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SF: ...Los Angeles after the war, and helped people resettle. And eventually you became the pastor of what used to be called, I guess, the Japanese Baptist Church, right?

PN: Uh-huh.

SF: And when the Niseis came back -- and I guess by that time, they were sort of the leaders of the community, right? As opposed to the Issei. I notice that the name of the church changed to Nisei Baptist Church. I think you told us this earlier.

PN: Uh-huh, uh-huh.

SF: Why did that happen? Why was the name of the church changed from Japanese Baptist Church...

PN: Yeah.

SF: ...to Nisei Baptist Church?

PN: Yeah. Of course, Japanese was not too popular a title at that time. And then our main appeal was to the Niseis. They represented the people coming back, mostly English-speaking. So as a transition from the Japanese-speaking -- primarily Japanese -- to English, and then it referred to the Nisei or the second generation, English-speaking. So we thought, well, that would be a good name to appeal to that group of people that have just come back, and about the future. 'Course, in time -- and maybe I'm running ahead of your question -- but we're going beyond the Nisei, would be more or less Evergreen. So we adopted the word Evergreen. Now it's Evergreen Baptist Church.

SF: What was the discussion like about -- when you changed it from Nisei to this more kind of generic American title of Evergreen Baptist Church? Did people explicitly say that they wanted to welcome others than Japanese into the church? Or that wasn't an issue somehow. Evergreen seemed to be a more, I don't know, for some reason a more acceptable title? Why...?

BF: And what was this time period that the name was changed to Evergreen? Do you remember?

PN: Yeah. The Nisei didn't last very long. [Laughs] It was sort of a temporary appeal, you know. But oh, I tell you, just go back a little bit. This Nisei, we had what you call, like the name, I gave it to -- Chi Omicron, the Greek letters for household of faith. And the Chi Omicron was for the Nisei. And there were a lot of young Nisei couples then. That's what -- we were all kind of young, just becoming parents and having children. And that was a tremendous social organization. Oh, we had a lot of, you know, we'd gone through the same experiences, either in the service or, whether in the camps or coming back. And so we had some wonderful experiences coming together as a large group of the young Nisei couples. And they're all having children about that time. And we developed a wonderful rapport with the young Nisei couples. And they became the leaders for the church to come. And then, of course, they felt that, "Hey, we gotta think about the new generation, and it won't be just Nisei. So let's begin to think about the third generation." [Coughs] 'Scuse me.

SF: What kind of social activities did this very tight, super-friendly group do in the time period from when they came back to, say, the early '50s? They must have been a very cohesive group that wanted to do lots of things together -- maybe bowling, dances, get-togethers. What were some of these things the folks did in that time period?

PN: Yeah. Children started being born. And there was a lot of picnics, I remember. And when we have our social times in the church, we played a lot of games, you know, just let our hair down. The Baptist church, they're pretty strict at that time. They didn't have dances. So as far as the community was concerned -- a lot of dances. And the people were free to go to them. But as a church we didn't sponsor any dances. But then as the Japanese American community, we had all kind of clubs beginning, and having dances and sports, athletics. And I belonged to a "Golden Bears," which was a Japanese American club that met in the church. So we always associate ourself with the church. But it was a most -- more or less an athletic club -- went into all the sport events. So that's the way the community started to develop.

BF: Did you find that this was a, kind of a boom time for the Japanese American churches, as far as growing membership? Was this a time when a lot of people were looking for that social connection as well as support system? And as they came back to the West Coast, they joined the churches? Was it a period of large growth?

PN: I think so. It's just something like the immigrants -- as we mentioned before, how they needed to have a support group and a social group. So it was a boom time. People tell their friends, and they start coming. And the church would begin to grow. So we moved from a mission status, where we were getting help by the denomination, to become a self-supporting group. And that took place when I was a pastor of that Evergreen Baptist Church. Yeah. And then we developed our own constitution. Fact is, we grew so that we were able to open up another church on the west side of Los Angeles. So that was a boom time. Yeah.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 1999 Densho. All Rights Reserved.