<Begin Segment 32>

MN: Now let me ask you about your involvement with the Japanese American Credit Union. How did you get involved and get onto the board?

KM: Oh. At that time, I was living on the west side in De Merit Park, and I was a good friend of George Saiki who used to be the liaison man for [inaudible], L.A. City Mayor. Anyway, he was the manager of the credit union, and I guess that was so heavy on non-professional guys on the board of the credit union that he wanted to put some guys that were in some sort of business or some sort of professional capacity into the board instead of just being all, say, gardeners. And so he asked me to be, become a member of the credit union board, so that's when I got started.

MN: Can you share with us, you mentioned there was a lot of gardeners. Share with us why there were so many gardeners and how the credit union started.

KM: The credit union started, they used to, the Japanese used to have organizations -- not organizations, but people would get together and have what they call a tanomoshi club. And the tanomoshi club was usually people that would put so much money in every month, like a loan or savings account. People would bid on, to borrow that money that these people would, that would put in the tanomoshi every month. So I guess it started getting so big that the credit union movement came into being.

MN: So why did they have to have a tanomoshi? Why didn't they just go to a bank?

KM: Oh, still had discrimination for the banks and insurance companies, still discriminatory of who the customers were, so the Japanese were excluded from that, so that's why they had to do their own thing. That's right.

MN: So now the... you started out with the Los Angeles Southwest Japanese American Credit Union, which has expanded and consolidated. As someone who's been on the board, what are some of the things that you're most proud of?

KM: Oh boy... one thing is that it grew from a humble beginning, and now we have assets of about, over eighty million dollars, and that's a lot of money to be tied up. So my thing is that that's a heck of a big accomplishment for any kind of an organization, to go from a small nothing network to an eighty-plus million dollar credit union. But accounts, other than we have... well, it's the wrong time to ask me that question because the credit union and banks are having such a rough time now that everything you think about, I hope it survives.

<End Segment 32> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.