Densho Digital Repository - Kathy Nishimoto Masaoka Interview II (Densho ID: ddr-densho-544-23)

<Begin Segment 23>

IM: I think I have to fast forward back to the '90s.

KM: I had no center. Okay.

IM: But you eventually, I mean, your center arrives at some point, right? Did you feel like, after going through the NCRR struggle and all this kind of stuff, you felt a new kind of confidence or...

KM: Oh, yeah, you know, I learned a lot through NCRR, I think, and I think I also learned what I bring to the issue or the movement in terms of people often pooh-poohed or laughed at process. I mean, like Bruce Iwasaki would say, "Oh, there she goes again, 'process.'" It's funny, because it's the male kind of pooh-poohing these things. I still felt like those were important things, and that was part of what we're trying to build. It wasn't just about getting things done, it was about how we do things. And I feel like those are valid.

IM: So eventually you are involved in Summer Activist Training? So now you have kind of a role as someone who can mentor younger people. Is that...

KM: Well, I don't know if I looked at it that way, but we didn't get involved until 1995 with Summer Activist Training. To be honest, I think that I actually feel a lot, these last few years have actually made me feel more sure of myself, than maybe all the other previous years.

IM: Okay, so why is that, do you think?

KM: I think there's more validation now and some of the thinking that we had, and even the thinking that I may have had individually that I didn't always say, and the fact that people do believe that we believed that... before, if you would say things like we really need a different kind of world, people were like, laugh it off. But it's like now, if people are saying we didn't, and it's not a thing that people laugh at.

IM: I mean, yeah, you were right for the past fifty years, I guess, and then finally... so do you see that shift coming in a lot of the post-9/11 work that NCRR and other Japanese American organizations have done?

KM: It was limited. The post-9/11 work was good because it reinforced our legacy of solidarity and importance of what we had done, and that's something that Japanese Americans do. I mean, I don't know if I'm overstating this, but I feel like it's almost part of our culture and a lot of our things that we feel like this is who we are. We do stand up for the people, but it's limited. And that's the thing, it's always been kind of limited. I don't think we truly understood what it meant, not just stand up for other people but change the system, which we need to go to that step.