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IM: We'll get back to fun in a second, but I do want to know a little bit more about, you mentioned that friendships would be split over politics or ideology, and that the movement's very serious, people were very disciplined. Can you tell me a little bit more about some of the ideological differences people had? If there were friendships that were made or destroyed or relationships that were made or destroyed over it?

KM: Well, those of us that worked in Little Tokyo, and the collective kind of centered around, well, East Wind was also the collective that, that political group that formed out of the collective and other people that thought similarly. But The JACS office, the Japanese American Community Services - Asian Involvement office, actually spawned a lot of groups that were self-help groups in the community, in working with all different ages and types of people. And our belief was that even though we worked in Little Tokyo, primarily with Japanese Americans, we still believed in Third World unity, but we felt that we all worked within our own communities, but connected in support of other communities, that we were basically doing the same thing. And also internationally, the Third World Solidarity, well, extended to International, colonies that were fighting colonizers. But it also meant that we also supported working people in our community. So there was two things, sort of the national question was kind of one of the big issues that was dividing the politics. So if some people, like in the Storefront, believed in working with all different nationalities at one time, and didn't really subscribe to the idea of JA, Japanese community focus kind of thing. And we thought that it was perfectly, it made sense for us to focus on our community, but also to link up. And so we went to Wounded Knee. It was all these other issues, police brutality. I don't remember doing a lot about police brutality, but I remember meeting people and talking about that issue when we went to Wounded Knee. So it was kind of like, we just saw ourselves as the same struggle, although we were focusing on the Japanese American community. So it was a lot of discussion about the national question and how they're aligned with the working class struggle.

IM: So within the collective, people generally thought... where did they kind of land on the national question?

KM: No. So the collective and East Wind, because we were centered, a lot of us were working in Little Tokyo or Gidra or sort of JA focused, groups like that. We believed that it was, working in the Japanese community was very valid. It was part of... it was correct thing to do. I think some other people may have talked about this, and I wasn't in LTPRO. I mean, I was in LTPRO, but not in that part in terms of redevelopment, but that's where a lot of the politics seem to be played out, because every group was in there. The Storefront, FANDI, WVO, East Wind. So they were, all had slightly different politics and that was kind of being played out in the redevelopment struggle.

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