Densho Digital Archive - Richard Konda Interview (denshovh-krichard

<Begin Segment 12>

TI: Okay, so Richard, we're going to start the second part of the interview. And where we left it was you had just decided to go to law school. So let's just start there. So when you entered law school, tell me about your, your classmates first of all. Who was part of your class?

RK: So that's where there was this very active Asian law student group, and they offered a lot of support to the first-year law students. They wanted to try to help us succeed, so they would have kind of these tutorial sessions and essay-writing sessions, where they would try to go through some exams and help us kind of figure out what we needed to do to kind of succeed in law school. And then there were other kind of committees that the law student group had, there was kind of an admissions committee...

TI: Before you go there, let's go back to the Asian law student... just in terms of composition, when you say Asian law students, what different backgrounds in terms of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, what was the composition?

RK: So at that time, there was a lot of Chinese and Japanese, and a few Filipinos but not a lot. That was pretty much it. And the thing that was interesting, it was mixed between people from Hawaii and then people who were not from Hawaii, from people, from basically the West Coast to Bay Area.

TI: And what was the difference between if they were from Hawaii or from the mainland? I mean, was there a difference in terms of how they worked together or didn't work together?

RK: Well, to be very... to generalize, the Hawaii Asians, whether they be Japanese or Chinese, were more engaged in maybe helping us with tutorials or doing that kind of activity as opposed to some of the other mainland Asians who were more involved with trying to create or work with the local community groups with that Information and Referral Project that I talked about earlier, or working with maybe some of the admissions programs.

TI: Okay. I mean, earlier we had talked about this concept of "Asian American." In high school you mentioned the Chinese Americans really didn't work together with Japanese Americans, and now you have this Asian law student, where you have this group concept. Was this the first time, or did you get this also in college? I mean, when did this sense of being Asian American start happening for you?

RK: I think this was really the first real concrete situation where it was, we were together as an Asian law student group, and it was clear that we needed to do that to be effective in terms of our work in the community or our working with the law school administration. There was issues around trying to help people with admissions to law schools, to the law school, so we had a committee of the law student group that would try to review applications and then try to, try to kind of nudge the administration to admit certain applicants.

TI: So you said this was needed, why was it needed? Why an Asian group versus individually, as Chinese Americans or Japanese Americans or Filipino? I mean, why, why Asian?

RK: I mean, again, I think we saw the strength in the numbers, and we had this common goal of, again, trying to, on the one hand help the law students to succeed, secondly to establish this community project, and then the third thing would be to kind of help with the admissions process.

TI: So it's, having the numbers helps, any downside or difficulties bringing these groups together?

RK: We seemed to work pretty harmoniously. I don't remember having any real issues between the different parts of the group. I think we worked well together. The one thing that did occur, I do remember, is initially when we were, when I first started at Santa Clara, the Asian law students also included some Pacific Islanders, meaning native Hawaiians, and at some point, I think in the second year, the Native Hawaiian group kind of split off on their own and formed a Native American group, which included Native Hawaiians, Native Americans and others that were made of quote/unquote "native people." So I mean, that was fine. They felt that they needed to kind of advocate on behalf of folks from their group, so they did that.

TI: And their groupings, in terms of Native Americans, the issues that were more important to their community, they felt it grouped better in that sort of cluster rather than an Asian American? Is that the reason for that shift?

RK: Yeah, I guess. I mean, I don't want to speak for them, but it seemed like they felt that some of, they could be more effective if they kind of took their issues separately with the administration.

TI: But as an Asian law student group, did you find that the issues from, say, the Japanese American community were similar enough to, say, the Korean community and the Filipino community to have this all make sense?

RK: I mean, at that time, it was pretty much Japanese, Chinese, and a few Filipinos. I don't recall either Koreans or Vietnamese or other, some of the more recently arrived groups, at least when I was there from '75 to '78. I think it has changed dramatically over the years, but at that time, it was pretty much Japanese, Chinese, and a couple Filipinos I believe, but that was it.

TI: Did the group, I guess, as you got into law school in terms of helping communities, oftentimes it'd be more the immigrant communities that need help, I mean, based on your experience. Did the Asian law students reach out to these other Asian communities that weren't part of, say, Chinese or Japanese?

RK: So that's where you have a kind of interesting dynamic that occurred. So when we were working with the Japanese American Citizens League with this kind of Information and Referral Project, I think, I think initially, the JACL thought of it as being a service to Japanese American community. I mean, I think that's what they were thinking, and I think as an Asian law student group, I think our point of view was a little different, and we felt that it should be more open. And I do recall there were some discussions or debate that the JACL had about really where should the direction be. But I think from the law student group, we pretty much were pretty firm in saying, "This is an Asian law student organization, we need this project to reach out to more than just the Japanese American community." And so it did in effect, if we got calls from whoever, it would, we would then try to connect them to the resource.