<Begin Segment 1>

RB: All right. Well, for the purpose of the recording, my name is Rob Buscher, and I will be interviewing this morning on Monday, May 22nd. Can you please state your name for the recording and what generation that you identify with?

PU: My name is Paul Uyehara, I'm a Sansei.

RB: Thanks, Paul. Is that your full name, or did you have a Japanese middle name that was given to you?

PU: Yeah, I have, my middle name is Michio.

RB: Do you know where that comes from by any chance?

PU: No idea.

RB: All right. Can you tell me the names of your siblings?

PU: My siblings are Christopher, Lisa and Lawrence.

RB: And what is the birth order?

PU: That's in seniority order, and I'm the youngest.

RB: All right. Can you tell us what was your father's name and where was he born?

PU: My father is Hiroshi, or was Hiroshi Uyehara, and he was born in Los Angeles.

RB: And your mother?

PU: My mother is Grayce Kaneda Uyehara and she was from Stockton. She was born in Stockton.

RB: So both of your parents were Nisei. Do you know how your grandparents came to the United States, what brought them here?

PU: Not really, not really. I know, I believe my mother's parents came through Hawaii. They were working there for a while, or he was working there for a while, but I don't really know the details.

RB: And did you know your grandparents?

PU: Yes. I kind of feel like I was acquainted with them because I couldn't communicate very well with either, any of the grandparents because I didn't know any Japanese.

RB: So your parents spoke to them in Japanese?

PU: Yes.

<End Segment 1> - Copyright © 2023 JACL Philadelphia. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 2>

RB: And can you tell me a little bit about the work that your father did? His profession?

PU: Well, he was trained as an electrical engineer, but he didn't do work commensurate with that degree until very late in his career. He started out working before the war at the Los Angeles Power Company. And all the Nisei were fired kind of right after Pearl Harbor. And after he got out of camp, came to Philadelphia. I think he was doing some kind of unskilled work initially. I think it was something about loading paper and machines and so on, because he couldn't get security clearance from the government to get an engineering job. And later he got a job at Westinghouse down in Lester as a draftsman, and did that for many years, became a supervisor of a section of draftsmen. And then late in his career, like when he was into his sixties, he finally got an engineering job at Westinghouse, and did that for the last several years before he retired.

RB: Did your father talk about his career, or did he share any sort of disappointment that he wasn't working in the field that he had studied for?

PU: Not really, he kind of had this attitude of, well, you got to work, make a living and, you know, maybe it's not what you really want to do, but if you're earning money, that's the main point. So yeah, but it was a good thing that he finally was able to make that change before he retired.

RB: And what about your mother, Grayce? What did she do for work?

PU: So she got very involved when she first came to Philadelphia, but she was trained in music. She had completed a music degree at College of the Pacific. And it was just before the war, I guess, or just at the very beginning, like prior to evacuation. And had been thinking that she would be like a piano teacher, and she played at the church and all that in Stockton, but she ended up in Philadelphia. And pretty soon after she got here, it sounds like she got very involved in assisting other people who are arriving in Philadelphia. And she was doing volunteer work for the War Relocation Authority, where they would greet people who were coming in at the train station and help people get kind of set up someplace. And she organized some groups for young people, have social activities and so on, and she started working at the International Institute. So they ended up giving her a scholarship because they said, you know, she was very good at doing that kind of work, it was essentially social work. So they sent her to Penn to get a MSW, which she would have completed, I think, in the late '40s. And so I don't know how long she worked at the International Institute. I do know that at some point, she stopped working because there were kids to take care of, and then she went back to work when I was like, I guess when I started first grade, and I think the first job she had at that point was she established this daycare center in West Chester. And then, I don't know how long she did that, but she ended up being a school social worker to two different school districts for pretty much her whole career.

RB: Great, we'll talk more about what she did post retirement later in this interview, but how did your parents meet?

