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Title: Tomio Moriguchi Interview II
Narrator: Tomio Moriguchi
Interviewer: Becky Fukuda
Location: Seattle, Washington
Date: December 9, 1999
Densho ID: denshovh-mtomio-02-0017

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BF: I, I know that one of the things that you see as being kind of a weakness in the Nikkei community is their lack of involvement at higher levels in boards, in politics. And it seems like you've gotten a great deal out of it, and feel it's very important. What -- do you, have you thought about why more Nikkei aren't involved?

TM: It's strictly a numbers game, and to a certain degree and a factor that with cultural issues, but it's a numbers game. We just, in terms of percentage or round numbers, we don't have the population. And you couple that with -- and the more I think about it, as I get a little older, I think the damage is done by the internment and the destroying of self-esteem, directly/indirectly, and it has really played its toll. And it will play its toll for next couple generations. And the toll may not be direct, but the toll is indirect in the sense that if my mother was incarcerated, she probably didn't want her children, including myself, to take any risk. Wanted us to be safe, work for the, become an engineer and work for Boeing or become a school teacher. I don't think people coming out of the internment is telling their kids to risk your whole bankroll or risk things. Be safe. Don't make waves. You've heard all that before. And I think that's, as I think about this more and more recently, and I think it's much more profound than we want to realize, I think. And that's why, getting back, I don't know about your, your parents, but your parents' age are the group I'm kind of thinking of, most of them, very -- all of them are very intelligent, nice people, but they have been adverse to risk.

BF: That's true. Yeah. I, I look at the leaders in the community, and just a handful have used that leadership outside their own community, outside the people they already know and the people they feel comfortable with. I know you've also said that -- and you just said that -- generations... so you feel that the Sansei, like your, and the Yonsei, will also have some of this kind of baggage to deal with. Do you... well, you have children...

TM: Uh-huh.

BF: Do you encourage Denise and Tyler to get out there? You know what I mean? Is that something you, you really, you try and make them less, consciously make them less risk-averse and --

TM: Well you know, I don't talk to them as much as I should. Thank God, my wife, Lovett, was much more, articulated much better and had better discussion with my children than I did. So I'm very fortunate that, at least Denise was fifteen and Tyler was seventeen or eighteen. In fact, a month before Lovett passed away, she spent, Tyler and her spent two, three weeks in Hawaii visiting her sister. So they, they I know that they had a lot of talk. This was just a couple weeks before they, he went off to college. So I -- and I don't want to hide behind this, but I'm probably typical Nisei in the sense that I did not talk to my children. But I think I try to set an example. And if they talk to me, I try to respond. But I think it was a shortfall on my part not to articulate some of these issues with them. But they know that, business, I talk to them about business -- well, maybe not talk to them, but I take them to my workplace and some of the meetings I've had ever since they were young. So they kind of had through osmosis a feeling of what is important to me and things like that. But I think that's a shortfall that I just did not sit down, because they're intelligent enough to talk about it. And I'm hoping to have more opportunity to do that. But getting back, I'm convinced that the Sanseis -- and I would love to see somebody do this study, that the Sanseis are much more closer to the Nisei than the Sansei want to be, I think.

BF: Do you, do you see it in certain habits or --

TM: Yeah. Values, habits. I'm not saying that's bad. I'm just saying that it is much more --

BF: What, what sort of values do you think, good and bad?

TM: Well, I think family values and values of education and values of, some real good values that start off with that Taoism, that Japan, you know, the Shinto. Not so much Buddhism, but any religion, they don't teach you anything bad. But the values of Japanese that we talk about, the Issei values, come from the Taoism. The respect to your elders, family, family and parents, and those kind, and things about carrying your own way, not being a burden to society. All that is ingrained in us, and being at the family gathering, being at the funeral, the weddings. Those are ingrained in us. I don't think anybody told us, but that's part of our culture. In fact, if you've been to a Chinese wedding, God, 5,000 people. You know what I mean. But that's a cultural issue. How can anybody know, 5,000's an exaggeration. But you've been to one with 500 people. That's a cultural thing. I don't think if that person, the bride or the groom, they don't want to invite 500 people, but that's a cultural -- and that's what I'm saying, is that the people you invite to like those events are cultural, and the Sanseis are caught up with that. And like I say, it's not a bad thing. I'm just saying that they may think that they don't want to be burdened by this, I don't know how you say, culture that they have received, but that's, it's stronger than I think they, a lot of people think it is.

BF: What about some of the not-so-positive things, like the risk aversion. I mean, do you see that --

TM: Well, that's the other, I think, the indirect heritage that the Sansei has, I'll say unfortunately, received. Because if your parents are not risk-taking, it's pretty hard for children to become a risk-taker.

BF: Yeah. You still don't see -- I don't see my peers, of the young Sansei, going, being entrepreneurs, trying politics.

TM: First of all, you have to equate those achievements with risk. And that in itself is a question. But if you do, in a very simple term, then there is a tendency of lack of risk or aversion to risk that is strong in our community.

BF: So you don't think then that entrepreneurship and politics -- I guess it, for you, it hasn't, you haven't -- well, I should ask you, do you think it's real, a risky, riskier, than if you had people go on the track to be accountants and engineers or --

TM: Yeah. And here again, I don't think I got out of high school or college and say, I'm going to be a risky, taker. I was comfortable. I was comfortable at Boeing. But I guess we're all kind of unique. But I don't think there's too many younger people, not only Asians, but just thinking in terms of, thinking things through as political connections, the risk and things like that. But this gets down to the numbers. I'm saying that if we had one million Japanese, I will guarantee you at least a handful of leaders because but that's just the numbers game. But we don't have a million Nikkeis in the community, so you're going to have proportionally less risk-takers and musicians and whatever it takes because a certain amount of that has to be demographically proof. But having said that, there are ways to enhance that odds a little bit in the risk in business, and we haven't been able to do that. And go back, the incarceration probably didn't help tweak that percentage or something like that because you can't say in China or Japan, where there's a hundred million or one billion that there aren't sharp leaders that are emerging, the same genes you have --

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 1999 Densho. All Rights Reserved.