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IM: So you get back to L.A. around the late '70s, I have here that you were involved with Lucy Kubota with Horikawa unionization efforts. Those ultimately don't work out for you, but can you tell me a little bit more about that?

KM: Well, earlier we were doing... earlier and even after the Workers Newcomers Committee had formed, and we were trying to do some education on worker's rights. So we had developed a flier and we were working with a guy named Koichi Ichikawa, who was a bartender at Tokyo Kaikan at the time. And I think Evelyn knew him. And we got to know him and he helped to translate some of the fliers so that they were in Japanese and English. And also Yasuko Sakamoto. She was starting to, she had first come, had just come to Little Tokyo, was working at, I think, I want to say Oriental Service Center, OSC, but I could be wrong on that. Anyway, she was a social worker, so she was kind of helping a little bit, too, with those fliers. I think we were passing them out to the different workers, I don't know how we did it, to Japanese workers. And then Lucy was in L.A. and had gotten a job with Horikawa. And so then I got hired at Horikawa, and then they immediately said, "No, we're not hiring any more Sansei, and we heard that they considered Sanseis troublemakers. So then I got a job at another Japanese restaurant, but I was part of the Horikawa, working with Lucy and others, and meeting with the workers at night. Mainly the Japanese-speaking workers.

IM: But it was, the workers were, they were multi-racial?

KM: They were Latino workers, of course, a lot of the busboys and dishwashers. And then you had the waiters and some of the chefs, teppan chefs and people like that were Japanese from Japan.

IM: So what was that like for you to work with Japanese-Japanese? I mean, you had spent a fair amount of time in Japan. Did that help at all in your interactions? How did you relate to the Japanese-Japanese workers?

KM: Yeah. Because I had spent time in Japan and because I really liked it, and also because my father's Kibei, and it always felt a little different, I really enjoyed working with them. I really enjoyed working with the Japanese workers, they were always more interesting.

IM: You're giving a smirk about them being interesting. Is there something in particular you remember?

KM: Humor, just being more open about things, the way they talked about stuff. I don't know why, I always felt that they communicated differently, their personalities. It was also kind of fun to be with them.

IM: So you had these meetings. I take it that during these meetings you discussed very serious things?

KM: Oh, yeah. So, I mean, those meetings, it was really trying to figure out who could be trusted. So they were kind of always analyzing all the workers and putting them in different camps, because there's going to be a unionizing effort, so they didn't want to reveal that they were talking about to everybody. So they always had this analysis, and we met at Tomio Sakuma's apartment often. They got off at ten-thirty at night or whatever it was, so we met at eleven. So yeah, it's a lot of analysis of the workers and where they were at and how they're going to proceed. And unfortunately, the union was terrible at the time, this is Local 11, it was run by...

IM: The CIA or HERE?

KM: Yeah, HERE, Local 11. It was mainly run by old white men and they had no translation of any of the materials either in Spanish or Japanese. So a lot of the stuff we had to do ourselves.

IM: So Tomio Sakuma was one of the workers there? So do you remember other names of people that you worked with?

KM: Hiro, but I can't remember his last name now. He eventually opened a restaurant with his brother. And that was really an interesting struggle because it eventually went to the NLRB, and so then people, we had to go to the NLRB hearings and work with the NLRB attorneys. And then a lot of us got married in 1979, four couples, and so a lot of the workers came to our joint celebration, and they sang. Then we went to one of their weddings, one of the workers got married, and then the NLRB attorney went to the wedding. And then he eventually started to work for the restaurants, NLRB attorney, oh, my god.

IM: Do you remember who that was?

KM: Eli somebody.

IM: But Eli...

KM: Yeah, he betrayed the workers.

IM: So you basically, during this time, you became a labor organizer. You weren't necessarily one before, but can you just describe what it took to get you there or the kind of... did you have to change any of their...

KM: No, not really, because my parents were working-class people, and my father was a retail clerk, I mean, he worked in the market. And so like I think I said, unions are always, I mean, I didn't really have a political view of unions, but my father was in a union and we had health benefit because of a union. I don't know if he ever had to go on strike, but he definitely believes in the union, so it was always positive. And so I don't think I had any, I never had a negative view of unions, it just seemed like it was normal. I mean, it wasn't alien.

IM: I'm really interested too in, you know, this is a time when a lot of people, especially coming out of the "new left," very suspicious of, I guess, entrenched union leadership, these old white guys, those types of people. So how did you, besides, you mentioned translating materials trying to have very inclusive meetings, things like that. But ultimately how was the balance of power negotiated between what the workers wanted, what you thought the workers wanted, and then what the leadership in HERE wanted?

KM: I think we just pushed for what the workers wanted, and we just did it ourselves like the materials. Eventually that union changed, and pretty soon after, if I recall. And then Lucy, I don't know if she worked for that union, but she might have. She might have gotten a job in that union. They started to see that they had to change. And then, yeah, so there were some changes already occurring, and Lucy was pretty confrontative, very assertive and dogged, so she didn't let go and wasn't afraid. So I think she did a lot of the challenging, I wasn't that, the face of that part. I was working with the workers and meeting them, building support about having, we had pickets outside Horikawa, things like that.

IM: So most of the workers were men that you worked with personally, do you remember?

KM: There were a couple of women, but a lot of them were men. I'm sure there were women because Lucy was a waitress, so there were... at least in the key organizing part, it seemed to be mostly these men. But there were a couple women, too, I don't remember her name, but she was the one that got married to this, they both worked at Horikawa.

IM: So you had a really positive experience, I take it, from organizing workers and made really good connections with them, went to each others' weddings. Were there other interactions that were less positive? I mean, in any kind of organizing campaign, there are people who are super resistant to unionization?

KM: Well, there was one guy we didn't trust.

IM: Okay, so who was that guy?

KM: I don't remember that guy, I just remember a skinny guy. But it was like, okay, do we really trust him? He's probably telling management something, so keep your eye out on him. But the people we knew, they knew the people pretty well, they were pretty sharp. And I think our friendships continued past Horikawa. I still continued to know Hiro after he got his restaurant, and then Tomio, recently we saw him again. And a lot of warm feelings towards many of them, or some of them.

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