Densho Digital Repository - Kathy Nishimoto Masaoka Interview II

Densho Digital Repository
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Kathy Nishimoto Masaoka II
Narrator: Kathy Nishimoto Masaoka
Interviewers: Issay Matsumoto (primary); Brian Niiya (secondary)
Location: Los Angeles, California
Date: November 2, 2023
Densho ID: ddr-densho-1000-544

<Begin Segment 1>

IM: This is part two of our oral history interview with Kathy Masaoka. We're here in her home in Los Angeles on a nice warm L.A. afternoon. It's almost 3 p.m., and I'm happy we can continue the conversation. Where we left off last time, we left off around 1971-1972, we had a very lively conversation the last time we met up. I think where we left off basically was we were talking about your entrance into the Community Workers Collective and some of the resistance you faced in your family with your mother, and then some of the, I guess, the beginning of your marriage with Mo. So can you... I guess we can start there and keep things moving, but basically, I would love to know more about how you and Mo got together.

KM: Well, I think that at that point in my life, I was twenty-four, and I think a little bit na�ve and not really as strong as an individual or as a woman at that point. And so there were people that, especially men, that were more leaders in our movement. And in the collective, both Mo and Shinya were considered, or looked upon as sort of the theoretical leaders in terms of the Little Tokyo work. There were other centers, other individuals, but for the collective, Shinya and Mo were like that. And I think that if I look back on it, I didn't really know very much. I wasn't that experienced, I really didn't know a lot of theory, and I looked up to people like Shinya and Mo and were very much, I don't think I looked at myself as an equal, and there was a twelve-year difference. And so when Mo asked many of us, talked about overt racism, a lot of us would be like, at least myself, and I think a few of us would be like, "Overt racism?" I mean, I was never called a name directly that I can recall. Were there small things that happened, yeah, but direct overt racism, no. And so it was like, wow, I didn't really comprehend what he was talking about. So there was a big gap, but I think it was more like the looking up to somebody and being sort of caught up in that, I think.

IM: So Mo and Shinya, they were kind of like the heavy hitters?

KM: Yeah.

IM: And at that point, because you were young and didn't think of yourself as a [inaudible] is what I'm...

KM: Well, I did. I mean, we had a women's group, I think I talked about that, and we were always trying to combat chauvinism and issues. But I mean, I was still really learning at that point, and part of me was still, I think, also back in the... I think I may have mentioned this, too, but I think I believed a more in somewhat spiritual things and things that were not necessarily tangible, and intuition and things like that, and I felt like that wasn't acceptable in that period of time in terms of politics. And there wasn't a place for that kind of sensibility. So yeah, I did feel not on the same level, I guess.

IM: So why do you think there wasn't so much space for that at the time in the collective?

KM: The politics were very hard. We had a lot of criticism, self criticism, discipline, expectations of people. I think we were going from morning 'til night with meetings, so we met in the collective from ten-thirty to twelve-thirty twice a week. And all of us were expected to do certain things. And as that period was getting more intense in terms of political thought and differences, and being sort of like, understanding all that, I was just trying to keep up with that kind of thinking, it was kind of alien to me, actually, in a lot of ways.

[Interruption]

IM: Anything about these self-criticism sessions?

KM: Well, I mean, we had them pretty frequently. They were supposed to be helpful, and I think they were, but we were trying to become different people. Like we were becoming socialist men and women, and we studied Che and things like that. And so I can't remember, maybe it's harsh at times, but I don't really remember that. I mean, it wasn't fun exactly, but I think they were helpful. But to me, the whole mood of everything was very serious, it was serious times and we were dealing with a lot of issues. The Black Panthers were being killed and we were just trying to develop our perspective in politics. So everybody was very serious about things and there were divisions that were occurring, some friendships that you had were not friendships anymore, depending on your politics. So it was a hard period. Not a lot of... I mean, we also had fun, I don't want to say we didn't have fun because we were young. We did have fun, but there was a certain, I think our collective was probably a little more disciplined than others.

<Begin Segment 2>

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.

<Begin Segment 3>

IM: So we'll get to LTPRO in a bit, I think. But I want to circle back to this, what you mentioned about having fun in the collective. What kind of things did you do for leisure as a group or maybe with other people outside of the collective?

KM: Well, we didn't have a lot of money, because we didn't get a lot of money. WE all put our money together and we got like twenty-five dollars a week. So the main fun was really our house parties, so the different collectives had house parties. There were two or three collectives on the west side and then our collective. So people would have parties, and that was kind of the main way we had fun. But I remember going to like fundraisers and events like that, teatros in the Latino community. Of course, people like Chris and Joanne and Charlie, the three of them came out and went to events.

IM: Chris, Joanne and Charlie?

KM: Nobuko, now known as Nobuko, but the three of them would come out and do events, yeah. And I don't know if we went to concerts so much, I don't know if we could afford it. Mainly within community, community events. We put in our own events, street fairs or things like that. And I have to say that there were drugs involved in these parties. I remember at the collective one time, I think we always said it was kind of like putting people in charge of somebody else. It was like you're in charge now, make sure nothing bad happens, because somebody else is going to be either acid or something else. And so I remember one time somebody outside the collective said, "Okay, can you be in charge?" Because we didn't know who was going to be doing what. So that was part of it, too, I guess it's okay to say.

IM: So drugs were permissible within the...

KM: Yeah, they were, they were.

IM: Was there a particular reason why they were okay for such disciplined socialists?

KM: You know, well, I don't want to say names, but...

IM: You can if you want to.

KM: Certain leaders really were into, like, weed, for example. Really subscribed to the benefits of weed and clarity of thought and ideas, so weed was something that a lot of people did, and they felt that it gave them some insight. It didn't do anything for me.

IM: Didn't give you any insights?

KM: No. And then others, other leaders were into acid. And so dropping, and again, kind of like really taking off and getting deep into thought, looking at old photos, it was kind of like, I think because they saw the value in it. But it was part of the scene, it was part of the times, so it wasn't seen negatively.

IM: So would you say most people in the collective regularly partook?

KM: No.

IM: It was just kind of...

KM: It was mainly at times like that when there was relaxation or a party, not like every day, no. Maybe weed a bit, I think that was probably more often than not, but not acid, that takes too much time. You have to have a lot of time to drop acid.

IM: So all the while that, I guess, drugs are a part of the scene, you're also working to combat addiction in the community, right? Can you tell me more about that?

KM: Yeah. So I don't know if I talked about the Asian Community Drug Offensive?

IM: I think you did a little bit, yeah.

KM: About the teach-ins? So that's a little different because people were taking, overdosing on reds, barbiturates, really to escape, well, again, drugs are an escape. But to escape, and overdosing because of a lot of self hate, and a lot of younger people were doing that. So it was a little bit different in terms of motivation, I think, and the end result was also more disastrous. Most people didn't overdose on weed or... you could have a bad trip on acid, and there were, but mostly it was not as tragic, I suppose. So the drug problem was really the reds and barbiturates and heroin. So that was a lot more serious, and so that's why we had to campaign to stop the overproduction and to try to deal with what were some of the issues, why people were taking drugs, and try to educate our community not to hide away from problems.

IM: So as a result, this partially culminated in very visible things like Nisei Week, I think?

KM: Yeah, that was actually a really fun thing. I think it was a really good example of how to educate the community but in a way that's accessible. Because we all dressed up in yukatas, we actually created a dance, and we made a mikoshi that was the drug company Eli Lilly, so it looked like the Eli Lilly company and people carried it. And then we had Red Hots, which were like those red candies that looked like barbiturates. And so we created this dance and we threw the reds out, but it was, I can't remember what the song was, but it was something about Eli Lilly and reds. But it was sort of like trying to tell people a story about the drug problem, but in a way that fit in. Whereas the year before, or maybe it was the year after, was totally different. But Nisei Week were part of it, we did the dance, and people who actually were somewhat involved in the drug issue helped with joining in. So it was kind of interesting.

IM: Do you remember as you were organizing this dance and skit, who was responsible for coordinating certain parts of it? Did you choreograph the dance?

KM: No, I'm not a Japanese dancer. But we had a Japanese person that was a Japanese dancer, Vicky Kobayashi, and she was really tough. She knew how to dance, and she also knew how to dress people. So I learned how to put on the obi by myself, because she showed us how to do that. So it was really, a lot of people were involved, men as well. So we all gathered at the parking structure that doesn't exist now, but it was on, right behind First Street North, where First Street North is, there was a parking structure there. We gathered there, we assembled there, and I can't remember how many times we practiced. And Shinya was involved with it, and he was carrying the mikoshi. There are some pictures of that. And we went to the whole Nisei Week parade and just did the dance. I think she might have choreographed the dance.

IM: Do you remember what the reception was to the dance? There wasn't any kind of uproar against you people?

KM: No. We were never, we were throwing out the candy.

IM: Well, I guess the candy then makes them want to, I don't know, "Oh, these are the drugs?" Okay, so you did the Nisei Week performance, and then you attended trainings in San Francisco with other progressives on drug issues, is that correct?

KM: Yeah. It's kind of slightly... well, it was related to the drug problem. All of us were working around the drug problem because Shinya was there, Merilynne was there, Ellen Wong and Tamiko Hirano, and maybe one other person, I can't remember. We went to this training as a team, and that's where, actually people like Matulu Shakura and Atalah, they came out from New York. So they were part of this training, too, and other people in San Francisco, so we were up there doing this training. Don't ask me what the training was about, I do not remember. And I think it had something to do with the first influx of funding from the federal government around mental health and drug problems and things like that. So we got some training, and I think I talked about the Women's Center before, right?

IM: Yeah, and the kind of discussion around the vision for it, I guess, around the Asian Sisters.

<Begin Segment 4>

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.

<Begin Segment 5>

IM: So you were trying to teach the young people how to... or at least in the case of the Agbayani Village, how to relate to farm workers. But I'm curious, how did you relate to some of these young people?