PU: I'm not sure of the details, but as far as I know, they would have become acquainted at Rohwer. Although, coincidentally, their mothers knew each other from Japan. [Laughs] So I don't know if there, I don't think there was any reason for the families to have come in contact with each other when they were in California, so I assume they met at Rohwer. And they weren't, it's not like they were a couple at that point,� and they came to Philadelphia separately. And they ended up coming into contact with each other because both of them were, ended up involved in activities with resettlement of Japanese Americans coming out of camp. And there's photos of basically, like, recruitment pictures that the WRA took with these young Nisei groups and they would have these very pretty pictures like at Independence Hall or Fairmont Park that they used to kind of encourage people to settle here because there's other people here that were having a good time.

RB: So, before we get to the resettlement, do you know much about your parents' experience in camp? You mentioned that they were both in Rohwer?

PU: Not too much. They were both there and my father was a teacher, I think, in the high school. And what my mom was she, I know she was involved, among other things, as a Sunday school teacher there, but they would have both been kind of young adults at that point and out of college. So, you know, I know my mom, at one point, was able to leave Rohwer to go, I think, to Minnesota, to a teacher's college, because she wanted to get some other kind of credential to help her find work. She apparently didn't stay there too long or complete that program, and she went back to Rohwer and then left later.

RB: So, did your parents talk about camp, or is this something that you sort of learned after the facts? How did you first hear about...

PU: Yeah, strangely, despite both of them being so involved, it's not something that we really heard about at home. So I probably picked up more information from third party sources than from them. Yeah, it was very kind of occasional times when it would come up.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2023 JACL Philadelphia. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 3>

RB: It seems that both of your parents resettled fairly early into Philadelphia. I know, in particular, your dad, was one of those early resettlers based on the photographs. I'm curious, did he come through the Philadelphia hostel? Do you know the exact means of his resettlement here?

PU: No, I don't know. I don't know.

RB: And the photos that you mentioned earlier featuring not just your dad, but also your aunts, around Independence Hall and sort of elsewhere in the scenic locations, how does it make you feel to see those photos?

PU: I mean, it's just kind of interesting, because they were all so young at the time, and to kind of think about the circumstances they were facing and all the change and kind of not knowing what was going to be happening to everybody, even at that point. And the fact that they decided not to go back to California and what that must have signified or represented about their outlook at that point. Yeah, so it's kind of a lot of things.

RB: And I know that your father was pretty involved with the Philadelphia Nisei Council as one of their co-founders. Do you know much about their activities or anything that you could tell us about the Nisei Council?

PU: No, I mean, I think it was mainly trying to be like a resource for people resettling here and kind of exchanging information and helping each other out and having social activities, things like that.

RB: And then I believe the Nisei Council sort of merged with the JACL Philadelphia chapter when it was established in 1947, if I understand the history correctly.

PU: Well, yeah, I mean, I guess I wouldn't, I hadn't thought of it as being a merger, but you could put it that way. But I kind of thought it was more like the precursor that evolved into the Philadelphia chapter. Just like the same people decided they wanted to have that national connection with what was going on through JACL.

RB: Both of your parents were founding members of the Philadelphia chapter?

PU: Yeah.

RB: Did they talk much about the early years?

PU: No. [Laughs] No, I read about it.

RB: I've seen some photos from that era, kind of late '40s, early '50s. I recall and EDC-MDC joint conference that was held here, photograph of maybe the Sayonara Gala with a number of ladies in what looks like prom dresses, including your mother.

PU: Really?

RB: I think your mom was there, too. But I'm just curious if you heard anything about some of the social activities that happened in those early years?

PU: Well, if you're talking about like, in the '40s and '50s, not really, I mean, I kind of picked up some of the vibe from when I first started going to EDC meetings, because they felt very different, you know, forty years ago than they do today. And there was much more of a kind of social component to it, more formalities and so on. Same thing like with the conventions.

