Densho Digital Archive - Art Imagire Interview (denshovh-iart-01-0020)

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RP: Couple questions about the Japanese American community in Sacramento.

AI: Uh-huh.

RP: What was the core of the community and did you get actively involved in organizations like the JACL or church there?

AI: Yeah, not, yeah... the church mainly, the Japanese Methodist church, Sacramento. And it was a combination of the Florin church and the Pioneer church in Sacramento. We help a lot there. And then back in the early '70s, Gloria was on this committee to try and establish a nursing home for, that particularly catered to Asians. And they had applied for a grant from the U.S. government but at that time, Nixon killed the program and so that died for a while. But then, there was a benefactor in, in Sacramento, a fellow by the name of Angelo Tsakapousos who was a immigrant that became very wealthy and in appreciation for that, he returned a lot to the community. And he donated three and a half acres to our group. It's called the Asian Community Center, I think, at that time. And then that started the impetus where we were able to raise, I think it was close to 5 million dollars and built a ninety-nine bed nursing home there. And it particularly caters to, to Asian people. They have Asian, Asian cuisine, Asian workers... some, and a lot of 'em bilingual. And it's... I don't know what the population is there now but Gloria's mother is in there now. She's ninety-four, I think, and has, has dementia. But she, that's something that we're really proud of that we did. We operated a bingo session. We ran two sessions a week of a group of five and we took two sessions out of nine during the week and we were able to raise a million and a half dollars toward that. And for the... just until recently we were able to raise, it was slowly going down but close to 100,000 a year, which is good income. But we had, we elected to quit because there was some opposition over the types of gaming things we were using and... but anyway, that nursing home is really the crown jewel for Sacramento Asian community. And it was one that wasn't necessarily Japanese but it was truly Asian. It was Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, Southeast Asian, all kinds. So that's what we're, one thing we're really proud of.

RP: How about, can you share with us a little bit about this Japanese summer school that helps --

AI: Oh, Japanese summer school?

RP: -- introduce young kids to Japanese culture?

AI: Yeah. We started that back in the '70s I think it's close to thirty years in operation. We were part of the core group that started it. And it was a summer school program that lasted about three weeks and they learned speaking Japanese, Japanese songs, the simple writing, foods, learning how to... I don't know if they learned how to make tofu or they make mochi, the rice cake. And they learn about martial arts and all that sort of thing. And it's been, it's been going on all these... we've since fallen out. We were active in it for about four or five years while our kids were going through it but then we kind of backed out of that. But it's still going and going strong. And it has a waiting list to get in. So it...

RP: Are you, do you participate in the program? Do you...

AI: No. There's a Jan Ken Po Association or something like that and it's a group of former, former parents and every once in a while they'll put on a cultural program. Like one they had our former minister come down and talk about the meaning of the Japanese words on and giri and all... you've heard of those. He'd give lectures like that. There's a fellow by the name of John Marshall, who is a protege of Mary Tsukemoto. And when she was teaching in Florin, she was, he was, she was John's teacher. And John became very interested in Japanese art. And he went, and he actually went to Japan and learned how to do a lot of this Japanese, I guess it's tie-dying, it's how you dye fabrics using natural materials and water in a stream. Yeah. And he learned how to do it. And fact is, he made a wall hanging for us with our, our animal zodiacs on 'em and our name. And it was celebrating our twenty-fifth anniversary. And he dyed all the fabrics using natural materials. It's very nice. Yeah. So, John is, I think he's in, somewhere not in the Bay Area but somewhere south of that and he's quite prominent. He makes cloths and wall hangings and all that sort of thing. And then I failed to mention that Mary was our director for Jan Ken Po for two or three years.

RP: Two or three years.

AI: Yeah. She was, she did, she composed a lot of the songs that the kids are still now learning about how they greet each other in the morning and say goodbye when the session closes and all that sort of... she wrote those songs, composed them.