KM: How did we relate?

IM: Yeah.

KM: Well, we weren't that much older. I mean, I guess we were, so we were eight years older maybe, eight years older. You know, for me, it was the first time that I was really working with that age. I mean, kind of did it with the young people that were into drugs, but that was totally different. Sometimes it would be like somebody ran away, so we're looking for them. One young woman had run away. Actually, I think she was, under my watch, I think she ran away and was like, oh my god, we have to find her. We kind of knew where she was, and then she also had run away with, taken some of my sisters' clothes and my sister was really mad at me. So I had to find her, and so it was like, it was a little bit different in that relationship. So with these young people, they weren't into drugs, they were just, you know, young people with different problems and families and things like that, and they were all different. So part of it was just them accepting who we were, because we were probably very alien to their experience, people that were into politics, and trying to talk about Asian Americans and talk about Japanese Americans, and they hadn't heard about these things before and their parents were a little alarmed, actually, some of them, especially the ones that were from Japan, it's like, who were these people? So we had to kind of... after we did some very normal things like the car washes and sports programs, then they saw us as okay. We were a bit radical to them, I think.

IM: So there were, I guess, sort of conflicts between, I guess, you guys had done your ethnic studies education, you had read some of these theoretical texts, and then you tried to apply it or bring it in sort of digestible way to young people.

KM: Yeah. It was our first experience trying to do that, create some curriculum.

IM: Yeah. So maybe, I would love to hear more -- well, actually, first, so that the young people that you were working with, you mentioned some of them, they had parents who were from Japan. So were they mostly shin-Nisei?

KM: Just, I know Kazuko's family was from Japan, but yes, she was one of the more outspoken people, one of the leaders. I think that she was going to do whatever she was going to do. But there was a lot of Sansei, young Sansei people that were part of the group, and their parents, some of their parents were very supportive of us, especially because we had done the rice distribution, and they kind of saw us as people trying to just bring people together. We did have a conflict with one family that was part of the rice distribution and their daughter was in the group. There came a point where we wanted to do protests and they didn't want to. It was sort of like there was a cutting edge of, like, we negotiate, they were one of the leaders, one of the parents who were kind of one of the strong supporters of organizing. And so we had to listen to what they said, but we kind of had to split ways, part ways on that one.

IM: Do you remember the particular protests?

KM: It was, again, the rice distribution, it was the company. So we went down to the company because they weren't giving us our money back. And we said we have to get in their face a little more. So we had a big rally and demonstration at their company, I don't remember what it was, but it was a factory. And they were, I think they were opposed to that. We thought, no, we don't need to do that, we don't need to go that far, we said, "No, we do."

IM: The parents.

KM: The parents didn't want to do that.

IM: But the child didn't want to or was kind of neutral?

KM: I don't remember that part. I mean, I think there were two separate things. So we had done the rice distribution, and I can't remember simultaneously if Young Spirits was also forming.

IM: So before you went to Agbayani Village, before you would do all these sorts of things, you would have, you would try to do some education. Can you tell me a little bit more about what it took to build a curriculum for the community and for young people?

KM: Well, not for the community so much, but, I mean, we did a lot of programs in the community using different facilities, I think, which was really great. Like we used the Rafu Chuo Gakuen building. When we did the rice distribution, we were at Higashi, and they stored bad rice for us for a long time. And we did some things at Tenrikyo temple, and a lot of things at the, what is now the... it was Keiro, but it was called the Japanese retirement home when we were working. And they let us use their facility a lot for different programs. I think we did an Agbayani program there, but we did a program just on the history of Boyle Heights at the Rafu Chuo Gakuen and had June Kuramoto play the koto and did a slideshow about the history of Boyle Heights from people that had lived there. One of the... we actually did a tour of the Evergreen Cemetery, and it's part of that history of people that lived in Boyle Heights, because it's very graphic if you go in the cemetery, like the different ethnicities, and the long founders of Boyle Heights are in that cemetery. So that was kind of fun to do.

IM: So were they mostly presentations or discussions, how did they...

KM: They were programs, actual presentation programs. I don't know if we had discussions, I can't remember. They're more like programs, so slideshow presentation and some music, then refreshments and talking afterwards.

IM: Did you ever leave one of these discussions or did you just help plan?

KM: We always helped plan them. I don't really remember.

IM: That's fine, yeah. Okay, so you're leading Young Spirits -- oh, actually, I wanted to ask also about Agbayani Village and interactions you and, I guess, the young people had with some of the Manongs. Do you remember any of those?

KM: There weren't too many Manongs left. I think it's... was it Sylvester? Sebastian. Sebastian was one of the ones, he took a lot of pictures, but he was one of the few that, I think, was very friendly and talked to the young people. There were so many young people. I just remember the work brigades going up and down, and then we gathered afterwards. But I have to say that it's really from looking at the pictures that I kind of recall stuff, because we were all gathered together. Specific conversation, I think we just learned about their life, their life story, and them being really alone. It's why Agbayani Village was important, because they had no family. And when I think about that now, it's like too bad we didn't think about our own community of single men that never got married and worked in the fields.

IM: So you mean the Issei?

KM: Issei. Issei that died really, with no one remembering their story.

<Begin Segment 6>

IM: So by 1972, we're still here. But you marry Mo in Elysian Park. I think we talked about that... but you... sorry, I'm just going over this.

KM: But I knew then it was a mistake. Is that what you're...

IM: Oh.

KM: My sister was clear, said, "This is a mistake."

IM: Your marriage?

KM: We knew it was a mistake, yeah.

IM: Well, maybe you could talk a little bit more about... because you were together for four years, right? Something like that?

KM: Yeah, you're right. It was four years. So it was really like, at the two-year point, I think I realized this was not going to work. Well, I wasn't really sure, but I knew there were issues, and so that's when I suggested that we talk to Amy Mass. And so Mo went one time -- here we go again -- I decided to continue to see Amy on a weekly basis, yeah. So I continued to see her for two years, and she really helped me get stronger. So I think at that point, I was like, I didn't have a lot of self-confidence, or my image, self-image wasn't that good at that point. Because I thought, "There's something wrong, maybe it's me," in terms of the relationship. So she helped me see that it wasn't, I think, more clearly, that this was not a good healthy situation, need to get out, and you're strong enough to get out. But the problem with being in the collective was because we're in a political group, and we're in a political collective, living collective, I could have extricated myself from the relationship probably and I should have sooner. But for whatever reason, it was hard, until the collective ended in '76, that's when I became like, then I could sort of go my way. Before, that would involve too much, you've got to... not really, but in my mind, it was too much. So that's when I, formally, was able to leave the relationship.

IM: So I definitely want to talk about Amy Mass and all of that, but first, I guess, just going back a little bit, when did you kind of... you said two years into the relationship, you kind of started to realize things weren't healthy, things weren't working. Can you tell me what was a kind of red flag for you at that point when you're, you know, twenty-five, twenty-six?

KM: Hmm. Well, I think it's a continuing theme, at the very beginning when he said that it's a community of the community, and there was nothing like, were we going to say anything to each other about the relationship? That was kind of the running theme. I don't think he understood how to personally relate, how to build a relationship. It was like it was about doing stuff in the community and there was nothing, there was nothing enriching about, towards each other. I think that was it, I think that was it. It wasn't healthy. I didn't feel like I was getting any, I wasn't gaining, I wasn't learning, I wasn't getting support.

IM: There was no room for bringing these sorts of things up with him?

KM: I don't think he could do it.

IM: Self critique session.

KM: I don't think he could ever deal with all this. It's kind of like this. It's kind of like Mo can't really fight for himself. He can fight for the people. It's like we used to say this kind of jokingly, he loved the masses, he just hates individual people. Because he would get into these really hateful things, individuals, angry with them, but he loved the people. One time we had to go to the welfare department, because they were questioning some Medi-Cal thing. And Mo can go to city council and speak out to a group of people, he can be the loudest voice and lead that charge. But when we went to the welfare department to argue our case, I looked around and was like, suddenly he retreated, and I said, "Okay, I guess I got to speak." I had to speak up, and it was like, what happened? So fighting for yourself wasn't something he could do. So that seemed to be kind of the theme here. Anything personal, individual, not able to deal with it.

IM: So all the while, you're trying to also kind of find your voice, right?

KM: Yeah. Well, I was doing my stuff with East L.A. Outreach Team, parents' group, we started a parents' group, and I was continuing with that, and I was the visible face of that group. I didn't feel negative about myself in terms of the work, but personally, it didn't feel good.

<Begin Segment 7>

IM: So some of this stuff changes when you start to go to therapy with Amy Mass. Can you talk about that decision to do that? I think at this time, in the '70s, it's not a super common thing, is it, really to go to therapy? In the same way that it is... all of my friends now, they're like, "I just met with my therapist yesterday." Like everyone is very, it's almost like people talk about today. They talk about their therapist like it's like brushing their teeth or something. Back then it wasn't necessarily like that, so I'm very curious what led you to that and then what you got out of it.

KM: Well, I think I was oriented more that way because I was a psych major, right, and I had been in some groups in college. And then because we were working with Amy Mass in parents' group, and again, doing groups and having those kind of discussions that were fairly, somewhat honest within those groups, and we were working with social workers, and we were doing some training with mental health people in the county like John Hatakeyama and other folks. So it wasn't alien to me at all. And we were also, like Merilynne was working with Asian Sisters, and Amy Mass was seeing some individuals trying to help individual young women. So it was definitely part of what we thought was important to do, some of us. And so I knew Amy and I liked Amy, and so I think I just asked her if I could see her. I think she saw me for free for two years, I think. Maybe we paid her a little bit, and I think the collective actually, come to think of it, may have contributed a bit because they saw it as important, I must have argued my case.