RB: Yeah, makes sense. So I guess in terms of the resettlement, a few other questions I was thinking about, do you know how they chose Philadelphia, last chance?

PU: I think some of it was happenstance. Because I believe it's one of my uncles, graduated high school in Rohwer. And through the Nisei Student Relocation program, he made the connection and got support from them to come to Philadelphia and go to Temple. So I understand that he was the first one on that side of the family to come here, and then he kind of got himself settled in. And then I guess they decided, you know, the rest of the family, not everybody, because another uncle, George, at that point, was in the 442nd and was already in Europe. And I remember, I think one of my aunts had enrolled at the University of North Carolina, so she was there. But I think I think the rest of the family on my mother's side ended up coming here, and they first were living in an apartment at the Fellowship House in North Philadelphia.

RB: Did you hear that Fellowship House apartment described in any detail?

PU: No, only that it was kind of newly created to serve as housing for Japanese Americans. And there's also WRA photos of some of my mom's... I remember one picture, it's got my grandmother and I think, two of my aunts and one of my uncles that were, you know, sitting in a room at Fellowship House. That was their apartment.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2023 JACL Philadelphia. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 4>

RB: I also recall a photo, I think, from the same time period, of George Tsuneyoshi Haneda working at the Hotel Whittier.

PU: Yes, yes.

RB: Is that your uncle or your grandfather?

PU: That was my mother's father, yeah.

RB: Do you know how long he worked at the hotel?

PU: No idea. [Laughs] I don't even know where the hotel was, but he was a chef's there. I think he might have gone back to doing gardening, which is what I understand he did before the war.

RB: Do you have any memories of his cooking?

PU: No, I don't. [Laughs] Not at all.

RB: It was kind of interesting, because I think, of course, professional chefs, there were many men in that era. But knowing the Issei, especially the women, tended to be the cooks, and I was curious if you had any kind of memories, I guess, or food memories in general with any of your grandparents.

PU: I think it was it was more my mother's mother. And I just remember going to her house which is in Mount Airy for, you know, family get-togethers and having meals there and so on.

RB: So you had a pretty large extended family that was in the region by comparison to most other people that grew up here and the Japanese American community.

PU: I mean, it was pretty significant partly because my mother had six siblings and then my father's sister, Yuri, also ended up in this area, and she got married and settled here. They had four kids. So a good number of cousins around.

RB: We just interviewed Miyo Moriuchi, and I'm curious, do you have memories that you could share of your Aunt Libby or Uncle Tak?

PU: Oh, yeah, I mean, we used to spend a lot of time in each other's houses when we were little. And their house was noteworthy because their behavior was very different from ours, it was a very noisy household. And I think it was kind of reflected in my Uncle Tak. He was just kind of a loud, boisterous guy that was always yelling and screaming and everything, and his kids were the same way. [Laughs] So there was a lot of running around and yelling and whatever. And so between, you know, four kids in that family and four kids in our family, so when we got together, there was a lot of noise in that house and a lot of vibration and so on. So, you know, it's nice. I remember, I think I got sent, sent over to stay with them for a couple of weeks, one time when my mom had to get an operation or something like that. So it's like an everyday thing to be in a pandemonium over there. [Laughs]

RB: I saw some photos of Apple Blossom Hanami that was done at the Moriuchi farm, and I'm curious if you had any memory of that.

PU: No.

RB: It may have been slightly before your time. But I think in actually the '50s and also into the early '60s is when they were doing it.

PU: Okay, yeah, the '50s I wouldn't remember.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2023 JACL Philadelphia. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 5>

RB: All right. Well, since we're talking about childhood, could you describe your childhood home? Any memories that you have of growing up and just what the neighborhood was like?

PU: Well, the first house that we lived in was in Morton, so would have been really close to the Westinghouse plant, and I have zero recollection of that. I mean, we moved out of Morton when I was like three, and we got this this house in West Chester, which is, you know, where I grew up. And it was a new development, you know, suburban development, and went to public schools throughout, all of us in that school district. I was in Boy Scouts, I was an Eagle Scout. I don't know, did typical kid stuff, I guess.

