<Begin Segment 11>

TI: So Jun, where we ended up last segment was you had just mentioned the JACL, and that how Niseis, that was an organization that Niseis organized. Can you tell me how you first got involved with the JACL?

JK: Well, we had, we had a young Japanese organization here, which we called the Reimeikai, they called it Reimeikai. And it wasn't a JACL at that time until a later date, I forget, I don't recall the exact date of the, the involvement with the JACL.

TI: So let me ask you about the Reimeikai. What was the purpose of the Remeikai?

JK: Well, it was just a social group more than anything else.

TI: And do you recall who started this organization?

JK: Yeah, well, I think the one who started it was Joe Masaoka, and Miya, or Miya Asahina and Mary Sasaki, Yasuo Sasaki, and I think my brother Joe Kurumada. And they were the principal organizers of this Reimeikai. In fact, I had a list of all the members there where the secretary, I think the secretary was a girl named Tomiko Kimura. She was the secretary of that group, and we had about, I think we had about fifteen or twenty members at that time. And our purpose was mainly as a social group more than anything else. We would get together and have readings and mostly dances.

TI: Okay. And then how did it change into the JACL?

JK: Well, that, that is something that came about when the JACL wanted to incorporate our group as a JACL membership group. But that came about after the installation of the JACL that was started in, I think it started in Seattle with Jimmy Sakamoto and... let's see now, there was Charlie Tsukamoto, I forget. I forget the names of those that were involved in it at that time, other than Dr. Yatabe and Saburo Kido and fellows like that. Now, I knew Saburo Kido and George Inagaki and Carl Hirota and the Hayashis from my association with those people in San Francisco. But I didn't get to know Toru Sakahara until after, after he had evacuated and he went to law school here, and I met him while he was in law school here.

TI: So we're gonna get to a lot of these people later on, but so in the early days of the JACL, after a chapter was established in Salt Lake City, what kind of, what was the purpose of the JACL in those early days?

JK: Well, according to the, according to the... oh, I don't know, the motto was to "be better Americans in a greater America." That was one of the items that... and it was mostly a civic group, actually, to fight discrimination and to initiate a program whereby we could buy property and whereby the miscegenation laws would be rescinded. We finally got the miscegenation laws rescinded, and we finally got the ownership of property taken care of.

TI: So these were all sort of after the war? Alien land laws and things like that? But going back to the, before the war, I'm trying to get a sense, so the Reimeikai was more social, then the JACL came in and sounded like it was more civic. So before the war, would you say it was a combination of social and civic, or did it really change more?

JK: Yeah, it was a combination of both, for that matter. We used to have what we used to call JACL, you might say, graduation dances and a party for all the graduates of high school. And the JACL would sponsor dancing parties for all the new graduates. I think we had annual picnics for the JACL group.

TI: And it was the older Niseis who kind of organized all this? They would do all this?

JK: Mostly that.

TI: And how about the national events? Every once in a while, the JACL would have national events where all the chapters would get together?

JK: Yeah, well, I don't think that Salt Lake was big enough at that time to participate in the, in the national, except a few members here participated, like Mike Masaoka. And oh, let's see, Shigeki Ushiro, but then other than that, there wasn't too much JACL activity here, that is in the way, in the sense that it was conducted in, like in Seattle, in San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, places like that, where they had a bigger influx of Japanese, and where the Japanese were a little older, they were a little older group. Not like, fellows like Dr. Yatabe and Jimmy Sakamoto and Tsukamoto from Sacramento and places like that, where they occupied, you might say, all the official positions of the JACL.

TI: But yet, and you mentioned Mike Masaoka, during the war, he was the national secretary, and was a key leader during the war, and he came from Salt Lake City.

JK: Well, yeah, he was a, his father, or his family owned a fish market right down here in Japantown. And Mike was, I think Mike was about the fourth, fourth child in his family. He was, he was a very articulate fellow, he was kind of an obnoxious guy, for that matter.

TI: Why would you say he was obnoxious?

JK: Well, he was one that, who, one instance that... he was making a speech in Los Angeles, and he raised the ire of all, so many of the girls down there, because he called them all daikon-ashi. [Laughs] And they, and I think one of the gals says, "Well, who do you think you are, Clark Gable?" But then, well, he was... and he was, I wouldn't say that he was a belligerent fellow or anything like that, but then he was, he was quite an orator. And he taught public speaking and he taught oratory at the university, and he was selected to be a lobbyist, I don't know for whom, but back in, in Washington. And he was the JACL representative there.

TI: And so yet, I mean, so his, Joe was his older brother?

JK: Yeah, there was Joe, Shinko and Ben, and then Mike, and Art and another, couple more in the family. And I think Ben and one other brother were lost in the war.

TI: Yeah, okay.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright ©2008 Densho and the Topaz Museum. All Rights Reserved.