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BN: So how did NCRR come about then? Because there are multiple other groups.

KM: Well, I don't know if I'm the best person to speak to the formation of NCRR. I was around. I think I was mainly, again, based on East L.A. Outreach Team, but there were meetings. There was a meeting in July, I think, at the Tokyo Towers. And I recall William Hohri and maybe a JACL person being there, and people talking about trying to come together. And I remember William Hohri saying something about, "If you're not for the class action suit, then you're against it." And so it was kind of like, it's only the class action suit. No, we think we can support all forms. And so I kind of remember that, and then I was pregnant, though. And so in November we had the founding conference, and then in December my daughter was born. So I think I was a little distracted by different things, but I also had kind of been rethinking my political involvement that year because I was pregnant. So while I was involved, I was also getting disinvolved in terms of the League. So East Wind had merged with the League in late '79 or something like that, '80, and I decided that I could not really continue to be involved in a political organization that required so much. Because I was pregnant, and I also said, thought to myself, "I don't feel like I know who I am at this moment. It's like I've gone through this whole decade of sort of struggling to be doing different things and trying to understand the politics and being part of these line struggles and trying to do the theory but not feeling like it was really me, and not feeling comfortable. And so I felt I had lost myself in all of that, and I said, okay, if I'm going to be a parent, I've got to know who I am, or else I'm not going to be a good parent. So I said, "I'm just going to not be part of this." I'll be supportive, I'll be involved, but I can't be in a political organization, although Mark, of course, continued to be, and that was fine. But I didn't feel like I had my own independent bearings. So I went to therapy to sort of work that out.

BN: And then at this point, are you teaching also at this point?

KM: I was. I had worked at a restaurant, and then I started teaching and I was pregnant, yes. So I was teaching, and I continued to teach until the baby came, 'til Mayumi came.

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