RB: Were you involved in any Japanese or Japanese American cultural or community organizations at this time?

PU: Yeah, I mean, we would always go to JACL stuff, you know. So we would go to, you know, they have picnics. And I remember going to some conventions and we would pile everybody in the car. And for some reason, I remember going to a convention that was in Detroit because one of the booster activities that they had was to go tour a steel plant, which was kind of an awesome thing to see, molten steel being poured and rolled, you know, from inside the factory and everything. And we used to play games in the hotels and stuff and run around and have elevator races and things like that. But in terms of the convention activities that were actually going on where business was happening, I have no recollection of that. But yeah, we used to go to things like that. And I think sometimes... I have really vague memories of this, because I was the youngest kid, sometimes I was dragged along to meetings that they would go to where I was kind of too young to know what was going on. But the same thing that I mentioned before, that I just kind of remember some of the vibe of what those meetings were like and the kinds of people that were there at those meetings that were just doing JACL business.

RB: Who are some of the people that you remember, I'm assuming from the Issei community?

PU: I mean, people like Mike Masaoka, Bill Marutani, Spark Matsunaga, I mean, it's just like people that would be there. And you know, some of the, lots of other kind of old heads from different chapters, yeah, from way back. When people would come to their meetings all dressed up and everything. And then they would have a big dinner, like after the district council meetings and so on.

RB: Do you recall were there more celebratory events as well? Festivals? I know the Folk Fair was a thing for many years.

PU: Oh, yeah. Yeah, the Folk Fair, I remember going to that. I'm pretty sure that was every other year, and I think it was at the old Convention Center, which isn't there anymore. Yeah, and they had this booth that was a pretty significant structure that they had built on a, you know, they had designed it, built it, and then they would assemble it on site, and then they would take it down afterwards and store it away someplace. And they would put together a pretty sizable operation where they were, you know, selling food, and also they had some merchandise that they would sell. And it was a pretty significant source of revenue for the chapter.

RB: What did the booth look like? Was it a traditional Japanese construction?

PU: I don't know enough about traditional Japanese construction, where I actually remember the details, but I just remember lots of two by fours. And it was a rectangular structure, and did have, like, kind of a Japanese motif kind of decoration around the top of it and so on. And a lot of counter space for equipment and serving and all that.

RB: And do you recall what kind of food that they served and what things that they were selling in terms of the cultural wares?

PU: Wow, I don't know. I mean, I don't really remember what it was, what kind of food. I mean, it was Japanese food, but I don't remember what exactly it was that they were making. But it was a sizable operation where you'd have, there were a lot of people that had to go to, you know, put it together and make the food and sell the food and the merchandise. I don't know. My recollection was that it was kind of... I forget what the word is, but, you know, kind of stuff that you would see in a souvenir shop, kind of thing. It wasn't like it was high class collectible stuff. [Laughs]

RB: Do you have any memories, did your family go to the Seabrook Obon by any chance?

PU: I don't remember doing that when I was young.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2023 JACL Philadelphia. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 6>

RB: How about school? Do you have any specific memories that you'd like to share around school? What was the ethnic or racial demographic? Were there other Japanese Americans in your school?

PU: In my school? I think there was one in my high school. Not in my class, I think she might have been the class after me. Oh my gosh, I should remember her name, but I can't. Her father was an artist, and she was kind of a hippie peacenik type girl. And so it's, the high school in West Chester was pretty big, and I remember my class, when we were in the ninth grade, had like a thousand kids in it. And I think maybe like seven hundred fifty or so graduated high school. My senior year, there was me and Bill Wong, that was the Asian contingent in that class. [Laugh] So I did some sports and I was involved in student council and things like that. I was actually elected president of the class when I was a senior. I'm not sure how that happened, but that's what happened.

