it, SDS, and I feel like I heard Richard Aoki speak, because I remember some guy, but all if it was kind of a blur, because it was so intense. So that was my year. And so, of course, on top of already having lost a quarter of school, that was one year I had to stay. So I stayed an extra quarter at Berkeley from the fall of '70 to December, and I was living at the I-House. Again, I kind of said, "I don't want to stay in this house with friends. I mean, it's nice, but I think I need a break." I think I also broke up with the guy that I really liked. And so it was kind of into my, like, feeling sorry for myself kind of mode. Said, "I'm going to live at the I-House, do something different, maybe meet some different people, be my lonely self," and then getting into transcendental meditation. So I did my little solitary trip thing, and I lived there for a quarter. So it was fine, met some people, and then I took... what was it called? Now I can't even remember what I took, but it was a martial arts. And I remember people saying, "Don't go back, don't go back to L.A., stay in Berkeley." I really loved Berkeley, and if I hadn't broken up with that person, then that was still the circle of people, I would have stayed, but it was like, again, why would I stay? I said, "I'm going to go back to L.A. I know there's things there, I'm going to go back." And I think it's home. So that's kind of... kind of the year.
<End Segment 20> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.
<Begin Segment 21>
BN: And then before I turn it back to Issay, I wanted to ask, through this period -- and this will recur later -- but did you know about, I mean, did your parents talk about their camp experience at all growing up or even taking Asian American Studies courses? Did that prompt you to ask them about it? What did you know about their wartime story at this point?
KM: You know, we had heard stories, bits and pieces, but about camp itself, not a lot until my sister asked my mother, who had said that she had been at the gun club, they told her to go home because something had happened, and then the family being in a flurry to get rid of things and to find a way to leave, but they couldn't, and her father being picked up. We thought it was after Pearl Harbor, but it was much later. So a lot of things were mixed up, and they had been at the Tulare Fairgrounds. She didn't say much. She said that her job was to escort a mental health patient, mentally ill folks, on the train, that's what she said. She ended up being a nurse's aide for a while at Gila working under one of the, Marianne Masaoka, she married one of the Masaoka brothers, so she remembers that. She was a nurse's aide, and she didn't talk much about the conditions. She didn't talk at all. I didn't hear about the barracks, didn't hear about the food, none of that. She didn't talk about her family, what her father did. I think there father was a cook, though. And the only feeling she expressed was, at first she didn't say much, she just said that, "It was okay, it got us off the farm," which it did. And then later on, at the end, she really did say it was the worst thing that ever happened to their family, so she said that. But she always talked about the good times, going to Chicago and really loving that kind of experience, the fun she had with her girlfriends and living on... I can't even remember the name of that avenue around Lake Michigan, Geneva Terrace. She'd throw out these names of places that sounded like, "Oh, it was really great, what a fun time it sounded like," and really neat places, you know. The Kanne family, and loaning her a car, and she had an accident, and they said, "It's okay." So it just sounded great, and then meeting my father at a dance or whatever it might have been. And my father had really good memories of being in the military and being in Chicago as well. And he wasn't in camp. He visited his family, but he didn't even talk much about that. And I just asked my father how he felt about the end of the war, because Japan lost. And he's so funny, he just said there was fliers coming down or something like that, and said the war is over, he said, "Oh, the war is over." That's it. But I did ask him, I said, "Did you think that the emperor was a god?" Because he's Kibei, raised in Japan all that time, and he seriously said, "Yes." And I think he still might have believed him. So I thought, oh, okay. But he was able to reconcile that with his being here in America. Never had any feelings.
<End Segment 21> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.
<Begin Segment 22>
IM: I had a few follow up questions, especially about your time in Japan. So I was curious, you mentioned that they had all of these meetings that, with all the Japanese women smoking cigarettes and things like that. I guess I was just wondering if you could say a little bit more about what influence that had on you. How did that change what you thought of Japanese women at the time, and were you also, you said that there are some things that, when you were in these meetings, you didn't follow everything, but how aware were you of the political situation in Japan while you were there?
KM: You know, I think I was pretty apolitical in terms of understanding. I could hear what they were saying. In my mind, I was thinking, "This is so different from who I am." More concerned about being a non-Japanese, and just thinking how interesting these women are, or how different they are, and not like a Japanese woman. I was really trying hard to be Japanese, so I didn't think I fit into what they were, for sure. I was trying to be more the other way, kind of. So no, I did not identify with them much.