IM: Do you remember... I mean, you can go into as many details as you want, but what did you kind of discuss in these therapy sessions?

KM: I don't really remember. This is like '74 to '76. That one I don't know, I don't really know. It moved from Mo, thought, I know that. That may have started it, it was kind of like, then it moved to other things. She just really helped me build up my self-esteem, I guess.

IM: And so you saw other people... you know, I think a lot of people think, they don't really think historically or they think about, they don't really think historically about Asian American mental health or Asian American women's mental health, but clearly this was an issue among people in your circles at this point. What did other women that you know, or men, too, kind of think about mental health?

KM: I don't think a lot of them were into it. I mean, Merilynne, because both of us kind of went to this training, she saw the value in it. I don't think a lot of people did, though. People were kind of like, not into "touchy-feely," as they called it sometimes. And it kind of goes back to really, other things that I think I was more into. So I did have therapy again later. I always looked at therapy as a way of checking in, so yeah.

IM: So why did you think people weren't super into the touchy-feely thing then?

KM: Part of it, I think, it was the politics. It didn't really allow room for that so much. I mean, we did do some training at Rest Haven and a few of us, again, were into Shinya and a few people, but don't think people liked to go there, they didn't really want to go and look inside, be vulnerable. It's not easy.

IM: Was it more, do you think, more of a problem among the men versus the women, or just equally, people didn't want to, really, examine themselves in that kind of way?

KM: There may have been a couple of men that were kind of into sensitivity training or those kind of thing. But I think it's pretty equal. I think overall people were not, didn't look to it too much, hesitant.

<Begin Segment 8>

IM: So you, eventually the collective ends in 1976, you part ways with them and with Mo. And I guess you begin with LTPRO?

KM: I think I had been working, I think we had formed a, I want to say a Workers and Newcomers Committee in LTPRO. I don't know if it was about then.

IM: Yeah, I think so.

KM: I was also teaching, but I was working at Hollenbeck. So it's still going to Little Tokyo, trying to remember what I was doing. And still working with East L.A. Outreach Team or Young Spirits for a time until they graduated from high school. So I think it kind of ended when that group of young people graduated from high school. So it was still going on for a bit. And I was working with some people around education issues, because I was kind of into school, so we were working around, I think the bussing issue that was starting up about that time, and so working with some other TAs, teaching assistants, like Steve Nagano and other Latino teaching assistants that were part of a group that tried to do some education around the bussing issue. But I was still involved in Little Tokyo as well. And I'm not exactly sure when the Workers and Newcomers Committee formed, but we did form.

IM: Just to circle back to your time as a teacher's assistant, do you remember what you tried to teach people on about bussing at the time? What kind of, what was your political stance on that issue?

KM: Our stance was that it's fine... okay, it's fine to bus, believe in integration, but we didn't believe in forced bussing of minority kids. We felt that that should be a choice, if I recall correctly. So it was that we felt that they should determine whether or not they want to be fussed, meaning it should not be forced upon minority communities, that was our view.

IM: So how did you guys arrive at that?

KM: I don't remember. And I don't think it was... I don't know if we talked about the collective, but I feel like I talked about it with this group, this particular group that we were involved in. Again, it has to do with the self-determination and people of color, so we felt that we should always determine what we want.

IM: Was there pushback against what you guys were doing from administrators or parents?

KM: I don't remember that. We just put out a pamphlet, I don't know if we...

IM: Okay.

<Begin Segment 9>

IM: You also went to Wounded Knee around a similar time, 1973? Can you talk about what that experience was like?

KM: It was... did I talk about this before?

IM: Not in our session.

KM: Well, many people were involved. So we became aware of Wounded Knee when people were demonstrating at the federal building and we were in Little Tokyo. So we were kind of aware of stuff, and went down there to find out. And we met some of the American Indian Movement leaders and talked with them. And I don't exactly know how it all evolved, but we just to know them, got to know some other people, indigenous folks in a group called Redwind that were located in Malibu, and had some exchanges. But the issue became a little bit broader, and we met at the Storefront, because the Storefront was, some of the folks there were supportive. And so we were working on flyers and things like that, and I don't exactly know how this happened, but Mo and another person, Ellyn Wong Braga, we decided that they would go out to Wounded Knee and find out they wanted people to go. There's going to be a big march, a people's march. And Mo and Ellyn went as sort of a, to go ahead, ahead of this group that might go to check out the situation and let us know. So they went ahead of time, and then some of us decided that we were going to go to Wounded Knee. There were about eight or nine of us, I think, not all out of the JACS office, but a lot of us, which left like two people in the JACS office to take care of the office. People weren't very happy about that, so we made this decision. And maybe a lot of us were out of the collective, actually, and East L.A.'s work. Yeah, actually, it was like Tamiko Hirano, Richard Hisamoto, East L.A. Outreach Team, Dennis Kobata, myself, my sister Judy, Betty Chen, Craig Shimabukuro, I can't remember who else now, Mo and Ellyn were already there, and I think Gilbert Hom might have been there, also Tatsuo Hirano. So there was a big meeting at the Storefront and we were working on flyers and stuff like that, but we told them, "Some of us are going to Wounded Knee." And then I remember their reaction was very angry, because it was sort of like, "You're making this decision to go, and you know that if anything happens to the people, it's going to fall on everybody else who mobilized support." And so I remember Warren being really angry with people making "unilateral decisions," seeing it as a JACS office kind of thing, different kind of grouping, right, politics.

IM: If something happens, like someone gets arrested or caught or killed.

KM: Yeah. I mean, it was a dangerous situation, right? So they said, okay, whoever goes, we don't want to know, because that would jeopardize everybody else, because it has to be done quietly. So they said, "Okay, we'll support the effort, but we're not happy about it." So people planned the leaving in different cars, and different times, and people met in Rapid City. So I went with Dennis and Craig Shimabukuro, and we drove nonstop to Rapid City.

IM: So what kind of support did you lend when you...

KM: What kind of support did we give?

IM: Yeah.

KM: Mainly what they wanted was publicity, because no news was getting out. It was a blackout, a media blackout of what was going on at Wounded Knee, so nobody knew. So they wanted, one is they wanted people to take the news back, and they also wanted presence of people from the outside to sort of forestall or prevent the FBI and the U.S. government from coming in, which they eventually did. So we were there for, I don't remember how many days we were there, we were part of a people's march. And I think it helped at least stop, delay anyway. So most of us left, and then there were like three or four people stayed behind, like Dennis and Craig and a couple of other people, and they were caught in the last part of having to get out of there fast, because the FBI was coming in. I wasn't there at the very end, we left earlier. So we met people like Leonard Crow Dog and some of the other people that were there, and tried to continue the support. We had a press conference here in L.A. after we came back about Wounded Knee, and then Nobuko Miyamoto, who was pregnant at the time, was asked to drive Russell Means, who was American Indian Movement leader, somewhere, and then they were stopped by the FBI. And so she's pregnant, she's on her knees with her hands behind her. We weren't there, but this is what happened. I won't say we put her in, but it wasn't a good situation. It turned out okay, I mean, she was okay.

IM: So can you try to describe to me... I mean, this is a big mobilization to go out there, abandoned, all your responsibility, I mean, I don't want to put it like that, but kind of put things aside here in Boyle Heights, Little Tokyo, for several days to go out and support people at Wounded Knee. Can you just take me through, like what were the kind of motivations and what was the general feeling about why you needed to do this? I mean you could just say, "Oh, we just felt it was right thing to do," but I'm really curious, it seemed like there was a lot of excitement for this among your cohort, but I'm very curious how you would describe it yourself.

KM: Well, I think it was, in the progressive groups, like I said, Storefront, everybody was behind it, so everybody felt moved by what was going on in Wounded Knee. I think there was some identification with the fact that the reservations, the camps, the land, I think we saw some connection, and again, the Third World solidarity that many of us already felt and believed in from the early movement. So it wasn't even a question that we would not support. It was more a question of the leadership, who were these people? We weren't always sure about the American Indian Movement leadership and the different people. So that was sort of like trying to figure all that out.

IM: Did you say you weren't always...

KM: We didn't know who was who, we were just meeting these people for the first time. So that's why when Mo and Ellyn went out, they met some of the leaders at the Pine Ridge reservation at Rosebud. We had to trust their judgment that this was a good thing to do, that we could trust this effort.

IM: So do you remember your particular interactions with some of...

KM: I don't know. I don't think there was a lot, because we got there, we met and we heard them speak, but then we went on this march. Don't even ask me if we slept on the side of... I don't remember. I remember marching, I remember some people doing morning exercises, and I just remember that people, some people stayed behind when we left.

IM: Do you think it had an impact on what you did once you got back?

KM: I think it did. I think they wrote about it, on the American Indian Movement, I think they remember it. I think so.

IM: But on you personally, do you think this... I don't know...

KM: Yeah, yeah. Because now when I think about the reparations movement, it's very clear to me that we have to, I just believe that the indigenous people have a lot to say and are already saying it, and that we have to figure out a way to connect better. I've always felt that about the struggle of First People.

<Begin Segment 10>

IM: So you get back to L.A. around the late '70s, I have here that you were involved with Lucy Kubota with Horikawa unionization efforts. Those ultimately don't work out for you, but can you tell me a little bit more about that?

KM: Well, earlier we were doing... earlier and even after the Workers Newcomers Committee had formed, and we were trying to do some education on worker's rights. So we had developed a flier and we were working with a guy named Koichi Ichikawa, who was a bartender at Tokyo Kaikan at the time. And I think Evelyn knew him. And we got to know him and he helped to translate some of the fliers so that they were in Japanese and English. And also Yasuko Sakamoto. She was starting to, she had first come, had just come to Little Tokyo, was working at, I think, I want to say Oriental Service Center, OSC, but I could be wrong on that. Anyway, she was a social worker, so she was kind of helping a little bit, too, with those fliers. I think we were passing them out to the different workers, I don't know how we did it, to Japanese workers. And then Lucy was in L.A. and had gotten a job with Horikawa. And so then I got hired at Horikawa, and then they immediately said, "No, we're not hiring any more Sansei, and we heard that they considered Sanseis troublemakers. So then I got a job at another Japanese restaurant, but I was part of the Horikawa, working with Lucy and others, and meeting with the workers at night. Mainly the Japanese-speaking workers.