RB: Do you have any memories from serving as the class president? What did that entail, any activities that you were in charge of?

PU: I remember there were these kind of ceremonial things that we had to do, you know, speeches that had to be given that were highly controlled. And we had like six class officers. And I don't know, I think we were responsible for organizing certain activities for the class. But I don't recall, you know, the details of putting together a prom or anything like that, that's probably not the kind of thing that I would have gotten too involved in. Just because it would not have been something that I would have been good at, like picking a theme and decorations and so on. [Laughs] I'm trying to remember, I think we also got involved. I don't know if it was that year or perhaps a year or two before I was a senior that we got involved in some kind of protest, but it was really about construction of a new school that was being held up by labor disputes, and so we started fussing at the labor unions. [Laughs] Oh, and I remember we actually took some buses to, into the city to go to the offices of the Building and Construction Trades Council to protests that they were, you know, causing this hassle for us.

RB: Do you recall if that was instigated by one of the school administrators perhaps or was this something that the students did on their own?

PU: I mean, if it was instigated, it wasn't something that I was aware of that we were being manipulated or anything. I think we were, had our own interest in the school construction. I think the demographics were such that, you know, there was a big increase in school population around, you know, before and around the time that I was going through the school system. Which kind of benefited us because I know I was in elementary school, I started out at one school. And then before I finished elementary school, we moved to a new elementary school, and same thing on to junior high school. And before we finished that, they opened a new middle school for the district because they just constantly needed more space for kids.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2023 JACL Philadelphia. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 7>

RB: So when did, where and when did you go to college and what made you choose that location?

PU: Well, I graduated high school in 1973 and I went to Oberlin College right after I graduated. It's in northeastern Ohio, and I kind of had been looking at schools that were like that when I was in high school, just kind of small, private liberal arts. Well, not necessarily small-small, because Oberlin is not real small. And I don't know, like that's the one, the places that I got in appealed to me the most. And it's kind of fortuitous, I think, that I went there because I think it had a big impact on how things evolved afterwards.

RB: Would you say that you were politicized in college, or were you already sort of moving in a direction towards advocacy?

PU: I was definitely politicized in college. It was almost entirely because of getting involved with other Asian American students.

RB: What were some of the organizations or causes that you were involved with in college?

PU: So, when I first arrived there, I immediately was, people reached out from the Asian American Alliance, which was a student organization on campus, to get involved with them, which I did right off the bat. And made friends there and social activities and stuff like that. And I think by my second year, it was partly because of the advocacy done by the Asian American Alliance that this new dormitory was created that was called the Third World dorm, and so I was in the first group of students to live there. So it was all minority students in the dorm, and we had programs there and activities. They moved it to another building when I was a junior. And I think when I was, it was probably when I was a sophomore, I was elected to the Student Senate. And I think when I was a junior, I was of the people that helped form this new student organization called the Progressive Student Union, but got involved in various issues, a lot of campusey kind of issues, like with budget cuts, and things like that. And through the Alliance, we would always bring like, outside speakers in, including, we had someone from Yellow Seeds come out and give a presentation about what they were doing in Philadelphia.

And Oberlin has this thing called a winter term where there's a, like a month-long period, basically, between the semesters when you had to do some kind of project or study that was educational, but it was pretty freeform. And I remember friends would do some of these things that were kind of like they would go someplace and it would be something where they were working on a project that was really grounded in some aspect of the community. Like where they were coming to New York to hang out with people at the basement workshop, or what have you, that there were a lot of connections, you know, from outside organizations onto campus and so on. And there was definitely, at that point, a number of people that were very involved in fairly radical Asian centered organizations and study groups, and so on, so I was involved in some of that. And I remember going to some meetings with other college students that were very, you know, like totally political, like study group kind of weekend meetings, and organizing some things like that with other Midwest college students. So that was a big thing, too.

