<Begin Segment 33>
SY: Do you think that there was anything learned from camp that maybe... I mean, it's sort of asking you, how did you become the person you are? What are all the different factors that went into who you are, and your goals?
BW: Yeah, well, you rarely ever think about a question like that, but I think everything I've talked about in terms of my family upbringing, growing up in a Japanese family, on the farm, going to Japanese school and having the set of friends that I did, did mold me in terms of the foundation of the person that I am. But at the same time, I think my Christian faith, and I do strongly believe in providence and sort of God's will and that kind of thing, so I felt very strongly that I learned some Japanese and became a social worker, and I wanted to serve in the community and Little Tokyo is where I should be. So I had such a strong conviction of that that I felt like I could launch out, even though -- so when I was hired onto the Little Tokyo Service Center, we had no budget, no money, we had no office, no staff, but we did have a board of directors, a group of people who felt like this was a vision they wanted to support. And I felt very strongly, like this is where I should be, I think this is what God has willed, and because of that I was confident that it would be taken care of. So if I didn't have that confidence I probably would've chickened out. I thought, "What am I doing? I'm married, I got a kid. We shouldn't be doing this." But --
SY: Also coming from a place, though, of being a minority in a society that once looked down upon Japanese Americans, did you feel that that, did you feel that internal struggle at all in terms of the work that you set out to do?
BW: No, I think it was, I felt like a person's life, meaning in life is really the kind of service that they can do in the community and changing the world for the better. I felt that then, as I do now, so I think that was the primary motivation. So my context, you can't change the whole world, you can't improve the whole world, but you can work on a piece of that. And so I felt very strongly that my piece of that is Little Tokyo, the JA community, and doing what I can there.
SY: And this notion of service really came to you through your, through your Christianity, you think?
BW: Uh-huh.
SY: So that was really the thing that prompted it. And that, was there a turning point in your life, do you think?
BW: The turning point probably was the commune experience, having lived in an Asian American Christian commune, and that was basically one of our perspectives, community service.
SY: So that would lead us to part two, to talk about the, that experience, which we don't, unfortunately, have time to do today.
BW: Yeah, that was quite an experience. [Laughs]
SY: Yeah, I don't think we have, I don't think we have time. So... and really, I do want to go into it in more detail because that, that would be important.
BW: Yeah. Okay.
SY: I think that's an important history. But in brief, you were, this was after you came back from Japan?
BW: Right. I came back in 1968 and, and got involved with a minister who eventually founded the commune, and I was his number one guy, you might say.
<End Segment 33> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.