IM: But it was, the workers were, they were multi-racial?

KM: They were Latino workers, of course, a lot of the busboys and dishwashers. And then you had the waiters and some of the chefs, teppan chefs and people like that were Japanese from Japan.

IM: So what was that like for you to work with Japanese-Japanese? I mean, you had spent a fair amount of time in Japan. Did that help at all in your interactions? How did you relate to the Japanese-Japanese workers?

KM: Yeah. Because I had spent time in Japan and because I really liked it, and also because my father's Kibei, and it always felt a little different, I really enjoyed working with them. I really enjoyed working with the Japanese workers, they were always more interesting.

IM: You're giving a smirk about them being interesting. Is there something in particular you remember?

KM: Humor, just being more open about things, the way they talked about stuff. I don't know why, I always felt that they communicated differently, their personalities. It was also kind of fun to be with them.

IM: So you had these meetings. I take it that during these meetings you discussed very serious things?

KM: Oh, yeah. So, I mean, those meetings, it was really trying to figure out who could be trusted. So they were kind of always analyzing all the workers and putting them in different camps, because there's going to be a unionizing effort, so they didn't want to reveal that they were talking about to everybody. So they always had this analysis, and we met at Tomio Sakuma's apartment often. They got off at ten-thirty at night or whatever it was, so we met at eleven. So yeah, it's a lot of analysis of the workers and where they were at and how they're going to proceed. And unfortunately, the union was terrible at the time, this is Local 11, it was run by...

IM: The CIA or HERE?

KM: Yeah, HERE, Local 11. It was mainly run by old white men and they had no translation of any of the materials either in Spanish or Japanese. So a lot of the stuff we had to do ourselves.

IM: So Tomio Sakuma was one of the workers there? So do you remember other names of people that you worked with?

KM: Hiro, but I can't remember his last name now. He eventually opened a restaurant with his brother. And that was really an interesting struggle because it eventually went to the NLRB, and so then people, we had to go to the NLRB hearings and work with the NLRB attorneys. And then a lot of us got married in 1979, four couples, and so a lot of the workers came to our joint celebration, and they sang. Then we went to one of their weddings, one of the workers got married, and then the NLRB attorney went to the wedding. And then he eventually started to work for the restaurants, NLRB attorney, oh, my god.

IM: Do you remember who that was?

KM: Eli somebody.

IM: But Eli...

KM: Yeah, he betrayed the workers.

IM: So you basically, during this time, you became a labor organizer. You weren't necessarily one before, but can you just describe what it took to get you there or the kind of... did you have to change any of their...

KM: No, not really, because my parents were working-class people, and my father was a retail clerk, I mean, he worked in the market. And so like I think I said, unions are always, I mean, I didn't really have a political view of unions, but my father was in a union and we had health benefit because of a union. I don't know if he ever had to go on strike, but he definitely believes in the union, so it was always positive. And so I don't think I had any, I never had a negative view of unions, it just seemed like it was normal. I mean, it wasn't alien.

IM: I'm really interested too in, you know, this is a time when a lot of people, especially coming out of the "new left," very suspicious of, I guess, entrenched union leadership, these old white guys, those types of people. So how did you, besides, you mentioned translating materials trying to have very inclusive meetings, things like that. But ultimately how was the balance of power negotiated between what the workers wanted, what you thought the workers wanted, and then what the leadership in HERE wanted?

KM: I think we just pushed for what the workers wanted, and we just did it ourselves like the materials. Eventually that union changed, and pretty soon after, if I recall. And then Lucy, I don't know if she worked for that union, but she might have. She might have gotten a job in that union. They started to see that they had to change. And then, yeah, so there were some changes already occurring, and Lucy was pretty confrontative, very assertive and dogged, so she didn't let go and wasn't afraid. So I think she did a lot of the challenging, I wasn't that, the face of that part. I was working with the workers and meeting them, building support about having, we had pickets outside Horikawa, things like that.

IM: So most of the workers were men that you worked with personally, do you remember?

KM: There were a couple of women, but a lot of them were men. I'm sure there were women because Lucy was a waitress, so there were... at least in the key organizing part, it seemed to be mostly these men. But there were a couple women, too, I don't remember her name, but she was the one that got married to this, they both worked at Horikawa.

IM: So you had a really positive experience, I take it, from organizing workers and made really good connections with them, went to each others' weddings. Were there other interactions that were less positive? I mean, in any kind of organizing campaign, there are people who are super resistant to unionization?

KM: Well, there was one guy we didn't trust.

IM: Okay, so who was that guy?

KM: I don't remember that guy, I just remember a skinny guy. But it was like, okay, do we really trust him? He's probably telling management something, so keep your eye out on him. But the people we knew, they knew the people pretty well, they were pretty sharp. And I think our friendships continued past Horikawa. I still continued to know Hiro after he got his restaurant, and then Tomio, recently we saw him again. And a lot of warm feelings towards many of them, or some of them.

<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.

<Begin Segment 12>

IM: So around this time you said four couples got married, including you. So can you tell me more about you and Mark?

KM: Well, so Mark and I got married, Duane and Lucy got married, Dennis Kobata and Jan Tokumaru got married, and Tamiko Hirano and David Monkawa got married. So we all had small weddings and we had this big celebration in the park. Not Elysian, another park. So Mark was in the collective earlier, the Community Workers Collective, but we were not, there was no relationship, he had a girlfriend at the time. I don't know, I guess it was when we were working on East Wind stuff that maybe he was starting to work at General Motors or Ford, Ford maybe. And then my sister also got a job at Ford, so we were all, kind of lived nearby. I think just from working together, developed a relationship.

IM: Who made the first move?

KM: Oh, I probably made the first move, oddly.

IM: Oddly.

KM: Yeah.

IM: So your political work kind of overlapped?

KM: Yeah, the organization overlapped, yeah.

IM: So I guess during your budding relationship, do you feel like you kind of helped each other politically as well as just personally?

KM: Well, I mean, yes and no. I mean, probably because I think the overlapping work might have been LTPRO, and then our investment in Little Tokyo, I suppose. So those kind of discussions overlapped and we had meetings at our house at times. And probably some discussions around some of the ideas.

IM: So was your work in LTPRO primarily through the worker organizing or was it through other...

KM: It was mainly the worker organizing, and I want to say a little bit around reparations because about that time, East L.A. Outreach Team, I guess we were still in existence. We're doing some work around reparations in Boyle Heights, we did a program, a bilingual program around reparations, and we also did a house meeting and a survey to gauge what people felt about it, because we had built relationships with people in Boyle Heights and new people, so we did a program and we did a survey. And that was kind of tied to LTPRO, because LTPRO was starting to look at reparations, but mainly those areas, reparations and workers...

IM: The bilingual meeting, do you remember, what was the energy like? The bilingual, I guess, reparations meeting in Boyle Heights. What was the energy like, do you remember who was there?

KM: Well, we had it at Konkokyo church, not very big, but we had it there. And I remember we had a slideshow. I think June Hibino might have been the speaker. I didn't know her well, she had just come down, I think, from the Bay Area, and I remember Henry Mori from the Rafu Shimpo coming in, and I don't think I knew him by face, so then I said, "Oh, would you like Japanese-speaking or English?" and he got very offended. It was like, I don't know why, and I think he even wrote about it in the Rafu, like, I was confronted by people asking if I wanted the Japanese, and it's like, "What's the big deal about that?" It was a good thing.

IM: He thought you thought everyone looks the same.

KM: You never know who speaks Japanese or English only. So you can't tell. But that's what I remember, I remember greeting people coming in. The program I don't remember, that sort of stands out in my mind? I think it was pretty full, though, there were quite a few people there. We were early though.

IM: Mostly you helped with running the events and planning it, but not necessarily speaking?

KM: Not at that one, no. This was really the first program we had in Boyle Heights, and I don't think I knew enough.

IM: At this point, do you know what your stance was on redress or reparations? Because this is one of the earliest meetings. So what was your stance at the time?

KM: Well, I don't think there was any... it wasn't like it was a change. I think it was already clear we were supporting reparations.

IM: But in terms of the shape of what that would look like and how it'd be implemented, do you have any idea at that point yet?

KM: You know, I can't really distinguish between that time and just being part of these discussions, and so already knowing that we were looking at it this way and agreeing with it, that monetary reparations, and supported it, and the survey that was done in the Rafu, monetary and apology, the other parts that sort of came out, but those were the main ones. And to try and be really clear that we wanted monetary, because that was like, no, we don't want money, no, we do.

<Begin Segment 13>

BN: Okay, so just wanted to back up a little bit to Wounded Knee, and I guess on the way back, I guess, that you and Mo were, was it a group of you that went and visited the Amache site, and I'm curious how that came about and what your thoughts were when you visited.

KM: Yeah. I remember that very vividly, because we were rushing from Wounded Knee and trying to make it before dark to Amache, because we were trying to get home. There were two cars, so there were about nine or quite a number of us. So we didn't quite make it to Amache before dark, and partly because I wasn't willing to pass large trucks, and so Mo was very irate, he was like, "Pass the truck." I said no, I can't do that, it's too close. So he was really mad that we didn't make it to Amache before dark. But we stopped at a gas station to find out where it was, and so then I remember getting out of the car and asking somebody, "Where is Amache or Granada?" I think we were in the town of Granada. And the guy said, "Oh, you mean the Jap camp?" And then I thought, oh, okay. He must have seen my face because he said, "Oh, you mean the camp where..." So that was the first time someone said that to me to my face. He wasn't calling me that, but it was like that was the word. So then we ended up having car trouble, so we ended up staying overnight in Amache at Pueblo where my cousin happened to live. So we just lucked out, so we were able to all crash at their place, eight or nine of us, how many of us. And then the next day we went to Amache, but I don't remember Amache, I just remember everything that came up to getting there. I kind of remember it, the foundations, not a lot. That's where Mo was at.