IM: So all of the things around, like, women's liberation that were happening at ICU at the time, it wasn't really the concern for you at all, it was more about fitting in as a Japanese person, not necessarily as a Japanese woman?
KM: Yeah, exactly.
IM: Also just for posterity's sake, I was wondering if you could mention some of the names of the folks that you met during your time in Japan and the people who you were friends with?
KM: Okay. So my good friend was Nobuko Soeda, and then she eventually ended up marrying... she went on these things called caravans, and I never quite understood that, to Osaka. But she eventually ended up marrying someone that she met down there, and he was from the burakumin, and her family disowned her for a time, for marrying a burakumin. And it's funny because I had no conception earlier, or at that time, what she was going through, what that meant. But, yeah, so she was really my good friend that I maintained friendship with. The family that I lived with, the Furukawa family, they were a very nice family, and she is a woman that a lot of Japanese cultural things like the stitcheries, and I have some of that. And she also did tea ceremony, and it's funny because the father, Mr. Furukawa, he was kind of a character. When he would drink at night, he'd walk around the neighborhood -- and maybe this is typical male -- but in his underwear. [Laughs] Hot summer night. But then we would exchange packages after I came back, and my parents, my parents were like that. They felt they had to continue something. He took on the name, one time a package came and his first name was Dick Furukawa. It was my father's name. [Laughs] And I think he took on an American name, and the American name he knew was Dick, my father's name. So that family. And I saw them again when I went back to Japan, and they had two daughters, and one of them came here for some reason, some church thing, and I think I took her to Chino prison for an event we did there, and it was kind of alarming to the host family, but anyway. So that family was very good to me, very, very kind, and then, of course, Nobuko's family was very close. They never came to the United States. Her father was lost coming to Tokyo, because I remember one time they came to Tokyo and said, "Oh, I have to make sure that he was okay, because he was from the country, and Tokyo was a big city for him." So they were that kind of people, they didn't want to come to Tokyo. Her mother continued to make the hantens for me, would send them every once in a while, and I'd get a nice, new hanten. So those are the friends I made in Japan. I didn't make a lot of friends, but I feel like... this is interesting, because I feel like friendships in Japan were different than friendships here, and I can't really quite describe and put words to it, it's just that I feel like there was a deeper feeling. Like there's an emotion that you share, a deeper place that you go to, than you can go to here. Even with friends that I know here, I don't have that same, it's not the same. I can't explain it.
<End Segment 22> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.
<Begin Segment 23>
IM: So also you mentioned that your mother was really, one of her things was that she really wanted you to be very, kind of, American. Was there any kind of ambivalence on her end about you traveling all the way to Japan to discover your roots?
KM: No, I think because it was UC sponsored and part of school, he probably did not feel that way. I mean, okay, she would always brag about her family being much better, higher class than my father's as well. They came from samurai. A lot of people say that, right? But I think they actually did, because his father was a doctor, my grandfather's father was a doctor in Shikoku. But my father's, their business, and that was kind of looked down upon, I suppose, class-wise. So she would always say very negative things about my father's side. His background, the fact that he's from Hiroshima, they were tight, they were stingy, all kinds of stuff, very negative things. But she didn't have anything totally negative about Japan per se, but when they did go to Japan after I had returned -- they went into 1971 -- she was very disgusted with Japan. Because as a Japanese American Nisei, her Japanese was old. It was rough, it was Japanese American, and she's sort of proud, my mother. So when she came back -- she also wasn't very well, she had started, her illness had already started her scleroderma illness. And so she was very exhausted, but she came to the airport four hours early because wanted to leave Japan as soon as she could when the trip was over. But she said, "I don't like Japan because they don't know the words that I do, and they looked at me like," she used the word katsudo for eigakan, old words, they didn't understand, and so she was very upset with that, so she was very turned off. But she was always very kind to people that came from Japan, and they did, people I had met came. And I wasn't even around. She was hosting people I knew, and she didn't even know them. So she was always a very good host, like Nobuko's brother came with their... they were in the market business and they wanted to know how Gelson's Market displayed their foods, so my father showed them around, and when they were in Japan, they were taken around. So they hosted these people, I never met them. So she didn't have anything against Japan, but it was full of contradictions, shall we say.
