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IM: So moving through the '70s, you begin to go, I guess, back to your roots in Boyle Heights.

KM: Well, the collective was in Boyle Heights.

IM: Oh, yeah, okay.

KM: The collective was, oddly, it was in Boyle Heights. And Merilynne also had been -- out of UCLA -- was working on a project called the Boyle Heights Study. I think that might be housed at UCLA, but when we did interviews of Boyle Heights residents, how they felt about themselves and the community. And so one of the things that we started to do as the drug problem didn't wane, it wasn't as intense, the overdosing and things like that. We started to think about, let's start younger, let's think about prevention and talk about education. So that's when we went into the schools, Stevenson and Roosevelt and Hollenbeck, and started to work with some of the younger people. And we were just lucky that there were two Japanese American counselors at Stevenson. And there were a group of Japanese American kids, and so we went in and did these sessions with them, presentations, talks with them, and eventually formed a group called Young Spirits out of that. Lot of these kids went to Roosevelt, so in high school, we formed this group called Young Spirits, and we formed our own group, was East L.A. Outreach Team. So people like Jan Tokumaru, myself, Dennis Kobata, Tamiko, Merilynne, I think Ellyn might have been part of it, my sister... and another guy Richard (Hisamoto). But a bunch of us that decided that we're going to work with young people in Boyle Heights and in the community. Actually, out of that study that Merilynne initiated and oversaw, we felt that Boyle Heights had been historic... we knew that Boyle Heights had been an historic Japanese American community. But it was a working-class community, and when we were there, it was starting to... people had moved away. It was still poorer Japanese Americans that were living in Boyle Heights, older people, people maybe newer immigrants were moving in. But there were still some old families there. So we thought let's organize, let's revive -- this is what we think -- I don't know why, let's revive the Japanese American community in Boyle Heights, we're going to rebuild it. So we had this notion of rebuilding the community, and I think I told you, we said, "Oh, let's start with the food co-op idea, get people together, because everybody likes, we'd start with rice, we'll buy rice together. So we did that, and then the rice was bad. But we did get the community together.

IM: So do you remember any particular young people that you worked with?

KM: Oh, yeah, because we worked with them for several years. Kazuko Kawagishi, I mean, a lot of the younger women were kind of the leadership. The boys were not as...

IM: At that age.

KM: Yeah, they were not as, not putting out much. So it was the women that were kind of much more in leadership of Young Spirits. We took them to Agbayani Village, did I mentioned it before?

IM: Not in this conversation, but to me, personally, yeah.

KM: Yeah. So at that time, there were four youth groups. There was ITA, Involved Together Asians, was working with young people. Yellow Brotherhood was working with young people, high school age. The JACS office had a summer program with young people, and then we were working with young people throughout the year. We had a sports program, we met, we had a summer program, and so we decided as the four youth groups to go to Agbayani Village. We did education before we went, and so we went all together, and one of our members had been, we knew one of the people that was leading the building, Chris Braga, was leading the construction of Agbayani Village, he worked with the Manongs there in Delano. So we knew him, and so we went up there, and I guess we stayed overnight, and we did some construction, so it was good. But we did a lot of education with the young people. We did things about, well, how do we relate to farm workers? What are our roots? So we talked about being rooted in farming and the land. We collected food, I think, for maybe Agbayani Village, so we did, in the community, we did collection of food in Boyle Heights, and tried to talk to people about what was going on. So the young people did that, and they did car washes and fundraisers and dances, and all that other stuff.

IM: So there was Kazuko Kawagishi. Do you remember other young people?

KM: Satoko, Jane, but some of them had tragic ends. Not the women, but some of the boys had been involved in a gang.

IM: Do you feel like you're at liberty to share some of the stories that you remember of some of these youth?

KM: Stories?

IM: Or whether or not they're tragic.

KM: You hear about these things later, not while we were with them. But one of them was in a gang called King Cobras, young one, and I don't know he survived that one. And another young man who was raised by his mother, his only child, single mother, and I think he got into some gun stuff, and I don't know if it was accident or what, but he died. I don't know how that occurred. I think it was some kind of accident.

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