BN: Was it his kind of idea to make the visit?

KM: Yeah. I think we didn't have to go that route, but we went that route.

BN: Out of the way?

KM: Right. I would ask you later, but what was his version of that story?

BN: [Laughs] He doesn't go into detail, he just says that, on the way back, that you stopped off at Amache. So there's no, doesn't go much beyond that.

KM: I knew it was very important to him, though.

BN: Probably should have asked him more about that.

<Begin Segment 14>

BN: So I guess transitioning then to the redress movement, I guess what was your first, when did the first inkling of that concept come up to your recollection?

KM: I feel like I was at some gathering, and the Nisei person, guy, could have been... blanking on his name.

BN: Edison?

KM: Edison. It could have been, I don't know, but it was a large gathering, and I remember hearing reparations being mentioned and talked about, and I thought, oh, okay, that sounds interesting. And it sort of stuck in my mind from that meeting, but it didn't come up a lot. So it was like that time, and then really nothing after that. So it was kind of early, I think. I want to say it could have been mid-'70s, something like that.

BN: Yeah, Edison first introduced the concept like at a JACL convention in 1970. Could have been early '70s or mid. Then in talking to Issay, you mentioned the formation of this committee, I guess, with LTPRO?

KM: It wasn't a big committee, but I think Alan and a few other people were on it. I can't really describe the connections to different things, but we met at the LTPRO office. What were we talking about? I think that's maybe where the idea of having that workshop in Boyle Heights came up. There was also, of course, LACCRR going on, the Los Angeles Committee Coalition on Redress and Reparations that several people that had been in camp were part of, and they were going around and talking to different people. Were they part of LTPRO? I don't know.

[Interruption]

KM: So we were talking about the LTPRO reparations committee.

BN: Then actually, I thought that they were one and the same, was it LACCRR? But they're different?

KM: Los Angeles Committee on Redress and Reparations. That's not quite right, but LACCRR. No, it wasn't quite the same, I don't think so. Because I was not part of LACRR necessarily, because they were mainly people that had been in camp. But we were supporting LACCRR for sure.

BN: And LTPRO was primarily younger people?

KM: Yeah, except for Bert and Lillian and then Alan who'd been born in camp. Of course, they took the lead in that area. But I don't think the committee was that developed, so probably LACCRR was the main force that was doing a lot of the pre-NCRR type education and outreach. I bet Alan knows better than do on this one.

BN: What sorts of things were you doing in the LTPRO committee?

KM: You know, I don't remember much of the LTPRO committee. I really remember doing more like, in East L.A., and it was kind of a coalition that did the Day of Remembrance. And so our East L.A. Outreach Committee and several others did the Day of Remembrance in Little Tokyo on Central, what was then Central Avenue.

BN: Were you doing Days of Remembrance before NCRR?

KM: Well, yeah. I think that was...

BN: Because the first one was only like '78 or something like that in Seattle.

KM: Yeah, so this is one that maybe Phil refers to, is the one that was pre-NCRR.

BN: So it must have been '79 or '80?

KM: Something like that.

BN: That would have been the very first one in L.A.

KM: Yeah, it would have been. And it was a coalition of groups that did it.

BN: Kind of like now.

KM: Yeah, that's true.

BN: Do you remember much about it?

KM: The DOR?

BN: Yeah.

KM: You know, I see pictures. I don't know if I remember exactly what was happening. It was much less, it was like people speaking kind of like on a platform, not casual but less formal. I shouldn't say less formal, because there were speeches.

BN: And I know a lot of the earlier ones had marches or things as part of that...

KM: And the ones that were later in NCRR, a lot of it was vigils and marches, definitely.

BN: But this is after the formation of NCRR?

KM: Yeah.

<Begin Segment 15>

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.

<Begin Segment 16>

BN: But then so NCRR was formed in November of '80, the Commission, the CWRIC bill was earlier that year, and then the hearings are coming in the summer of '81. But you were involved in that, right?

KM: Yes, so I was involved in NCRR trying to be, go to the meetings and keep up with stuff. My mother had scleroderma, she kind of quit her job at the end of December, Mayumi had just been born. She came home, I mean, she stayed at home and really declined until May when she passed away. So from January to May, my father, my sister and I were sort of taking turns being with her. So Mayumi was a baby, and I'm trying to keep abreast of what's going on, so I was working on the slideshow, I think, so there was a slideshow, I don't know what I was doing, I was listening to it, whatever. So I had this slideshow and I was listening to it, and then there was, preparing for the commission hearings, and talking about the need for people to testify if we don't get enough people. And so then I thought, "You know what? I should testify for my family," and I said, "I think everybody should testify for their family, because everybody's story is different. So that's when I called my... my mother had passed, actually, by that time, it was after May. And so I just called family members to find out a little more history and to prepare. So now in July or June, I decided I'm not going to go back to teaching, there's no way I could teach with a small child. So I get a job with Little Tokyo Service Center, and they're what they call the Escort Translation Program. Because I spoke a little Japanese, I could coordinate the program with Japanese-speaking calls and set up translators and escort people that could speak, set those things up. So I drove some of the people, actually, Issei, to the hearings using the escort van from Little Tokyo Service Center. So it kind of worked out well, but it was a rough period emotionally. Because with my mother passing, having a baby, and then the commission hearing, it's like, it became very, like everything kind of fell into it, and the meaning of it. So it was very emotional. On top of the fact that it was emotional just listening to everybody testify. But I took Mayumi to the hearings because it was at night and I had her, and my sister was with me, but I testified at the hearings. So I felt that that was important.

BN: Were you able to hear all the other testimony of people?

KM: You know, I don't think I was, because I was working part-time at Little Tokyo Service Center, so I couldn't be there. I didn't feel I could be there the whole time, and I think Mayumi was at the babysitter, but I was only working half a day. So I was there as much as I could be. I don't think I ever sat down, I was always at the doorway. I don't know if I ever got a seat, because it was filled whenever I got there. Yeah. So I don't even know if I was at some of the gatherings at lunchtime, because, again, I was working, juggling.

BN: Were there any moments that you, that stick in your mind of testimony or anything, the Lillian Baker incident or anything that really sticks out?

KM: It's weird now, because I've seen the tape so many times that I don't remember when I was there and when I wasn't there. It's like I feel like I was there for all of it, do you know what I mean? But I know I was there with Hector, who was Japanese Peruvian, because I think we encouraged him to testify. Not too many people knew Japanese Peruvians, but we knew him. So we encouraged him to testify and I felt like I was sitting next to him, so I remember him. I remember Iwan Yoshida, especially talking to him afterwards because his family was with him, and he really was looking for his father. So it's being around, I remember. I kind of remember some of the Nisei that joined NCRR like the Tom Shiroishi and I don't know about Jim Saito, but Tom Shiroishi. You know, so meeting some people like that that kind of came across NCRR at the hearings, that's the kind of stuff I remember. Then I remember, of course, the overflow rooms where we ended up. I don't think I was in the room as much as I wanted to be.

�BN: Were you involved at all with JACL?

KM: As an organization?

BN: Yeah, at the time in terms of organizing the testimony and so forth. Because I know there was different visions.

KM: I wasn't involved in terms... there was some conflict with some JACL supporters or people were doing a slideshow? I forget. There was some conflict over that, but I was working at LTSC and JACL was right upstairs, and John Saito was a wonderful collaborator and supporter. We would use their copy machine to make copies from LTSC. So we'd go up there making copies of the testimonies, and then Harry Kawahara and (Phil Shigekuni) were the two people that were organizing the JACL testifiers. So they, sometimes we'd cross paths, but we always felt very friendly with them. They were great to work with, as was John. So I didn't deal with the people that we had negative relationships with, but those folks. So that was my kind of relationship with JACL during the hearings.

BN: As it's happening, do you have a sense of its significance or the historical impact? I mean, is that something that you could kind of feel as it's happening?

KM: Well, it's hard to separate the tapes from the real thing, but yes. Yeah, I mean, everybody was very serious about it and also somewhat intimidated by the panel of commissioners. So in that way, it was very, we knew it was very important. How significant? I don't know, because I was just blown away by what I was hearing, the different testimonies. Again, it's hard for me to separate the tapes from real life, but it's like, I feel like every time I listened to them, I'm listening for the first time, sort of. So yeah, it feels like everything was very electric. Well, I mean, there were times when it was like, you're just standing there listening, but very moving, very... you knew it was like people speaking for the first time, so it was very momentous.

BN: What do you remember about your, when you gave your own testimony. Do you remember who were you looking at or any of that?

KM: Yeah.

BN: Were you giving Lungren stink-eye?

KM: I was so nervous. And because it was very late and they had said that they wanted people to speed up. I think Lungren might have been the chair at that moment. And I could kick myself now, because I got intimidated by that, and I was already intimidated by the whole thing. And then being told that we got to speed up, so I sped up. I spoke too fast, and I feel like I'd never do that again, because you're testifying, you're saying something that's important, and should not be rushed, like Jim said. "I will not be rushed," and I let myself be rushed, so I was really mad after that. Now when I look at it, it's like...

BN: And then were you able to attend any of the other hearings in other parts of the country?

KM: No. No, I was not. You know, we had another hearing, though, a Senate hearing later at UCLA, I think. So we were there for that.

BN: This was for one of the bills?

KM: It could have been, but people testified.

BN: Yeah. Because there were...

KM: Ted Stevens convened that one.