IM: And then you also mentioned that you had to make all these adjustments to fit in to Japanese society as a student. Can you talk a little bit more about what those changes were? You mentioned that you lost a lot of weight. Was that mostly because of stress or did you have, change your diet, change your hair, clothing, all this sort of stuff? This is all some stuff that I also do when I visit, so I was just curious what you had to do and how you learned that.
KM: It's funny how you pinpoint these things. Well, one is I was taking up a certain amount of space. As an American, you walk a certain way, and when you're also more curious and more obvious in looking at people. So I said, okay, can't do that, just kind of look to the side, don't turn your head and look at people like that, don't make people uncomfortable. Don't draw attention to yourself. All of that, don't stand in the way. Although I was... on the train one time I was grabbed by some guy, and he was a short guy behind me. It was like, where did that come from, you know? And the guy's just like looking this way. And again, because you don't want to draw attention to yourself, you don't yell. Whereas maybe I would have if I thought it was an American, I might have said, "Hey, what are you doing?" or whatever. But then you're embarrassed because you're... why would I be embarrassed? He should be embarrassed. But anyway, so I didn't do that. Didn't talk because I didn't want people to know I didn't understand. And then the biggest thing is I didn't eat and I lost weight, because I didn't want to order food where I didn't know how to order, so I'd have to speak or be by myself eating. And the safest place to eat for a woman was like the kissaten, where you'd have more dessert type food, so it wasn't like a meal. So I would end up eating at places like that. Isn't that kind of sad? I'd be like I'm really hungry, but I can't go there because I'd feel awkward being by myself because it's mostly men, and then I can't order the food because I can't speak. Where am I least conspicuous? Oh, the kissaten. I'll go on there and pretend that I'm just sort of here, so that's what I would do.
IM: So you didn't go out that much, like the nightlife or anything?
KM: I did only with friends. It was interesting because Japan is the first place, first time I ate Korean food, Korean food I was eating in Japan. We went out to Korean food and said, "Well, this is the best food in the world." And then we went to hear jazz, and that was the first time that really I was listening to that kind of music, like "hino teramasu," for example. And I really loved... why am I forgetting his name? He's really famous. Anyway, more like a soulful Japanese singing. So, no, we did go into the international area of Tokyo, where is that? What is that area that's more like...
IM: Like Roppongi?
KM: Roppongi.
IM: So you mostly went out with your girlfriends at ICU, basically?
KM: That were Japanese, so I felt safe. And actually, my friend did get mad at me, the one that, good friend, You could be, she was honest, she said, "You know what? It's hard for me because you don't speak enough," and she's speaking for me all the time, which was true. One thing I forgot to say is that one time... I forgot to say that I left Japan at one point because I was, it was spring, and I was so, felt so enclosed by the society, it's like the whole island, trying so hard, I said, "I have to get out of here." I was feeling like I was suffocating again. So I figured out on two hundred dollars I could take a plane to Taiwan, stay with a friend from Immaculate Heart, in Taiwan for a couple of days, take a refugee boat, it was kind of like a boat that was, I don't know, to Hong Kong, and then take another ship from Hong Kong back to Japan that'll take four days, and I can do it, so I did it. I did it by myself.
IM: So you basically started... I mean, you had this, when you started, you had this three week kind of trip, where everything was, oh, it's so great, you'll get to see all of Japan, and then toward the end, it was kind of like, oh, this is the reality of the country.
KM: But I still liked it, and I really liked the people I had met, that I was friends with, and the students that I taught. Because when I left Japan, they all came to the airport, the students that I taught. And so we had a recording that, unfortunately the recording was stolen, but the recording was on this tape of all the people that I knew, and it was like this guy had a, what they called it was, not a Datsun but it was a sports car. It was a certain Japanese name for a Blue Angel or some weird name. Anyway, he drove me to the airport, so, "I'm driving to the airport in this car." [Laughs] So it was like a really nice group of people that I had come to know and I felt really close to. So I was sad to leave Japan. But again, I had to come home.
<End Segment 23> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.
