Densho Digital Archive - George Kikuta Interview (denshovh-kgeorge

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RP: George, you mentioned while we were setting up about a couple of folks, women who were putting together a project to, or a video about the camps, and you were talking about...

GK: Oh, there's two young men.

RP: Right.

GK: Uh-huh.

RP: Can you, can you share with us some information about that project?

GK: Okay. There's a local Japanese TV station... the name escapes me, but they have a local Japanese TV station that's targeting Japanese-speaking communities. And two young leaders, before they started this, I think they were students at the film school and they developed a project to cover Japanese American community here, and the hardship that they went through. And the more digging they did, they find out about the Manzanar and other camps' experiences. And so they made the short film of their interviews. I'm part of one organization called Japanese American Friendship organization, picked them as a recipient of our annual award for their effort to study this and communicate it to local Japanese Americans and also to Japanese in Japan. So we thought it's a very good cause. Even though I think here in the United States, we have, what, I don't know, maybe you know more than I do, close to 200,000 Japanese Americans. In Japan, other than selected number of people, Japanese people don't realize there are so many Japanese Americans living here in the United States, and the camp experiences. So they, it's, recently some proactive people started creating videos and some articles trying to advocate these community activities that we had. They know the huge Japanese American population in Brazil, but they don't, they don't realize that we have here a huge number of Japanese Americans. Vice-versa, many Nisei, Sansei, Yonsei, maybe Niseis are more interested, but Sansei, Yonseis, they really don't think they're Japanese. They're American with a Japanese background. So I think it's a mutual disregard or just no interest. So it's good that even the U.S., not Japanese government, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, are very, making effort to have mutual projects to have exchange programs. I think consul general's office here regularly sends, what, around ten people on an annual basis, the young Nikkei leaders, to Japan and meet with Japanese leaders and politicians. So I think it's good that they're doing it.

RP: You mentioned to me that you eventually established an accounting firm in Korea?

GK: Korea? No. No, no, I... my accounting career is experience here, and I started my own practice here. Currently it's in Koreatown, but --

RP: Oh, Koreatown, I'm sorry.

GK: Yeah, Mid Wilshire. Mid Wilshire started and I was recruited by the largest Japanese American-owned CPA firm in the United States back then as a bilingual partner. And I was not ready to be a partner, but they offered me a partnership position at a large firm that they were auditing, like, Bridgestone Tires, and Suzuki Motors, the motorcycle company, and many well-known Japanese, Japan-based companies here in the United States. So I joined them, and so I had a very exciting... not too many people think accounting profession is that exciting, but I went through a very exciting accounting career. After that, we grew so much, we merged with one of those Big 8 accounting firms. And our group became national Japanese practice section of one of the Big 8 accounting firms called Deloitte. And I'm currently, the name is Deloitte Touche. It's one of the Big 4 accounting firms. They have offices throughout the world. I think they employ nearly 400,000 people, mostly CPA and consultants. So it was very exciting professionally to deal with the high-level businesspeople that you... plus, financially, too. Money was good.