BN: Yeah, kind of subcommittees hearing, legislation, redress legislation, so it could have been that.

KM: Yeah, but we mobilized for that as well.

BN: In L.A.?

KM: Yeah, I think we had a bus that took people there, because we had a lot of people go and then, of course, we had our own people testify, like Gordon... Tokumatsu? No, Gordon, anyway.

<Begin Segment 17>

BN: And then you mentioned that in putting together your testimony, you interviewed family members and so forth. What was their general sense?

KM: Well, I only called my uncle because my uncle Yuzo in Santa Maria, because he's eldest, and I figure he would probably know the best. But I find out later that I don't think they really knew that much. I mean, how many acres of farming they had, and whether they owned it or released it, they didn't know, and why my grandfather was picked up, stuff like that. But I got some information from him and was able to talk about my mother and what she went through. She's the oldest daughter, citizen child, so a lot of responsibility fell on her.

BN: But was he generally in favor of...

KM: Oh, yeah. You know, he's the kind of guy that can talk about anything. So he didn't even have... he could have had a reaction, but I don't think he did. I don't think he said anything negative. I have a feeling he probably supported it, I have other relatives that that didn't, but I think that's why I called him, because I knew he was kind of more open-minded about stuff like that.

BN: And your dad is...

KM: Kibei.

BN: ...around also, right?

KM: Was around? Yeah.

BN: Did he have a, ever express any interest or sentence about redress?

KM: Well, my father was always supportive. I mean, he didn't say he was supportive, but he came to a lot of the DORs or the Day of Protests. He would translate stuff if we needed it. To be honest, I don't know if he had... I don't know what his feelings were, because he wasn't in camp, his family was in camp. He did lose something, his stand, and his family lost their market. He never expressed anger about it, though, but I think he was generally... but not passionate, but just like, yeah, shit happened, kind of matter of fact. I don't think he said a lot about it. Maybe I wasn't listening, I'm not sure.

<Begin Segment 18>

BN: And then afterwards, NCRR is continuing to organize the Days of Remembrance, support the hearings of the various bills and so forth. NCRR kind of, was sort of known for also supporting other community struggles, and was that something that was, early on you were doing and talking about?

KM: Yeah. I think whenever it came up, we were pretty... we didn't look for it, but if things came to us, we responded. Like Hopi Navajo support. And early on, we had them at the DOR, we did a fundraiser film showing of Broken Rainbow or Broken Arrow? One of those titles. And the theater was filled, the Japan-America Theater, so that takes a lot to fill it. But I was always amazed at the response of our community to things like that, support for that event and also later on, support for minorities from Japan. A lot of interest in those kinds of things, so that was good. But I just want to backtrack a little bit to say that I think one of the biggest things that NCRR did, which we're probably looking at now, was Black reparations, because we did so much outreach. We very fortunately, Duane Kubo quickly got the hearing tapes and edited it down. So we had something, I think it was really an hour and a half, which was quite long, but we had the Beta tapes. And we took those... I was on the outreach committee, so I had a list of all the places we took it. I don't know where that list is now, but we took it to every place we could. And people wanted it, like Karen (Ishizuka) was teaching at USC, she took it to her class. But the churches, the communities, everywhere, and we took those tapes. And I think the thing that I'm most proud of is that we really demonstrated intergenerational organizing. So it's kind of like we had these Nisei guys carrying monitors, because we didn't have, the screens were huge. So they carried monitors, and we had Takashi Fujii with all his cables from Visual Communications that we needed to connect everything, and the deck, and spoke together, the Nisei men and women, and Frank Emi, all those guys are carrying stuff. And we were speaking and presenting to these senior citizen group, whatever it might be, and we did a lot of that. They always shared their experiences and we would say what the campaign was about, what we're trying to do. It worked out really well, but we were constantly doing that long list of outreach.

BN: What other types of groups were you speaking to?

KM: Churches. I remember the Monterey Park senior citizens groups in West L.A. It's whatever group we could get. But the issue was getting, of course, a lot of awareness, so it wasn't that hard to set up these different speaking things. But our main motive was to get the other Nisei to speak, too, and the audience to hear these testimonies and to feel that this is a valid thing to talk about and to support it.

BN: And then were you asking the audience to do anything in particular? Contribute, write letters?

KM: At different times, it was different things. So, I mean, we had the Dymally Bill initially. And then sometimes we were sending people to visit. We had a small lobbying group, so we were doing fundraising, to donate. We did a lot of letter writing, of course, throughout the years. We did telegramming, we had to raise money for telegrams. We did a lot of mailouts, a lot of mailouts, bulk mail. But those were good opportunities for us to get together and talk, so those were great organizing times for NCRR. We did a lot of things democratically. We had general meetings once a month, we had CC meetings once a month in the evening, and people that were working in the daytime could come at night, the working people, and participate. Everything was open, all decisions. I know that I was accused of being a "process person," but Alan and I would fight a lot, because he'd be like, "We got to move this along." "Wait, let's hear what people have to say." And so it would take longer, but I always felt that that was more important than maybe making the decision, so we bumped heads a lot during those days.

BN: Was there much interaction between your L.A. group and the NCRRs and the Bay Area and elsewhere?

KM: Yeah. I don't know if I was in all of those meetings, but we had statewide steering committees. So we would meet sometimes here, sometimes up there, I was at a couple up there. I don't know if we ever met mid-point. So there were those steering committee meetings. I don't think I was always at all of those because we had different leadership throughout the years of NCRR, right? I mean, I was co-chair with Alan towards the end of the '80s during the time that we were lobbying in D.C., the big delegation, and then the time that everything (bills) was starting to pass, and we had a lot of press conferences and stuff like that up until the ten-year anniversary in 1990. But prior to that, we had a lot of different co-chairs. Always women, men, older, younger, hopefully. So June Kizu, May Love, different combinations of people were co-chairs throughout the years.

BN: Were you involved with the Dymally Bill at all?

KM: You mean creating that? You know, I remember it. And so much was discussed in the meetings, I don't know how much was discussed outside the meetings. And we had those whole phone tree, whenever a decision had to be made, we all had this long list of, you're calling three people. And we tried to get people's opinion and then bring it back up again, stuff like that. But we talked a lot about... there was a lot of process. When we decided to support the anti-apartheid struggle, we had a lot of discussion. And I do have to say, though, because I was aware of the league, and there were a number of people in the league that were in NCRR, that sometimes I felt some views were being pushed, and maybe that's why I kind of said, "Let's hear other people." Because I felt, wait a minute, we're not hearing, let's hear people that don't agree, loaded up with everybody that supports it, because it was kind of important that the Nisei speak that didn't really, that might question it. And they did. Jim would often say, too, it's got to fit within our priorities of reparations, and he was very clear about that. And then some of the Nisei would ask questions, but eventually people would actually support, after much discussion. The only issue that people didn't support, I think, and the comfort women was a difficult issue, that came later.

BN: Oh, really? Okay, I'll ask you about that later. What was the rough Nisei-Sansei kind of...

KM: Breakdown?

BN: Breakdown, more or less? I always viewed it as largely Sansei, but there were quite a few Nisei.

KM: I don't think they were a majority, though. They always had a significant number, but it probably was majority Sansei. However, of course, it was Bert and Lillian, although Lillian's a Sansei, right?

BN: But Nisei age.

KM: Yeah, it was majority Sansei and a handful of Nisei. Like Frank Emi didn't come into NCRR 'til later, because I think he was still very hesitant to come out as a draft resister. And so he came to NCRR because some of our folks, I think Merilynne and another woman named Sandee Suzuki, went to a program at Cal State on Heart Mountain. And they met him and they talked to him, and I think he felt like, oh, maybe NCRR is the kind of group that he could relate to. And then he came to our meeting, they invited him. That's how he became a part of NCRR, and that's how we learned about draft resisters. So I don't think we had a lot of Nisei, actually, at the beginning a handful, the Jim Saito. And then Tom Shiroishi's a truck driver, Shiroishi, was a truck driver, so he couldn't always make it. Says, "Is there a meeting tonight?" and they'd come. He'd always check to see.

<Begin Segment 19>

BN: Now, through the mid-'80s, there's a succession of bills that are going through this legislative process, but then in '87, there's this, you decide to do this big lobbying trip, because this House bill is being heard. Yeah, wonder if you could talk about that.

KM: Well, I'm going to have to go to Jim for this, because I don't remember how some of these ideas came up. I think Jim says that Alan had this idea -- [coughs] -- excuse me, of going to Washington, D.C., putting everything. And then Jim felt, yeah, let's throw the whole treasury into this, this is like do or die. And so then we said, "Yeah, we should get as many people to go as possible. This is a great opportunity to get people to actually organize and grassroots and be in Washington, D.C., and let's raise money." So I'm going to claim this idea, but my sister and I said, "Well, a lot of people can't go, but they can donate, maybe here and there." So let's get this idea of bringing these ribbons. And one ribbon with their name on it is twenty dollars. So we raised money, and everybody that donated twenty dollars had a ribbon. So those ribbons went to Washington, D.C., if you remember. We put them up everywhere we went. So it's like they were there, too. So the idea was that we brought our community with us, maybe a hundred and forty or so or less, people were able to go, but everybody else was with us, too, and supporting that. So yeah, but the organizing was from all across NCRR, so not just L.A. San Francisco, San Jose, so people from all over, and JACL chapters, some JACL folks came on the lobbying. I can't speak a lot about the interaction with JACL, that was more like people like Bert and maybe Alan. I never operated on that level, I was always the outreach and community type thing.

BN: And then you went on the trip, though, right?

KM: Yeah.

BN: I mean, what were your memories of actually going?