<Begin Segment 24>
IM: Then I also wanted to follow up on how you came back to Berkeley and got involved in Asian American Studies. So you mentioned all of these guys who were involved in Asian American Studies at the time and building curriculum. I was curious about, what about the women who were involved in it. Did you feel like you could find a place in the, what seemed like a very male space?
KM: Interesting question. I don't remember the women. Maybe it was me. The men were the leaders of the class, that's true. And even these other to guys were, they were guys, Stan and Stan. Stan Abe and Stan Kodani, and Bobby Oshita. Lot of guys, huh? I frankly don't remember any of the women in the class.
IM: Do you feel like that led to some sort of, any kind of bias in the curriculum? Like they focused on the Chinese railroad workers who were the men and...
KM: You know, it wasn't even like that, because there was so little curriculum. And I think it was called... I don't know what the title was, but I know what we did. We went to a class at San Francisco State to hear the teacher there, very well-known guy that I don't hear his name now, maybe somebody knows him. And we heard Rich Wada's father who was a CRA type guy in San Francisco, talk about San Francisco J-Town. And we visited the Issei in working on a project in Japantown. And we just had people coming in to speak. There was no real curriculum. Did I read anything? I don't remember. We had a lot of talking and a lot of listening to people speak. Maybe my mind was just kind of swept up with the whole idea, and people that I feel good about for the first time, and I'm just soaking it all in. Because frankly, I don't... I just remember Neil and somebody else saying, "We want to design a Japantown or community center," and it was like, what? So I was looking at, trying to put all these ideas on paper, and I had done my best, it's huge to me.
IM: So you were soaking it all in, but were you able to kind of express yourself?
KM: I don't think so. I don't remember seeing too much. I don't remember if I had any ideas at that time, you know what I mean? It's like I didn't know anything. Yeah, I don't remember what I said. I don't remember really what we were talking about. They liked my teriyaki chicken.
IM: But you were good friends with all the guys who were...
KM: All the people in the class. Maybe they were all guys in the class. I mean, all my roommates were women, and I was very good friends with them, so it's not like I didn't have women friends, but I don't remember the presence of the women.
IM: So you never told your girlfriends, like, "Oh, you should come to this thing, we're having all these speakers come in"?
KM: We met at our place, but they were... well, one wasn't older, one was younger, actually, she was Chinese American. She was kind of like this trippy, offbeat kind of person. So she was like, hmm, she was very smart, she knew what was going on, but she was not a groupie. She wouldn't be part of that, Jane. The other two were older and they were going to, they were already in grad school studying to be teachers. And I was their younger sister kind of thing, "Oh, she's doing her thing." They were more like looking out for me. Like when I wasn't home and my parents would call, "Where's Kathy?" They'd have to make up stories about why I wasn't there.
IM: So when they were looking out for you, were there anything like... why did they have to look out for you in particular? Was there a certain sense, like, oh, maybe...
KM: Because I was staying over at my boyfriend's place, stuff like that. So then they'd have to say, "Why are you there at eight o'clock in the morning?"
IM: So in terms of relationships within the early movement, how were relationships like among your peers looked at? Like romantic relationships?
KM: Fine.
IM: It was just fine?
KM: Well, you know, because there was also that, I'm calling it sensitivity training, but I don't know what it was called. Then that was kind of a big thing. And because I was into psychology, I was also, gravitated towards that kind of stuff, too. So that whole thing about expressing feelings, I mean, yeah, getting to know people and going out together was, I think, fine, was part of what people were doing.
IM: So there were no hard feelings or love triangles?
KM: You know, I don't think I was, like I said, I think I was kind of deep into it the first half of the year, and I was not involved in any triangles, I don't know. Well, no. I don't remember those kind of things happening. Maybe I wasn't into the environment enough long enough to know that. I just got to know people, went out with some people, then had a roommate that was related to one guy and then she was (relating) to somebody else that was living at our place and caused a lot of trouble. I brought this woman in and so I felt kind of bad, because then she brought her dog in and her boyfriend, and he used to lie around a lot, and we hated him. [Laughs]
IM: So this Chinese American guy that you mentioned, took you away from Asian American Studies for a moment, how did that happen?
