<Begin Segment 11>

IM: So you had regular late night meetings in Tomio's apartment? Do you remember, can you describe what the long-term strategy was for organizing, unionizing these workers?

KM: In general, overall workers?

IM: And where did you get, kind of...

KM: Guidance?

IM: The guidance, yeah, on doing this?

KM: Well, you know, Lucy, other people were part of organizations like IWK or the League. The League was formed earlier, and at East Wind, I was part of East Wind. Did I get guidance from East Wind? Maybe. Maybe I was even asked to do this work from East Wind, I don't know. But we were starting to talk about merging with the League and talking with IWK. I was actually part of some of those discussions, like going to San Francisco to talk about merging, and I always feel sort of like, what's that word now, "imposter"? Because I really didn't feel like I understood what was going on, but I had to be part of these discussions like, "I don't know, I don't feel like..." anyway. But I had to do it. So yeah, we were part of these discussions, I think we got guidance a lot from the League, and I must have gotten guidance from East Wind, but I was really kind of following the lead of Lucy, the people that were really providing the leadership and learning from them and discussing things with them. Long term strategy, I think we just talked, there were a lot of restaurant workers that are Japanese, and also Latino, but Japanese restaurant workers that don't know their rights, and the restaurants are just really abusing them, so we need to just get out there, so we continued to do that on that work, with the workers, actually. And I continued to do that work after I started working at LTSC, so we would get some referrals, people would call, and there was a restaurant called Shogun restaurant, and that was another somewhat long-term issue that, supporting the workers there and some of their complaints. I think that... what is the organization called now? The labor... OSHA, is it OSHA? The one that checks out complaints. Anyway, you can call OSHA...

IM: The Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

KM: You can call anonymously, so we had some of that, we urged people to call so that they could investigate and visit the restaurants and look at... because a lot of the restaurants would charge people for mistakes and make them, pay for their own uniforms being cleaned. There were several things that restaurants would do and they weren't supposed to do. So some of those came in, I think there were worse things than that, but I can't remember all the complaints. But David Monkawa was part of organizing that, so we worked together.

IM: I guess aside from language, accessibility, hours, and just the general way that management could rely on this distrustful skinny guy, what were some of the just basic challenges, I guess, of organizing restaurant workers in particular?

KM: Well, a lot of it was their own fear, so there were very few that felt comfortable, because maybe their status and then not knowing their rights. We tried to have a workshop for workers, and this is when the New Otani was, organizer was happening, the Japanese workers were very afraid. And we had a workshop set up at Little Tokyo Service Center and we had to be very careful about how do you get the information to them, and even then, I think, when they came, we had one volunteer that was like a Nisei guy that was real gruff, and he kind of talked to someone a little bit roughly, he said, "What are you here for?" and it scared them, and I think they left. So it was not easy to get workers to not be afraid. They're afraid of the management, losing their job, people would tell on them. So actually, the woman that kind of stood up to the Shogun management was not Japanese American, I think she was Thai. They were very afraid of losing their jobs.

IM: So it sounds like most of your interactions were generally with Japanese workers. Is that true, and if so, then who was responsible for talking with the Latino workers?

KM: You know, aside from Horikawa and then trying to... it was not easy to talk to workers. We really had to rely on getting kind of, I don't know if we flyered them. How do you reach workers, right, unless you're in the restaurant, you hand them something. But I don't think we did that. We did get referrals, I don't know how we got the word out, but people did contact Little Tokyo Service Center, the Shogun one. So there were a couple of cases like that, that I don't know, maybe David Monkawa was a little more assertive in flyering a restaurant, I don't know, or hearing about things. I didn't do that. I don't speak Japanese well enough to do it, probably scare them if I tried to talk. And then the Latino workers, I don't think we had that capability. Well, we tried one time to do some education in Little Tokyo, but you would go during their breaks, but it was hard to get people to come out.

IM: So ultimately when it came to, like, voting to unionize, things were a success?

KM: No, they didn't. Horikawa was not unionized.

IM: So what do you think ultimately was...

KM: Accomplished?

IM: Or what was accomplished, and then what was the primary thing that drove the failure of that campaign?

KM: I don't know if we analyzed it. It did go to NLRB though, so it went to at least that level, and at last education was done about unionizing. I don't remember if the Rafu covered much, but we did demonstrate in Little Tokyo, so I hope they covered it. I don't know. I have to think a little more about this.

IM: I mean, I'm very interested in that.

KM: I think it did accomplish impacting the union, though.

IM: Because they saw the limitations of what they could do?

KM: Because they weren't even organized, they didn't care about organizing these restaurants in the Japanese American community or almost anywhere really. They didn't care about languages.

IM: That's really, I mean, HERE has a difficult history for sure.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.