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MN: So that's... and then I had gotten a draft notice, and that was clear, this was like 1966 now, I was clear, "I'm not going." I mean, I may go to prison, but I'm not going to go to Vietnam. I'm not going to support this war, and so I went on the bus, there was this bus that went up to Newark to the induction center. I had applied for conscientious objector status and was turned down, but I was supreme in my confidence that since I wasn't going to be going into the army, I was going to be coming back home. I mean, my father was a little upset in the sense that, being Japanese, and not unfamiliar with the ethos of the military there, to go into the military means you're going to die, essentially. And I said, "Pop, don't worry." [Laughs] "I'll be back." Sounded like Arnold Schwarzenegger or something. So I go up on the bus, and I'd been counseled by some truly expert people on the draft. And one thing you should not do when you're out there, is when they say, "Step forward," don't step forward. Because when you step forward, you're in. And I was there, they asked who were conscientious objectors, so I was among this cluster of people, most of whom were Seventh Day Adventists, and they were going to be going into the military, I mean, the medical corps. And so I said, well, I'm not going either. I mean, one of the ironic aspects of this, to me, was that this might have been the most integrated work site I've ever seen, was the U.S. induction center, in terms of Black officers directing white guys, and giving orders, all that. So he looks at it, and this was a Black guy, he looks at my papers, and he said, "Well, you need to take another physical." This would be like my third one or something. And at this point, I'm just psyched up, essentially, if that's the right term, to go to jail. Henry Thoreau, here I come, kind of thing. [Laughs] It was like that. Or Eugene Debs, I mean, so I go through this whole physical routine again for about an hour, the test and all that. And they'd tell me, "Well, you're 4-F because of your eyes." I could have told you that before, but they let me go through before. And I tell people at that moment, I felt like saying, "You can't fire me, I quit," [Laughs] but I resisted, and that was it. After that, there was no threat of going into the... well, there was never a threat about going into the military. The only threat was whether or not I was going to go to prison, and I wasn't. So no term in Leavenworth or wherever they put hardcore COs.

And from that point on, I did various projects for the Friends Service Committee. In '69, I was sort of a little footloose, but I got some... I did things like, I was part of a team that went down to Mississippi in '69 after Hurricane Camille hit the Gulf Coast there, Mississippi Gulf Coast. It was at that time, I think maybe it still is, it was the strongest storm that ever hit the coast. Winds were clocked I think at about two hundred miles an hour, and our task was to look at how the relief aid was disbursed, and surprise, it was disbursed along racial and class lines. And at that time, this was pre-FEMA, and the task of the government was just seen as putting physical things back together, and they then jobbed out long term support, or even short term support like feeding people, putting up temporary housing, that sort of thing. And we issued a report, it was team of four of us, and it a report, we got national coverage on the Today show, and then there were later congressional hearings on the Gulf Coast that were chaired by Senator Bayh from Indiana. Senator Bayh had a notion that it was going to be important to expand the federal role in federal disaster relief. So we had these hearings, my job was to round up witnesses who we had previously interviewed, and with the same kind of story. And basically got jobbed out, the relief aid was slow in coming if it came at all, it was inadequate, and people on top got more aid. Anyway, so it was actually, in retrospect, it was sort of the beginning of FEMA, the notion that you needed a national federal agency that could deal with these issues, and that just replaced one batch, torn concrete with repaired concrete, basically. So that was sort of what I did with the Service Committee then. I was on one of their committees dealing with domestic stuff. And in 1972 I became a staffperson, one of the staffpersons for the Thoreau Coalition, which was an internal caucus within the organization of people of color. So our job was to... I mean, we were sort of like institutionalized gadflies, our task was to increase the number of people and broaden their placement in the organization, but also understanding that you can't just drop people cold, they needed to have the support structures and all that, so we had annual meetings. And it was a fascinating job, and after two years of that, I started working as the National Representative for Native American Affairs for the Service Committee. Started in 1974, and I did that for thirty-one years and then I retired. And I lived happily ever after, I guess. [Laughs]

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