RB: So a couple questions about that time period. First off, the Third World dorm, I'm guessing is sort of referential to the Third World Liberation Front and the sort of Ethnic Studies movements that were happening? Was ethnic studies part of what your organizing was related to in your college years?

PU:� I don't think there was too much of that. I mean, we did have... I remember taking a course, kind of an Asian American Studies course, but it wasn't, it wasn't in the actual kind of traditional academic curriculum. They had this program called the Experimental College where anybody could offer coursework, and it could be for credit. But sometimes it was taught by students, or it could be people who are not faculty members. And so we had, there's this position for what's called an Asian American counselor coordinator on campus, and he put together Asian American Studies curriculum that was offered to the experimental college, and I remember signing up for that and doing all kinds of reading for that. But the demographic was very different than from what it is now, in terms of the size and the diversity of the student population. So when I was in college, it was probably like something like ninety percent of the students were either Chinese or Japanese American, and there were a handful of Koreans, one Vietnamese student, and maybe another handful of South Asian students. So it was very, very different. And it might have been like, there were a hundred Asian American students on campus, I don't know, twenty-five hundred students or something. So now it's dramatically different in terms of the relative size of the student population and the diversity of how it's made up. So it was very different. And so I think that would have also been a factor in thinking about, we wouldn't be thinking about having a department or having a bunch of faculty or something. Some of the people would be in other fields, whether it was more focused on Asia itself, Asian art or Asian history, that kind of thing, Asian Americans.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2023 JACL Philadelphia. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 8>

RB: The other thing you mentioned, that Yellow Seeds, and I'm curious, were you the connection point to Yellow Seeds or did someone else do that outreach to all who came?

PU: Well, it's funny, because had this argument at my household for decades that I thought it was my wife that came, but she denies ever having been in Oberlin. [Laughs] So I don't think I was the connection. I mean, I do remember meeting people from Yellow Seeds when I was in college in Philadelphia, but that was later on. So you know, I don't think I was the one who arranged that. it might have been the counselor coordinator person, or one of the older students.

RB: And so you mentioned that you did actually, though, afterwards, meet some of these organizers? I'm just curious if you have recollections of Yellow Seeds at that time period, what you thought about them, whether your parents were aware of them, any other conversations that were happening?

PU: Yeah, so I think in 1976, which is the bicentennial year, my recollection is that summer, we hosted a meeting for Asian American students at my house, and my family's house in West Chester. And just probably kind of stayed in touch with people, and I think we invited incoming students from that area to attend also just to meet some of us. And I think we did some activities with Yellow Seeds where we'd go down there and I think we were leafleting and stuff, because there were a lot of protests, and it was pretty controversial because I'm pretty sure that Rizzo was the mayor then. So there was a lot of kind of heavy handed policing that was planned at the time. They were kind of afraid there were going be these huge protests and so on. So I remember going to the Yellow Seeds office and meet some of the people. And we met some other people who were kind of like us in the sense that they were also students, maybe from other places besides Oberlin, who got connected to Yellow Seeds and we're doing activities with them.

RB: Can you describe the Yellow Seeds office and community space?

PU: I just have this vague recollection of this unremarkable storefront in Chinatown, that was pretty basic as far as what they had there, and some of the young people that were, belonged to an organization and they put together a newspaper, it's a bilingual newspaper that would address the issues in Chinatown and distribute that and build relationships with the community and the local businesses and everything. And I think, at that time, just as there is today, there were development issues that people were getting into fights about, including the Vine Street Expressway.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2023 JACL Philadelphia. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 9>

RB: Do you have any instances of racism that you recall either from growing up in the region, here in Philadelphia, or in college? Because you described both of these spaces fairly white, fairly non-Asian spaces. Is there any sort of direct instances of racism that you or your family experienced at this time?

PU: You're talking about after I came out of school?

RB: Either during or after?