KM: Well, I don't think he took me. I took myself away because I always liked him, and I felt like, well, this is meant to be. So when I saw him, it was sort of like, things sort of clicked. I kind of threw myself into it, you know what I mean? And because I was not that experienced, I think, it was kind of that whole mentality of, like, everything is about this person, and he is one of those people that my sister met and kind of grilled. And then he said, "Wow, your sister."
IM: So did you ultimately approve, seal of approval from her?
KM: No, I think none of my roommates approved. They always felt, I think -- and they probably were right -- that I was throwing myself into, and everything I did, like I would probably put myself second to everything. Took care of his garden while he was gone somewhere, like going every day to water, stuff like that. And going over to his place, and he had dog poop all over, got to walk up these steps with dog poop, stuff like that. Yeah, I put myself second, I'm sure, like beck and call kind of thing.
IM: Was he older?
KM: No, we were the same age, but he was an artist, and I was totally enamored, probably.
IM: I might ask, maybe outside, more about this.
<End Segment 24> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.
<Begin Segment 25>
IM: So basically, you graduate college with a psychology degree, and you're talking about JACS and how you volunteered for that, and then you eventually, after graduation, come back to L.A. and work on, kind of, counseling, drug abuse issues. How did that, how did you start?
KM: You know, I was living at home, and I don't remember my first step, but I know that I went to some meetings, I think, and I met some people. And I feel like this is probably how I got into... oh, I met Merilynne Hamano who was at UCLA, but she was also doing some things. And then she invited me, I think, to come to the women's group meeting and picked me up, she lived in Silver Lake. So she picked me up, and that was actually very impactful because... I forgot to write that down. So I went to a meeting in the Crenshaw area, and there were like thirty women at this house, and I was like, whoa. You asked about women, this was all women, and these were women that were all involved. So I meet all these women and I said, "Wow, okay." And this was a women's group, and they're studying sisterhood, it's powerful. And so I get to know some of the women, and we go, one of the first things we did was, besides studying the book, was organize these skits about male chauvinism. And we'd go into Chino prison to perform. And I think we did performances somewhere else, but we created these skits and we'd do these performances, and it probably coincided with the time that I started to volunteer at the JACS office as well. But before that, I was going to these meetings around mental health. I think I meet Shinya Ono, I think, at that time. And I'm kind of debating whether to become a social worker, and I get hired by DPSS, actually, to be a first level bilingual Japanese. My Japanese was actually adequate to be that level of a social worker, and I get offered a job. And by that time, I am volunteering and I say, "No, I'm going to do this." My whole life is going to doing this JACS office, community, I'm not going to work in social work, that's it. So I do some things around education, we're checking out what's happening with young kids in some of the elementary schools, working with a couple of people. That doesn't quite take hold.
And then again with Merilynne, we're kind of looking into mental health and mental health training. I can't really remember if this is the same time that Shinya got a job at Resthaven, but they were doing some mental health work at Resthaven in the community. So we're talking about the role of mental health and thinking it was very western, how do we make it work for us as Japanese American? Because for many of us, sharing our feelings, and also confronting things is not what we do. So assertion training was one of the things that John Hatakeyama was doing. So Merilynne and I went to this training together. Every week we went to his office, and we were talking about how... what's the word? How different it is to be assertive as Japanese Americans, but it's something we needed to do. But it's kind of like not our culture. We don't really want to do that, but sometimes we have to do it. So had a lot of discussions and stuff like that about it. And then I started to get involved in the JACS office. And to get thrown into this area called Youth and Drugs Division, they had all these areas. They had Medical Division, and I can't remember the other one, but Youth and Drugs. And I thought, "I don't really know anything about youth or drugs." I mean, I'm a young person, but... especially drugs, I mean, the only thing I knew about drugs was a little bit of weed and a little bit of peyote, but nothing else.
