<Begin Segment 23>

JS: But in my JACL work, I met JACL, I met leadership from all over the nation, and I know that during wartime, I got Hawaii guys who just hated Mike Masaoka, the things he said, putting it on that monument on Washington. But the president of the, the president of the Japanese American Citizens League during the wartime was Saburo Kido. He's a Maui boy, isn't he? He's a Hawaii boy, anyway. And he always sounded like somebody a little different, but he was an attorney in San Francisco and a great guy. And I work with all those guys. He's, gee, my buddy from Honolulu wrote me a letter, he went to that vet case in the monument in Washington and he got, there's some guys that's been on, he got on the side and listened to some of those guys that didn't like Mike Masaoka, and he wrote me, he wrote me a terrible letter. My wife said, "What are you gonna do?" "I'm not gonna do anything. I got the letter, I'm just gonna keep the letter." 'Cause he's on the losing side if, he would not find many friends to take his position arguing with putting Mike, some of Mike's statement on the, that monument in Hawaii, because heck, I used some of Mike's statements in my public appearances. I worked with Mike, and so I worked with postwar, JACLers, and I was a district council chairman of Inter-Mountain District Council, chapter president here. And my activity's not just been limited to that. I've served on several boards in Oregon, and I was elected, appointed to the Board of Agriculture in 1958, and I've served on the Board of Health and Economic Development. Some places I wasn't qualified to serve, but I was appointed because they needed some Oriental on there, maybe to kind of balance. But anyway...

AC: How did that make you feel, feeling that you were just appointed just because you were --

JS: I'm sorry?

AC: How did it make you feel to be appointed to some of those boards just because they, you thought, you felt that they needed an Asian there?

JS: Well, I was, I never turned one down. But I consulted with a number of people, especially the first one, where I was, I was one of the early ones that served on the board in Oregon, I think, when, in 1958 I was appointed by Mark Hatfield to the Board of Agriculture, when he was governor. And I asked several people, but I was recommended by Farm Bureau and others, so the reason that from down here we've had a continuous string of Nisei and Sansei board members to the State Board of Agriculture, because we represent a type of agriculture and we represent an area and we represent a minority, so we balance, we throw several things on balance. And fortunately, we've performed, all performed well. And so we're, I'm proud that we people from down here in a little community like this, that a community that has a terrible time during the years past being accepted as part of the State of Oregon, we're out here in the boonies by ourselves, we had a reputation of having more jackrabbits out here than people...

AC: [Laughs] Were you very much involved in the redress movement? I guess, during --

JS: No, I wasn't, 'cause I didn't feel like I was... I was asked to serve, I was asked to serve on this cultural center for developing that, but I decided it's too much. One person can't be involved in everything. He shouldn't. I was involved in enough things, anyway, and in the, in our field of agriculture too, I was one of those who helped start the Onion Growers Association here, and I was on the first board of Treasure Valley College. I served twelve years on there when it opened up, started the campus. So I feel like civically, both in the potatoes and onion field, I've done... well, I've done my share.

AC: I want to get back to another point. I guess, you'd mentioned that this person had written you this, this letter that you said was a really angry letter about using some phrases that this other, that -- Masaoka was his name?

JS: Yeah.

AC: Had used, and you said used, what was his objections to using that, and you said you had used some of these statements in your own work?

JS: Mike and, there were four or five Masaoka brothers in the 442nd, and Mike was the mouth. Very eloquent, I mean eloquent. He was a leader of the University of Utah's debate team, national champions, and Mike worked for the JACL. When he came back from service he worked for the JACL as the national secretary for a while. He resigned that job to become the secretary of the Anti-Discrimination Committee. The Anti-Discrimination Committee was raised so we, was formed so we could raise funds for a tax situation to keep us properly political, or lined up with Internal Revenue. And so, and Mike, so Mike fought for all kinds of things, every problem that we've had as a people, the right to, of citizenship for our parents, the stays of deportation. You talk about illegal immigrants today, our people, who were here before the war, illegally, got the right to stay here permanent... what do you call 'em?

AC: Resident alien?

JS: Yeah, permanent resident alien. Every one of those had to go through with an individual bill through Congress, before they could, before they got cleaned up. And so Mike worked for starvation wages. He and Etsu just lived a very careful life, until he finally resigned from the JACL and took, became a consultant, and then they lived comfortably, I think, after that. But until then, Mike and Etsu just lived on shoestring wages. I just, I don't, never could figure out why he was willing to do it, but Mike was that dedicated. But he was so dedicated that, and he was strong-willed, so those that were against him, there weren't too many, I don't, in JACL there weren't very many against him, but there were certain ones that really felt like he was pushy. He was pushy.

AC: So that was their objection, that he was too pushy?

JS: Yeah. So in each of these areas, I think that I had a mission, a personal mission to fulfill, and I'm satisfied that we got where we wanted to. How things moved from here on out is for a younger generation to take care of. But, like people like George Iseri and I, and those others around who tried to be leaders in our community and keep harmony amongst our own people, I think we've done, we've had wonderful experiences. We've had, things weren't always pleasant for us, but...

<End Segment 23> - Copyright © 2004 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.