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TI: So let's talk about the, the starting up of the Asian Law Alliance. I mean, whose idea, how did that come about? You were, at this point, still in law school when this happened.

RK: So again, it started initially as this Information and Referral Project, and the law students that were there on campus, wanted to kind of evolve that into something a little more than just information and referral. And we were lucky enough to have a young lawyer by the name of Don Tamaki, who was working at the Legal Aid Society here in San Jose. He helped guide us in our early years. And also, another young lawyer named Brad Yamauchi, who was working at the Santa Clara County Office of Human Relations. And basically the way it worked is that both Brad and Don kind of were supervising the law students in doing the work and guiding us and helping us kind of formulate the organization and structure.

TI: And so was the thinking earlier, just, "Let's start small, information, referral, and then build from there"? Or what was the vision of the Law Alliance?

RK: So I think initially the Information and Referral Project was, allowed us to do a lot of outreach. So one of the components was to let different people in the community know about what services they could connect to through this I&R Project, and then at the same time, we were also just, you know, meeting with community leaders from different organizations and just trying to find out what kind of legal issues they were seeing, if they thought there was a need for a legal organization, and what should be kind of the areas that we should concentrate on. So in the course of that kind of investigation, as part of the Information and Referral Project, the Asian Law Alliance kind of evolved out of that.

TI: And when you first started law school, did you know this was what you wanted to get into? What was the impact of the Asian Law Alliance in terms of your career?

RK: So, I mean, I was part of the group that was kind of thinking about it. I mean, I was, the I&R Project actually predated my entering Santa Clara, I think they were talking about it back in '73/'74, and it took a while for that to get going. So that by '75 when I arrived, that's when they were actually putting it together. In the summer of '76 there was a big push to try to let people know that this service was available, and again, there were some of us who volunteered would sit in the office and answer the phone and then again try to connect people. So it kind of, it was there when I was entering, and I, it seemed like something that was really of interest to me, and so that's how I got involved.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.