KM: Well, I have to say, I didn't feel that effective, because I think we were visiting people, they were not as critical, I guess. And a lot of the visits, people, we met with the aides. But it was exciting to see everybody there, and talking to different congresspeople and engaging. For me, personally, the actual visits were not that impactful because we talked to aides and they all said, "Oh, yeah, we supported it. We think it's the right thing to do, but there's no money." That's all they ever said, "There's no money." And then I do remember the demonstration at the South African consulate where we were able to hold a demonstration, which was good, in D.C. In my mind, it was good, but personally, I don't know how much I was I was impacted by meeting congresspeople or not meeting congresspeople. Was it worth doing? Yeah. I mean, even though you don't know how much impact you're making. The best part for me was going to New York after that with Evelyn and staying at the Kochiyamas'.

BN: Where were you when you heard that the House had passed the bill?

KM: Was I at home? I might have been at... you know, I feel like we had, I don't know if we had word. We organized pretty quickly a celebration at the JACCC, like almost the next night or that night. I mean, I don't remember where I was, I feel like I was watching it, maybe, on C-SPAN. I'm not sure if somebody called to say that, but I feel like we all rushed down to the JACCC, or we were ready... I could be wrong, but I feel like we might have known. Because we were actually, we did a celebration at the JACCC, and Alan and I were co-chairs at the time, so we had to speak, and we had people ready to speak to them, a Nisei spoke, because media was there. So it could have been night, it could have been the next night, but we rushed down, it was like scrambling, quick. We had food, so much have prepared.

BN: What was your own feeling?

KM: You know, it was all moving very fast. I mean, I think it was kind of unbelievable. The whole thing was unbelievable because it was moving so fast, especially the first one.

BN: When you first started it, did you believe that this was possible, really?

KM: No. I don't think any of us ever said that, but it was kind of like a feeling like you just have to do it. This is what we have to do, we're committed to doing it, it's kind of hard keeping up with momentum, there were periods of, like, nothing's happening, and it's very hard to keep a campaign when things are happening far away like in Washington, especially legislation. What do you do to keep people engaged? So fortunately we had the JAPSS campaign that wanted to stop that salon, and we got more people to join us, and just different things that kept it alive, our work alive. Things went down, things went up, but we just kept on going. I don't know if there's anything else that was demanding our attention that much.

<Begin Segment 20>

BN: And then after the legislation, after the bill was signed and it passes, I know NCRR plays a key role in the process of actually helping to identify people and disputing these different cases that are being denied and so forth.

KM: Yeah. So I remember before that we weren't getting any money, right? The bill passed.

BN: Right, the appropriations.

KM: There's no money, so then we had a Day of Protest, which was great. The Day of Protest was, actually, some people joined NCRR then, too, because it was like, yeah, we're going to protest this.

[Interruption]

KM: So that was like a thousand people in the plaza, and students from UCLA, all the NSUs were there, and they spoke, and we got somebody to come from Canada. And I think I made that contact, because Canada had gotten reparations before we did, that year, '88. And so we said, "What's going on? We should have them come and speak." And so I don't know how we must have funded the flight down, but this guy came.

[Interruption]

KM: Edward James almost came to speak, our own people spoke, Frank Emi spoke, but yeah, Canadian Japanese spoke. So that was really a good event, and I think it really energized people and was even more like, "People are dying every month, two hundred every month." So it got people pretty fired up, and I don't know if that influenced Inouye to do more, or other congresspeople to do that. But anyway, so we got it passed. Was it legislation or was it more like... what did they call that? It's like social security.

BN: Right, yeah. So it doesn't have to be appropriated every year, I forget the term for it, too.

KM: So you asked me another question? What was the question?

BN: About the subsequent work, helping, working with the ORA, helping to identify people and also to advocate for those, because it's very complicated and different groups were denied.

KM: Yeah, it was like another decade, another decade of work, because the bill was going to sunset in 1998, and people had to be identified. And so we were not sure about these people from Washington. So we called, we had community meetings, and we wanted to make sure that they were responsive to the community. And there were people in the San Fernando Valley that were also very good n reaching out to people and working with the ORA. So Bob Bratt was the person that, I think was the first Office of Redress Administration director, and he listened. So he was pretty good, and I think he bent over backwards to try to answer the questions and also make it much more possible for people to get redress within the limits of what the law was. So I remember even things like the person wasn't in camp, but they lost their freedom or they lost their possessions, things in California or something like that, they got redress. A military person, for example, they got redress. A military person, for example, it's like, "Oh, that was a pretty liberal reading of it." Obviously, it made more sense with the railroad workers who later, they had to fight for it, but they lost their freedom, they lost their jobs, so anybody impacted by the order and the other laws that came from it. So we learned a lot from that. We had to work with different administrators in the ORA, not all of them were great, and we had to organize lawyers in the community to work pro bono, which was also great. So a lot of lawyers came out that were not just JABA (Japanese American Bar Association) attorneys, but maybe a lot of them were. And then out of that, also the Campaign for Justice is organized, mainly through the initiative of Grace Shimizu, but we also had people down here that were... well, actually, Hector did qualify, because residency dated back to 1942, but a lot of the people didn't. So we became part of the Campaign for Justice campaign, and worked with people in Northern California and some of the lawsuits, and also, of course, just finding people and making sure that people knew about it. And then we had calls coming in to Little Tokyo Service Center, people had questions about reparations, we would call at night, return calls at night. Ichikawa, the guy that was part of the work organizing, he would take his time between shifts, go to Little Tokyo Service Center, take down, answer the phone, and then write down some of the questions that people were calling about, and their names and phone numbers, so that we could call them later. So I would make calls from home at night, and I remember how hard it was because my kids were like three... no, they were older than that. I'm sorry, that's wrong. But they were young, and it was very distracting. I just remember phone calls at night were just really hard when the kids were little, but trying to return calls and stuff like that. So we did a lot of work, just responding, getting the word out, having community meetings, dealing with the ORA. Again, I was not the person that dealt with the ORA that much, I didn't want to. In fact, I think I always felt like I don't want to deal with these people. I don't like D.C., I don't have any love of these legislators. I mean, I'm kind of intimidated by then, but I didn't really, I didn't feel that I wanted to do that. And I didn't really love... I mean, I liked Bob Bratt, but I didn't... he was doing his job. But everybody said, "Oh, Bob Bratt." So I did not attend the big party that we had for him. I sort of did a silent protest, I said, "I'm not going to go." That was kind of dumb, but anyway.

BN: In that decade of work, are there particular cases or people or incidents that kind of stand out in your memory as being just really memorable for you personally?

KM: I remember this woman, the railroad worker lady, because we heard some of these things at community meetings, they would say, "My family was a railroad..." it was like, "Wow." So it was sort of like this whole period of fighting for cases of people that were denied, it was like we were learning about all these things that we had never heard about. We didn't know about the railroad workers, we didn't know about the people that lived across the Glendale, Arizona, line, and couldn't go to their church, school or whatever it might have been because they lived on the wrong side, but they were not detained, but they were still there. Those were some of the cases I remember most. There were people that were born outside of camp or after camp. So obviously, the people that voluntarily relocated were eligible. I'm trying to remember.

BN: There was a dispute, I think, about their children?

KM: Oh, the minor?

BN: No, the children of the so-called "voluntary evacuees" were, I think, a contested category, as I recall.

KM: Yeah, but I think if they were born during that period of time, because they couldn't really return to California, so they were restricted. Yeah, I think the minor, the children that went to Japan with their parents, that was a significant case, and we got to know some of the people pretty well, Reiko Nimura and their stories were...

BN: That was my mom.

KM: Their stories were really horrible. And then I think Jude Narita, we had some people do some enactments, tell their story. There were some dramatic readings, Jude Narita and maybe Chris Tashima. At some DOR we did something. So those stand out because we also got to know some of the people better.

BN: Now, kind of at the same time this is going on, there was this whole legal coram nobis stuff going on.

KM: In the '80s.

BN: Yeah. Does NCRR have any involvement in that?

KM: Not really, no. We were focused on the legislative stuff. I mean, we were aware of it, but I don't think we had an disassociation, but we just didn't connect to it. They were doing their own thing. They didn't really require community support.

<Begin Segment 21>

BN: And then you're putting on Days of Remembrance throughout this time period?

KM: Yeah.

BN: Did you have a sense of how they evolved or changed over time?

KM: Yeah, I think I worked on every DOR to a certain point, like maybe... I didn't work on the 50th, and then after that, worked on all of them until a certain time. But a lot of it it early was, like you said, the vigils. We gathered at the plaza, we'd have candles, we'd march through Little Tokyo with the Issei, Issei were marching, helping other Issei, and we marched to the federal building one time. We ended up at Koyasan another time. And then when we partnered with JACL in the legislative work, then we moved inside to the Japan-America Theater, because (JACL) also covered a lot of expenses. They had more money than we did. We did a lot of legwork, but they paid for it. But we always tried to tie in some issues that were, well, updating people especially on redress was part of our job at DOR, trying to do some organizing as well. Like I said, with the Hopi Navajo, try to bring other issues that connect and relate, Wen Ho Lee, we did another program with that issue. I don't know if we did anything on anti-apartheid with the DOR. But our inclination was always to tie in a current issue. I'm not sure if we did to 187, but I feel like we would have, and try to bring up the parallels, and the Japanese Latin Americans, of course.

BN: Was it like it is now where it was a coalition of organizations organizing it, or was it mainly just NCRR organizing it, or did that kind of evolve?

KM: NCRR was a coalition, and I feel like we were much more of a coalition initially. The DOR's... I think it was more of a coalition initially, but then it became strictly, for a period it became NCRR and JACL. And then it expanded again later, when we moved to JANM and JACL.

BN: Was there ever any disagreement about between you and JACL about this speaker or this topic, or was there pretty much an agreement on the content?