So I'd meet these guys from the west side, people like Nick Nagatani, Greg Fukuda, Larry Iba, so different from me. And we'd start working with young people that are overdosing, or that "overdose," using drugs, we'd get calls from parents. "My daughter is gone," or whatever, we'd have people would go out running, looking for them. Then that was the summer, and I don't know if it was one month. I think that's wrong, but thirty-one young people overdosed that year? I can't believe it was one month, but it could have been. And it became a big thing because people were saying that they had heart attacks, and we said no. Heart attacks? No, not really. It was denial. So again, we were saying our community needs to confront, needs to be open, that we need to talk about this. Not everybody is doing well in school, there's a lot of reasons why. And so the JACS office along with, I think, the JACL, because they were right across the hall from the JACS office, and there were a lot of young people working there like Warren, Victor Shibata, Ron Wakabayashi, was sort of over that area, and Willie Fujinami. So they're working over there, and I think the idea started because of that. So the Asian Community Drug Offensive, I'm a little fuzzy on this because I was new. And the JACS board all kind of launched this offensive called the Asian Community Drug Offensive, because there was big press conference, and I remember dressing up and being told, taken over to the Horikawa restaurant where they had this press conference, and I didn't know anything. But somehow I was thrust into this situation where I was supposed to be part of this, help lead it. And the first press conference, actually, I didn't even know if I said anything or what, but this Asian Community Drug Offensive's role was to talk about the overproduction of drugs by Eli Lilly Company, and also to talk about the drug problem in the community, and to bring it out. So we had two things going on. A petition about the production, and we had a plan of talking about teach-ins to bring our community and start talking about why we have a drug problem. So that was what I was working on and working, one of the main things I did.
And then with Nick, Greg and Larry, we were looking at why were so many people overdosing, what was the problem? And one of the things we said, besides the identity, was the communication in the family. So we said, "Let's start a parents group." And I don't know what we were thinking, but again, the philosophy of the JACS office, and we thought we could do anything. We'd serve the people, relate, educate, organize and mobilize. So I don't know how we figured this out, but we decided that we were going to start a parents group. And somehow we had the support of the social workers that were at USC, four or five of them. And we had been working some with Amy Mass, but not much, but she was somehow in the picture. So she was like the mentor person. So we started having these meetings in about '71, '72, in Senshin Buddhist Temple, because George Abe was involved with us. He said, "Oh, we could use Senshin, we could meet there." So we reached out to the parents and to the young people. We thought we'd get the kids, too, the kids fell out, the parents stayed. So we had these groups that had social workers leading them, discussion groups about family communication. Shinya led a Japanese-speaking group, and then we'd all get together afterwards and talk about... I don't even know, we would all get to come back, assemble, talk together about... and it was really quite good. And we met every week, and people would come, and at the end of a session, we'd have a huge potluck, and even my father participated, I don't know why. He came to the Japanese-speaking group. My father is a curious guy, so he came to the Japanese-speaking group. Then we'd have these potlucks, and at the first potluck we had, we had someone playing the flute, my father did shigin, Reverend Kodani was starting the taiko, so they played the taiko. It was just very homey. So that was kind of... I think, actually, a very good example of what a project like that could be. Created a little community of people. And we were employing mental health techniques in the small groups. They were having these discussions and talking to people, sharing what they felt. It was all, of course, private, confidential. But yeah, so that was one of the first projects that I worked on along with the Community Drug Offensive, all about drugs.
<End Segment 25> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.
<Begin Segment 26>
IM: So a lot on JACS and the drug efforts. Just before this gets lost, I wanted to just circle back really briefly to this women's group that you mentioned. So did, what came out of that for you, participating in this group? I take it it was kind of like study group as well as kind of a political action group as well, because you're doing these skits, but what came out of it for you?
KM: You know, things were moving very quickly in those days. This is the beginning of 1971. I met a lot of women that I didn't know, and for the first time, I think that I liked women, got to like women, right? Because before that, it wasn't JA women and Asian women. Like you said, I didn't really meet that many women in the classes, even though I had roommates that were women that I liked. But women that were both political, involved in community, and different, and from L.A., they're L.A. women. None of them were from Maryknoll, or from my Immaculate Heart days. So they were very different, lot of west side type women. But I did notice within the women's group, there was kind of a hierarchy, some of us talked about it, I remember, but some don't remember this. But there was like, they're called the Heavies, like the women that sort of dominated and you didn't really want to contradict too much. Then there were like the middle group that was, people were accepted or didn't rock the boat too much, likeable, and then there were the people that were kind of the outs. Not outs, but they were the people that may have... you know, it's almost reminiscent of women treating women in Maryknoll, like not picking on them but kind of picking on the women that maybe cried too much or weren't strong enough, stuff like that, too vulnerable. Yeah, I observed that. And then, again, watch out for that kind of thing. But a lot of those women I did become close to, and still close to the day, not all. And then eventually lived with some of them in the collective. So that was, several of them moved into the collective.
