<Begin Segment 6>

LH: So do you think that the degree at Penn, sort of the work you did at Penn, and the school, the School of Social Work, was that really something that sort of motivated you for the next for the next years of your life?

GU: Well, those things have to, the opportunities have to come and you don't know when the opportunity is going to come. But we started and continued the work in Philadelphia, we eventually -- after we got married, the following year we established the Philadelphia Japanese American Citizens League. 'Cause we felt tying in with a national organization will help us to know what is going on among our people and the rest of the country.

LH: And what year was this that you organized?

GU: We organized the Philadelphia JACL in 1947. So we just earlier this year celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Philadelphia JACL. So that it gave me opportunity to meet Japanese American leaders throughout the country, but that was not my very first impact with JACL. When I was a freshman in college, JACL had been sponsoring national oratorical contests, and the Stockton chapter encouraged me to compete and my high school English teacher also helped me to write out the oratorical speech. And both in 1938, when I went to Portland -- no, Los Angeles -- and in 1940 to Portland, I represented Northern Cal. At that particular time, the California JACL was divided into half and we had a Northern Cal district and a Southern Cal district. So that I am thankful for, because I never had any fear of appearing in public, and if one is to go out there and fight for any cause, you really have to be able to stand up in front of a group and, you know, say what needs to be said, and not be hesitant about saying what you want to say.

I have (a weakness with the English language). Even my kids, my Sansei kids say, "You know, Mom, I guess because you grew up in a family where the language was Japanese, you never really mastered the language." [Laughs] And I said, "Well, I don't know if it's that," because I said my husband's family spoke less English, but then he was just a linguist, you know, so I guess I never worried. It's the idea that I have to get across and sometimes my mind moves too fast before I put my sentence together. So eventually what happened was because I was so active in JACL and before we knew it, we pretty much had attended most of the national conventions, both my husband and myself. The early ones we dragged our children to the West Coast and left them with a relative. So we have many friends in JACL. And it was at the 1978 National Convention in Salt Lake City that a final real determination was made to proceed with redress. And Clifford Uyeda was elected the president and because he saw I was also concerned about how the organization ran things, he appointed me as a nominations chairperson for the next biennium so we would be focused on getting good leaders, you know. So that I became part of the national organization, too, about that period.

Then John Tateishi, who was appointed to chair the National JACL redress committee, eventually he asked me to join that national committee. I was not on the beginnings of it. And he provided very good materials for people who would go out and speak. And so, you know, I learned about presenting our story to the general public and then you go back and you begin to train people to go out and speak in the wider community. So it was a little different from folks who are here on the West Coast they might do something right there in San Francisco. But ours was not just in Philadelphia, we went out to all the suburban communities. Then Philadelphia also had a portion of its membership and the southern middle section of New Jersey, and those folks also did their work in New Jersey. So our potential was really wonderful in view of the smaller membership. So my personal deduction is that the folks who decided they would stay on on the East Coast instead of returning to the West Coast, I think had a basic feeling that there would be better opportunities for us if we remained east. So that I think, you know, without getting into what we call activism of the West Coast, we just naturally became part of the community and then you select organizations that are into the kinds of things that you want to see done. So I think we're, we just became natural coalition builders because we don't work really among ourselves. Our work always went out naturally to the wider community.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.