<Begin Segment 26>

SY: So you never had ambition to become a doctor or become a pharmacist?

YY: Pharmacist, no.

SY: And you never felt like you wanted to go back to school?

YY: Well, I did afterwards. Then I got my bachelor's degree in administration, health services administration.

SY: And when was that?

YY: That was in the '70s.

SY: So you worked all, for many, many years before you went back to school. And that was, why did you decide to get back to school?

YY: Well, I was going into administration, so I thought it was a chance to go to school, all that. Then I was, I went into community relations. I got, I didn't take an exam or anything, but they, I got appointed.

SY: How did you get appointed to...

YY: Health officer came and asked me if I wanted to me, wanted this position, and I said, I jumped at it. [Laughs] More money and different kind of job.

SY: And why was it that he picked you, do you think?

YY: Well, I think because I was one of the founders of the Los Angeles County Asian American Employees Association, and I spent two years as the president. And so this job was supposed to be for Asians, community relations with the Asians community, so I think that was one of the reasons he picked me.

SY: So let's back up, and so when, you were a health inspector for, until, until that time, and then you got into administration? So all that time up to that point you were a health inspector?

YY: Well, seventeen of those years were in occupational health, and I was doing industrial hygiene work.

SY: So you were doing, going around and inspecting for bigger problems?

YY: Industrial hygiene, our work mostly was more the, from the complaints that we get about people getting sick on the job. And in California, the doctors, when they treat a person that got injured on the job or got ill on the job, they have to send a form into the state and the state sends it to us in our community. So we would go through it, and if we find something that we thought would be, say like they're breathing air that's foul or they're getting sick from dust, radiation, things like that, we would go out and investigate to see if it would harm other people, make other people sick. And if we would, if we thought it might be a problem we would go out there and test an area. We'd have instruments and things that we would take out and measure things, and we would do that.

SY: So you needed additional training for that job as well?

YY: Yeah, 'cause I went to Cincinnati to Public Health Services and I took eighty hours of industrial hygiene engineering. And Public Health Services gave classes here, forty hour courses, and I took it in different subjects, like heat and stuff like that.

SY: So that was --

YY: I had to do a lot of going to class.

SY: And that was considered, you got more pay for that, that industrial hygiene work.

YY: Hygiene.

SY: And how is it that the L.A. County Asian American Employees Association started?

YY: Well, it started because we felt that since the blacks and the Latinos have their own organization, we would fall back if we didn't get organized. So we started looking for membership, and we had about three hundred when we first started out.

SY: And that was when, in the '70s?

YY: It was, yeah, '71 and '72.

SY: And what was your role? How did you, how were you involved in starting it?

YY: Well, we, there was, let's see, there was about four or five of us that decided we want to do it, so we tried to, we talked to different people to join and get together and join. So we went out and tried and get all the employees we can to join the association. And we got it started.

SY: Were they all, were you mostly involved with people in the health department?

YY: That's where we started, yeah. Then we got a fellow from the employee, employment office, they were interested in it too, so he got in the area. So we talked to different people in different departments to see if we could get them to join.

SY: So was this all in one, like did L.A. County have central offices for all these people?

YY: The health department, yeah. We started in the health department.

SY: You started there. And then what other kinds of employees did you eventually...

YY: We went to see the, well, the first thing we went to was the employment area, where they employed people, and we got them to help us. Then we went to, let's see... can't think of the name of these agencies, but we went to several agencies looking for people.

SY: And how much work was involved? How much time did you have to put in to do this? Was it a...

YY: I can't remember that either. 'Cause we had to work too, and I can't remember how we were able to do this.

SY: You did it on the side.

YY: I remember we had, we called a meeting one time and asked the people to come after work to hear what we had going.

SY: And what was your, your biggest pitch was that you needed an Asian American...

YY: We needed an association or we were gonna fall back way behind the blacks and the, getting jobs and getting promotions. That was our big thing, getting promotions, 'cause they're talking about affirmative action and, and you see, it wasn't included, the Asians weren't included in affirmative action, so we had to work to get our share in there.

SY: So then you had to deal with the administration to try to get more promotions for people?

YY: Right, yeah. We had to make them aware that we were interested in getting promoted too. [Laughs]

SY: So in that group, how, what was the percentage of Japanese Americans?

YY: Well, not that much 'cause there was a lot of, let's see, we had Filipinos and we had Chinese. Well, maybe, I don't know, maybe one quarter Japanese.

SY: And was it something that, was there an awareness about the whole issue of having been to camp? Was that even something that you talked about in this organization?

YY: No.

SY: It had nothing --

YY: No, nothing to do with it.

SY: No bearing at all.

<End Segment 26> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.