IM: For posterity's sake, who were some of the women who were involved, and also, was it a kind of racially, class-wise, diverse group, or was it mostly just kind of Sansei?
KM: It was both Chinese and Japanese. Because like May Chen, Sandy Wong, Miye Iwataki, Evelyn, Merilynne was in there, Wendy Mori. I remember meeting Carrie, but I don't remember being in the meeting. And Carrie...
IM: So that's Carrie Wong?
KM: Yeah. Candace Murata. But there were a lot of different women. Anyway, I can't really remember all the names now.
IM: So within... you said that there's this hierarchy. Where did you fall in this hierarchy?
KM: I'm the safe middle at that time. I didn't want to be on the bottom, the picked on one. Maybe I was too new, I was too unknown. I didn't grow up with a lot of them, and I didn't go to school with a lot of them. They had either gone to Cal State Long Beach together or they grew up together on the West Side. So I was probably safe in that way.
IM: So who were the heavies?
KM: Oh, I have to say they probably don't think they were.
IM: Well, that's something that a heavy would say.
KM: Oh, really? I didn't know what. I think I brought it up one time. Well, I think Carrie, Miye Iwataki, probably May Chen, there was one more person I can't remember. I don't know if Evelyn was a heavy. Maybe.
IM: Do did you... I take it you discussed all of these, you discussed books and you kind of studied together, questions of male chauvinism and things like that?
KM: We didn't study male chauvinism. I mean, Sisterhood is Powerful is the only book I remember reading and studying. And then we had more like discussions. But to be honest, again, so you're talking about Asian American Studies class, what did I learn, what did I study, what did discuss? I don't really remember a lot. I just remember the people and I remember what we did, places where we met.
IM: So where were the places that you met? There was this house in Crenshaw, right?
KM: That was her mother's home. The first place I went to was like, oh. It's a big living room with everybody surrounding, sitting in chairs, and wow. Never saw so many women like that together.
IM: So it really was just...
KM: Impressed me.
<End Segment 26> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.
<Begin Segment 27>
IM: Okay. Were there any major ideological or just interpersonal...
KM: Not political at that time. Because I think the women's group actually kind of ended when the collective started becoming more important, I think. And also when politics became more, people had their own political groupings. Started doing more work in their own area. This is kind of early when people were not as integrated into specific political groups or collectives or communities, perhaps, projects like that. So no, I mean, there were probably interpersonal things as there always are, I remember Merilynne cried a lot, and people were not very patient with her. And it kind of carried over into, she was very instrumental in starting Asian Sisters because of her own background. Very vulnerable because she herself had been, had gone through a lot as a woman and has different experiences. So she started Asian Sisters, and it was a very important group because a lot of young women, she identified with them, were going through a lot, identify, self-hate, and she worked with a woman named Clara who overdosed eventually. Clara had been seeing Amy Mass. Her death impacted a lot of people. So Merilynne wanted, got funding, so this is another dilemma is that at the same time that this whole period of time, there was funding coming in, federal funding, people were saying, "Oh, that's kind of a dangerous thing," we were wary of funding coming in, because we knew that it could create problems and people were going to do things for the money versus the work, and we never did anything to be paid before.
IM: Before JACS?
KM: Uh-huh, JACS office or anything. But she applied for funding, I think it was okay, but she applied for funding for Asian Sisters. And then we said, "Well, we should have a group of people talk about the funding." And so it got a lot of people that were working in Chinatown, Yvonne Nishio, May, other people, other Japanese American women, to talk about what should be done with the funding. And suddenly it became, "Let's have a women's center with other projects and programs," and not just about drugs, not just about Asian Sisters, not just about young Japanese American women, which is Merilynne's original intent. And so people were very dominant, these voices became very dominant. And I felt, being with her in those meetings, and coming out of the drug war myself and the JA community, that that was needed. But I could hear what they were saying, but the way that it was handled was not good. Because also, perhaps it's also the way that Merilynne communicates, maybe a little bit too, "I feel sorry for myself." So she put herself in a vulnerable position and people were not very kind. So she lost that battle and it became the women's center and not Asian Sisters only. That was not a pretty scene, frankly, I think.
