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EK: This is Emi Kuboyama with Stanford University. It is January 24, 2020. I'm here with Kay Ochi in San Diego County, California. Good morning.

KO: Good morning, Emi.

EK: Kay, could you start by telling us your name and your organization's name and your role or title within that organization?

KO: My name is Kay Ochi. My real Japanese name is Kozuye Kay Ochi, but for everybody's ease I've always been Kay. I represent NCRR. In the 1980s we were known as the National Coalition for Redress Reparations, but it was always NCRR. And in NCRR I was first just a member. But part of NCRR's mission was to encourage and enable women especially to take leadership roles. So I soon became the treasurer. Not long after that, by 1990, I was the president, vice-president on and off through the years. But because we want to share the responsibility of leadership, we've gone to a co-chair kind of system. Whereby at this point, in 2020, I am a co-chair along with Kathy Masaoka and Richard Katsuda. And the two other officers are Janice Yen and Suzy Katsuda, and we five make up what we call the coordinating committee. We really are the main, kind of, organizers for NCRR at this point.

EK: So were you affiliated with the organization beginning in the '80s?

KO: Yes. What happened was, NCRR organized, became a formal organization in 1980, however, through the '60s and '70s, we were the benefactors of the Civil Rights Movement, all the really impactful leaders, Martin Luther King, Cesar Chavez, on and on, we were impacted by the ethnic rights movements, Black Power, Yellow Power, and Ethnic Studies. Ethnic Studies were so important to people of color that I think that during the '60s and '70s, that really is our background and our roots. Because by the '70s in Little Tokyo in Los Angeles where there were a large number of Japanese Americans, they formed something called LTPRO, Little Tokyo People's Rights Organization. And in the '70s, they worked for people's rights, social justice. One example is there were a lot of Nisei, second generation Japanese Americans, who lived in downtown, Little Tokyo, because there were SROs, Single Residence Occupancy. And a lot of the men were single, the older Nisei. Very few women lived there, but there were some, and it was an economic thing also. They were low economic people, so the SROs met their needs and they were near Little Tokyo. Well, they were being evicted for, of course, expansion, gentrification, and LTPRO took huge leadership in that campaign, to fight against their eviction, so to speak. And from LTPRO, the focus of redress, by the end of the '70s, became more and more the forefront. And these young leaders and activists, primarily Japanese Americans, decided to form an organization whose goal was specifically to seek monetary redress. That was NCRR. They were not content or satisfied with the national JACL and felt that they would have to have another organization, another campaign. And in 1980 they formed NCRR. What's really key are the Principles of Unity. They were so smart, these LTPRO and NCRR people who started the organization. The main thing, of course, I've said, is to seek monetary reparations for those incarcerated, forcibly removed during World War II. Second would be the education around these issues, and third would be to support other groups, other ethnic groups or religious groups who suffered similar kinds of injustices. There are a couple of others.

But I would like to interject at this point that the information I seem to not have readily at my fingertips is in our book. So this is recently published in 2018, and it is NCRR: The Grassroots Struggle for Japanese American Redress and Reparations. Published by UCLA's Asian American Studies Center, NCRR officers are part of the editing team, as editors, with Dr. Lane Hirabayashi. And this book will probably contain ninety percent of what I'm going to share with you today, so if you ever need to go back, and also it has wonderful photographs. And should I forget, I want you to know, if you want more photos of you, Emi Kuboyama, at a community meeting in Los Angeles, or not just Bob Bratt, Joanne Chiedi, Tink Cooper, Lisa Johnson, it also has photos of Paul Suddes, who was only director for a short time, at a community meeting. DeDe Greene, I'm not sure if we have Deserene Worsley, I'd have to really look for those, but they're on my laptop screen. So if you want any of those photos for your project, we're ready.

EK: Thank you, that's good to know.

<End Segment 1> - Copyright © 2020 Emi Kuboyama. All Rights Reserved.