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EK: Could you talk a little bit more about the evolution of the community outreach efforts?

LJ: Sure. In the beginning of the program, like I mentioned, the community leaders were very much involved in getting the program, getting the law passed. And so as the program developed, Bob Bratt, who was the initial administrator, worked very closely with the leaders in the Japanese American community to get their opinions on the best ways to reach people, how are we going to do that. And so he did a lot, he was very much the face of ORA in the beginning, and he went out and met with them individually, in groups, to work on how can we reach people. And then as the program developed and we realized that people did need some one-on-one assistance, and so then our workshops developed where we took a number of staff members out so that people could come to a church or come to a community center, and we would do a four-hour daytime workshop and then we would come back in the evening for three more hours and people would come with their questions or their paperwork. Or they would come and just say, "I don't know what to do. I think I'm eligible for this," and, "Help me, how do I get started?" So we would sit down with them and establish was this something that we could easily handle, or did we need to have them sit with one of our attorneys to go through a more complex case and try to give them some guidance on how to do it. But as the program went on, we used the help of the community leaders to help us find people in the community that may not have known, for whatever reason, they may have missed press releases or news stories. It was very much, especially in the early years, it was very highly publicized, but you always have those people who, for whatever reason, don't find things out any other way. And so we counted on community leaders and their churches, in their stores and their restaurants, among their friends, they would find people and send them our way.

And we had a couple community leaders that we were then all in close contact with over the years. And Sox Kitashima, who was out of San Francisco, was amazing. She was a tiny little spitfire ball of energy, and she would call at all hours of the day. We would be like, "Sox, it's five a.m. there still." She's like, "I know, I'm up, I got a case for you." She was great about being a good liaison for us for people that were having a hard time, or people would come to her. She was very well-known in her community, and people felt very comfortable going to her for help. And she helped a lot of people on her own getting things and getting paperwork they needed. But she would call us to give us a heads up. And it was funny, at one point we were in an office that was big and pretty open, and there were some individual offices, but there was a big open space. And if somebody was out of the office or somebody was in a meeting and you'd hear someone's phone ring, and if they couldn't get their phone, then you would hear the next phone ring and you knew that it was probably Sox and she was going to keep calling until she got somebody who could help her. And by golly, you'd answer the phone and she'd say, "All right, I got a new case for you," or, "I have this case." "Hey, you remember that case we were talking about? I'm helping them find this paperwork," or, "I need your help with this," or, "They're stuck on this." She was amazing. She probably single handedly helped get several hundred cases through the system that may otherwise have lingered for a lot longer. So it was always great to have the opportunity to go out into the community and have those community leaders there with us to help facilitate things and make introductions and get people to come to the events. It just made the process easier for them and more comfortable for them and easier for us to be able to get somebody pushed through and verified. So that community help was invaluable.

EK: Thank you, Lisa.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2019 Emi Kuboyama. All Rights Reserved.