IM: Okay. So when people kind of shut Merilynne down, was it mostly, like who was responsible for that?
KM: I don't know if I should say this part, but they were very dominant women, most of them Chinese American women, I think. I don't remember the other voices being that strong, but they were very authoritative women that people looked up to. Me, too. And they spoke very clearly, very strongly, and very hard to contradict.
IM: So they thought maybe a women's center that is all-encompassing versus one that was solely focused on Asian women or solely focused on drug problems would be the way to...
KM: Yeah. And they were probably right, but there was a harshness to it that... and Merilynne can be hard, to be honest. She's passed away now, so maybe I feel okay saying this, but she was not easy. We bumped heads a lot, too, she could be very stubborn and very, "this is my idea, this is how it's going to be," and I was like, no. I don't want to do it that way, it was very pushy. So it became hard. Her personality wasn't easy.
IM: So a lot of things came out of this women's group that weren't just limited to having discussions on this one book or doing these skits, but it was really about this network of women who knew each other and were involved, would eventually become involved in different initiatives? Is that kind of...
KM: The women that were in it?
IM: Yeah.
KM: Yeah. I think the women that were in it did become involved in many different initiatives, because that's why they were part of the women's group, because they wanted to be involved, but they knew that women's issues were something they cared about and were seeing problems in areas of work like the JACS office, for example. Because that was one of the early areas, right? So I don't know if it continued to be a network after that, you know what I�m saying? Because I don't remember it being a network for me, I don't think. Because it was really more the people I was working with after that, or living with.
<End Segment 27> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.
<Begin Segment 28>
IM: So approximately from what year until what year was the women's group, and was there an official name for it?
KM: Asian Women's Group. I don't know. I actually don't remember when it, if and when it actually ended.
IM: But by the time that you had entered into it, it had already been running for some time?
KM: I don't know. I don't think so, but it could have been. I'm curious about that, because I was asking, I wanted to ask Evelyn, but I should ask Miya Iwataki, because I think they were there at the very beginning of the women's group. Yeah, I kind of came in at the point where they were already studying, and I do think, though, I don't know if the skits were created yet, but I think I was part of helping them create some of the skits, but I don't know if I just acted in them.
IM: I didn't know you were an actor.
KM: Very much so.
IM: A thespian. Do you remember any of the content of the skits? Like what were the topics?
KM: The only one I remember is about making coffee for a meeting and running stuff off, things like that. And I don't really remember what else. We must have had like three or four different skits, we actually turned it in to the Chino men's prison. It must have been something they can relate to, I don't know. So must have had some skits that were more relatable, but we did it for them, kind of funny.
IM: Do you remember what role you played in the skit at all?
KM: No, there were some pictures, dim pictures in maybe Gidra. Gidra may have had some photos, I think. But I don't remember.
IM: And what was the reason why you chose the Chino men's prison to do these skits?
KM: I don't know if we chose it or if it was part of... you know, there was a thing called Joint Communications that came out of the JACS office. Tommy Chung was the one that was sort of leading that area of work, but they went in to visit people in the prisons. And I never did that per se, but I remember that Judy Chu did that with then-boyfriend Steve Yoshida. So I remember meeting Judy Chu at that time, but they were going into prisons, California, and I believe it was probably connected to that work, to go into Chino. They said, well, we can go into Chino, you had to get a lot of clearance stuff done, but we'd take a bus in there and we did it. I had nothing to do with arranging it.
IM: But do you remember the reception of these kids among the inmates?
KM: I don't.
IM: It's kind of an interesting, for me, it's just interesting that all of these kind of young Asian American women radicals would be doing this skit about coffee for the inmates.
KM: I don't know if we did the coffee one, but there were several skits. I just remember some of the, meeting some of the young men later, one guy in particular came out of Chino, but I don't remember at the time, I think it was so intense going in. And then I was also distracted because I had this young girl from Japan that was a daughter of the family I stayed with, and we were there for longer than we were supposed to be. And she had to get back to the family, I was very worried and nervous. I don't know if I was totally all present.
<End Segment 28> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.
<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.
<Begin Segment 30>
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.
<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.