KM: Because JACL wasn't really that involved in it. I'm trying to remember if they ever disagreed with anything. I don't think so. JD Hokoyama was a JACL person. And I don't know. I mean, we did a program on Michi Weglyn, but that was kind of organized a lot by the draft resisters and Frank Chin, who didn't really, a little conflict with him. But I don't remember if JACL objected to that one or not. That might have been the only one. I don't recall them, and they were pretty much supportive, because, again, we were doing the legwork for most of them.

BN: And then how long were you co-chair of NCRR?

KM: I was co-chair that last period of time, from like '87 to about '90. And then we went to... and then I kind of went to another period of removing myself for a period, like a few months. I kind of felt there had been an issue around the decision that we were making within NCRR, and I felt disrespected by one of the other people in the group that was rather significant, and it was over the draft resisters and a program that we were having with the 522. And I felt... well, I didn't feel, but we were having a program on the 522, the group that liberated Dachau, and Saul? What's his name? Eric Saul.

BN: Eric Saul, yeah.

KM: Eric Saul wanted to have Harold Harada on the panel with the other speakers. And Harold Harada was an avid, not an avid but a rabid anti-draft resister person. And so Frank Emi had called me and said... Frank Emi never asked for anything. In fact, when we went to Washington, D.C., he said, should he go? He asked the group, "Should I go? I don't want to be a detriment or a harm to the redress movement if I go as a draft resister." And so he said, "I won't go if that's the case." And we all said, "No, you should go, you should go." So he never asked for anything, and this time he said, "Do you think we could not have Harold Harada on the panel?" This is our panel. And so I said, so then I was at some gathering and I brought it up, and I was kind of belittled. I don't know. I was belittled. Not the idea, but I was belittled and then I wasn't really hurt, but we ended up not having Harold Harada, which was a good thing. But that experience kind of said, you know what? I don't know if I want to continue in this because I felt like it was sort of a male chauvinist kind of experience, and I felt really devastated. So I kind of stepped back. And even though I was supposed to, we were going to have president and co-president. So I said, "I'm not going to run for those positions." It was supposed to... anyway, I just said no, and I kind of retreated for a bit. But the work is the work, so you come back.

BN: When was that... about when was that?

KM: We had our ten-year anniversary in October of 1990. Sometime after that.

BN: Okay, so in the '90s.

KM: Yeah, it was a little bit after that, because that's when NCRR also became Nikkei for Civil Rights and Redress, kind of the following year, I guess. And then that was... 1992 would have been the 50th, huh? So 1991 might have been when I stepped back, because I know I consciously did not work on the 50th, I said I'm not going to participate.

<Begin Segment 22>

IM: The thing that I wanted to ask, I guess, was so you mentioned around the time when you were pregnant and you kind of took a step back, tried to reevaluate who you were, because to be a parent, to be a mother, you had to know who you are if you're going to raise a child, right? I was wondering if, during that period, you mentioned that Mark was still pretty active. Was he supportive of you and the kind of things that you were going through at that point?

KM: I think so. I mean, he never said not to step back or things like that. Although when you ask that question, it's kind of like Mark always did... I mean, there was very few things that he feels strongly about sometimes. I mean, most things he's pretty flexible, but I think the job, the workers, it's like when Mayumi was born, he got called, he was trained to be an airplane mechanic, and he just finished it. And then he call that there was a job at General Motors in Van Nuys, and Mayumi was about to come. And so that first week that she came, he had started the job. And I think it was like a swing shift job or something like that. My mother was sick, she was not able to do a lot, and then Mark wasn't around so I think actually he had, it was like he was gone. So I was like, "What is this?" I mean, no, I didn't feel support after she was born. Before that, I think he was okay with it. I don't think Mark understood what... my reflection in thinking about, even then, was that Mark had these ideas about, I'm going to have two children, a house in five years. I thought, "What are you talking about? What does that mean?" What kind of, what's so important about two kids and a house in five years? I didn't even think about getting a house. But he somehow was like, I said, "I don't think you even know what that means." So it was like, I was very perplexed by some of his thinking. So I don't think he understood sometimes reality, like what was really, was needed. Like having a child, well, what does that mean?

IM: Sounds like he didn't understand the work it took for you?

KM: I think so, yeah.

IM: So who did you turn to for help when you were dealing with this early on?

KM: Well, there weren't people to turn to. My sister was working, my mother was still actually working, and she would bring food over. And even when she couldn't cook, she'd bring over packages of steaks or something, something like that, she was trying her best, but no. But before that, I mean, with the decision not to actually pull out of the League, because I guess I was in it for a brief period because we merged. So not being part of the League, I don't know if Mark really understood what I was trying to say or why I was doing that, but that didn't matter. Someone earlier had said to me, earlier in the movement, like maybe in mid-'70s or earlier had said, "The joy is gone. You don't seem to have any joy." And I thought, "Oh, my god." That kind of stuck with me because I thought, yeah, everything had become very serious and very without any kind of... metaphysical things were no good, that kind of stuff. Things that I thought were kind of, I kind of more related to. So to me, it was like, at that point, I have to really go back to who I really, what I valued, what I think is important, and just check that out. So it's funny because the counselor that I saw, she was just very interested in learning about the movement. So she'd ask me all these questions about the movement, so I'd be telling about the movement, and I don't know if it's therapy I got but it was like, she was learning a lot about the movement.

IM: So the counselor got a lot more.

KM: Yeah. It was kind funny, but maybe that was helpful.

IM: So no one in the League really reached out to you?

KM: I don't know if I told them. I don't think I expressed... I might have said why, but I don't think people understood. No, I didn't expect them to reach out. I didn't really think people would understand, frankly.

IM: Because there were other members in the League who had gone through a lot of other...

KM: Because what I was seeing was so alien, I think, to how people thought at that time. It was not so much about self-care like we talk about now, but... I just really thought I had no center.

IM: Okay, well, thank you for that.

<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.

<Begin Segment 24>

IM: But you have been involved, you've continued to be involved in different ways, I guess, Vigilant Love, Nikkei Progressives, I guess we can talk a little bit -- we can talk about in a second, I was just very curious also about you were involved in these poetry workshops, right, with Amy? Can you talk a little bit more about how you got involved with that and what that was like?

KM: Well, I mean, I've always liked literature and fiction and writing to a certain extent, and I've always liked poetry. So after retiring, it seemed like kind of a good opportunity to get into it, and I also thought that maybe writing would help me summarize some of the work. Like maybe I don't want to write about it, like write-write, but I could write little snippets, like some reflection that would sort of capture what that work was about in a more creative way, you know what I'm saying? Not that it happened, but this was my thinking. I don't have the energy to write something big, but I could at least go through my things and have some record of what that was about in a different way. So I looked at my stuff of some reflections, put it away, that's it, that kind of thing. So that's what I was hoping I could do, but poetry has always been kind of something that I've liked. My father wrote tanka also, and actually, as a small child, one of the favorite things I would do is when I didn't want to go to school and I was sick at home, I would actually read my mother's poetry books. So, yeah.

IM: So you became, you started a new life as a poet?

KM: No. I don't consider myself a poet, no. I wish I were, I wish I was... no.

IM: Do you remember, I mean, this wasn't too long ago, but what kind of things did you write about in your poetry or other creative writing?

KM: Well, I've written a little bit about my father and his life, and then I also write about persimmons, stuff like that. And my grandfather. And more about, I wish I knew more about some of them.

IM: About the members of your family?

KM: Yeah. When you try to write something, it's like, "Gosh, I realize I don't know anything about him now, who he was, what his life was about." Evan may have to call time.

IM: Yeah, I guess the other thing I just wanted to ask, and also just check in about, was like, I don't know, recently you mentioned something like the Sansei right now, or at least some of the members of NP are going through a lot right now with people passing and people declining health, things like that. I guess I'm just really curious how that's been affecting you at this point in your life looking back at everything?

KM: I'm seeing a therapist again. [Laughs] It's kind of like, yeah, I'm definitely not hesitant to be proactive about it, because I felt like a month or two ago, I was at a point of immobilization. It was like I don't know if I can take any more of this. I'm not the one that's sick or dying, but it was just too much to see and to respond to. I said, "Oh, no." I decided I had to see a therapist for that. It's been kind of the ringing theme of my life, huh? Therapist, therapist, therapist.

IM: So have you been trying to cherish moments with people, I guess, at this point?

KM: Yeah, I went to see a relative this morning, Mark's uncle Harry Kawahara, who is not doing well. And I thought, gee, I see all these other people that are friends, like Iku, Tracy's mom, or Alan, but I hadn't seen Harry. It's always good to see them.

IM: I guess... I don't know how we are on time.

EK: Last question.

IM: Okay, okay. There's so much riding on this last question.

BN: Don't blow it.

IM: I guess... I don't even know what to say for the last... but I just want to say something that allows you to say, I don't know, kind of put a bow on our entire conversation, but... I guess at this point in your life, we've spent a lot of time looking, talking about everything that's happened to you in the past and looking toward the future, what are the things that, I don't know, have given you the most meaning either a long time ago in your childhood, but are also things more recently. I don't know if that's too vague of a question.

KM: You know, think just learning about, from everything that I've done, and I don't think I regret anything that's happened, bad marriage, or being in the period of, like, losing joy or losing myself, none of that really I regret. It's like it's all part of the development, and I also feel like I've been very lucky. I've been at different places at the times that were right. Really happy to have been alive, and at a point where redress was happening, to be the Sansei generation that could be part of it. Really lucky to have been alive in the late '60s and been at Berkeley at that time. So all of it is like, almost like oddly weird to me that these things have happened, and to be alive at these certain points in time, and a lot of crossovers from when I think about the collective in Boyle Heights. Even the house I lived in in Berkeley became J-Sei. It's just weird how things kind of overlap and come together. And the fact that I'm able to learn something now, and I value that, and I think that, I do think others. But it's like it's amazing, actually. It's amazing to be alive at this point, horrible but amazing at the same time.

IM: Okay. Thank you, Kathy, really appreciate it.