<Begin Segment 28>

Female voice: While we're asking that, can you tell us a little bit about BIJAC and how BIJAC started?

FK: Oh, now that's an interesting story. [Laughs] You know, Bainbridge Island Japanese American Community was formed originally in 1952, after the war. And it was kind of a, a loose chapter, kind of modeled after the Japanese American Citizens League, and I think Joe Nakata was the president for about seventeen years. And I think my sister Lilly, who was still in high school, was the secretary of the group. But it became kind of dormant. I think the only transaction they did was to sell the Japanese Hall, which was, at that time, they thought it was a burden, but I think it was really a mistake to sell it. I mean, they sold it for a really small amount of money and we lost this hall and the property's just worth, probably a million by now. But they just saw that as a burden they had to take care of and pay taxes on and so forth. But back in 19... about 1982 or so, three of us Sansei, third-generation, got together and started talking about having an oral history project. And, and it was myself -- and I was the old guy -- and Ron Nakata and... what's his name? Sakai... I can't remember his first name, that's terrible. The, and we met together and tried to start an oral history project and to revive things. And it was mostly because we had been sitting around talking one day and we said, "You know, when we went to school here on the island, there was nothing about Japanese American culture in our school." Never knew that we'd been here since 1883, that we'd cleared most of the land here on the island. If it was cleared it was probably a Japanese American farmer. And that we spent our time in school -- in my case trying to be white -- and not knowing our own history and stuff.

So we decided that we didn't want our kids to go through the same type of stuff again, so we tried to revive a history project. And boy, did we ever get flack. People were upset with us, they called us "angry young men." And, "Why bring up all this stuff and make people upset with us again?" And we were getting nowhere real fast. And then eventually, Don Nakata and Junkoh Harui, who were about five years older than I am anyway, I am, listened in on us and said, "You know, that's not a bad idea," and joined us in wanting to do this. And I think they were probably more willing to listen to them 'cause they had some stature in the community as far as with the stores and, and greenhouses and stuff. And slowly by surely, we got more people to say, "Okay, we'll join in and do this." And as the years went by, people were getting more comfortable in doing this. We did that photo project, that traveling photo exhibit, and that really made a difference 'cause we had something to focus on, as far as gathering pictures and doing text and so forth, so we had a lot of sessions with the text for that. And as the years went by, it just became easier and easier for us to do this.

And, and I know when the Densho project started -- I was on that board when it started -- and they went through the same stuff we did. People that were upset, didn't want to share their information, were real guarded about giving things away, and they were really upset about it. And I told them, "Hey, you know, you've got to do this, we did this. That's what we went through." Except they had bucks so they did it in one year rather than in the ten years it took us to do it. So, but that's, that's kind of the way things started. And we still have people that refuse to talk, we still have people who have never talked about it with their children. But I think each year, more people are finding that they're not gonna live forever and that they need to share some of that story. And we've just had a good group of people. I mean, people say, "How many Japanese Americans do you have living on this island?" And I'm going, "Well, maybe a hundred fifty at the most, and maybe about twenty or thirty were here before the war." They're going, "You're kidding." But it's that small group of people, but everyone just really works hard and I don't think any of us really stops, stops and says to ourselves, "We can't do that." And we've done some things that I just can't believe, and it's because of the, the way, how hard a few group of people have worked at it. And, and it's not only people that have lived here forever and, and... but it's people that have moved to this community and are of Japanese descent. I mean, I talked to, I talked to Mary Koura the other day about being interviewed and she said, "I'm not a Bainbridge Islander." I said, "Well, how long have you been here, Mary?" She said, "Sixty years." [Laughs] And I'm going, "Oh, geez." So it, it's interesting because people kind of think of people that have living here forever as being real special, but we've had people living here for sixty -- and that, and that's kind of sad to me, in a certain way, that they think they've lived here for sixty years but they're a newcomer. So... and the newcomers are doing the work right now, so that's the ones we want. [Laughs]

<End Segment 28> - Copyright © 2007 Densho. All Rights Reserved.