PU: I mean, I know that my parents had definite issues with that. You know, my father got fired after Pearl Harbor just based on race, and along with all the other Nisei that were at the power company. I think what happened with a lot of Nisei when they were coming out, including people like my parents who had college degrees, were not getting jobs that matched their educational background, and they were getting unskilled labor jobs like my dad did when he first came here. And my mom, her first couple jobs, she was basically a typist or a receptionist kind of thing, and then she just started kind of moving up when she started doing this resettlement work and they realized that she was very good at working with people and solving problems and so on. But I think it's kind of significant that they chose to come to Philadelphia instead of going back. I've often thought that that kind of had an impact on my generation in terms of how we were raised, that we were kind of put into this isolated setting, which was bad in a lot of ways, but it was also good in a sense that people went back to California, and many of them encountered this open hostility or worse, treatment that they got from people that still regarded everybody as being enemy people. So the fact that my father spent most of his career as a draftsman rather than as an engineer was also, I think, a reflection of that.

So I think in terms of myself, I kind of feel like there might have been some occasional things that I pretty much try not to remember, of being verbally mistreated by people from time to time. But I kind of think that there were other instances where there were things that happened that I didn't, I was unaware of, but they had an impact on me. And I just remember, even when I was in high school, that my mom made some comment to me about the girls that I was dating, and whether their families would not like the fact that their daughters were dating me because of race. Which was not a vibe that I picked up from anybody, but how would you know if somebody was not interested in being your girlfriend or something? I mean, there's obviously lots of reasons for that, which you may not be aware of. And same thing, like with social activities and stuff, like was it just because I was more of an academic kind of student as opposed to a social kind of person? Or is it something else that there were lots of kids, whether it be the kinds of social circles, go to parties and things like that, hang out with other kids, which I didn't do. Was that me or was that them? I don't know. So I think there were probably things like that throughout my life where, about opportunities that were missed or people that you could not benefit from because they would not be interested in you based on race.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2023 JACL Philadelphia. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 10>

RB: Let's pivot a little bit and talk about your career. How did you decide to get into law, and can you talk a little bit about your pathway into the legal profession?

PU: Well, I've always enjoyed mentoring younger people about career things. And one of the things I realized is that a lot of what happened in my career was totally random. It wasn't a result of some plan that had been laid out for me or by me when I was young, but it's just things that happened, paths that I could have gone one way or the other and it just so happens. And to give an example, when I was in college originally, I was thinking, like a lot of young students, oh, I should be a doctor, right? So I was taking a fairly science-heavy course load when I started in college. And I had done well in high school, and I've taken advanced placement like science and all that stuff. And the funny thing is, I think that was actually a bad thing for me because I placed out of some introductory level science courses because of the high school courses that I had and AP scores and so on. And then what happens, I get to college and instead of taking 101 and 102, I'm taking a one-semester 103 chemistry course and not doing so well. That's like, okay, whatever. And then the second semester, take another not introductory course, and also not doing so hot in that, and getting more involved in activities and so on. And I still remember now that the first semester of my sophomore year that my organic chemistry professor came up to me in the lab and he said, "Hey, Paul, did you not get a chance to study before the test?" Which might have been partially true that, because I was going to all these meetings and everything all the time. So, yeah, at that point I realized my grades are not going to be good enough in these science courses to get into medical school.

And so I wasn't sure what to do, so I left campus and went to an off-campus program that was in Philadelphia. And you took classes here, and you also had to do an internship. I don't know, I just ended up doing an internship at Community Legal Services, and I worked in one of their old offices and I said, "Oh, this is nice what they're doing and everything." And as I was working my way through school, the only thing I knew is I enjoyed the kind of life of being a college student, but I didn't really like the learning part of it, actually, it's like too much reading too many books. And we put in a lot of time studying and everything, and I didn't really get a lot of pleasure out of that. So I was like, whatever I'm going to do, I just need to get a job, because I need to start working and doing stuff, getting involved in other things, and I'm not interested in going to school anymore. But I had to get a job, so randomly, I'm like, oh, that internship I had when I was a sophomore was kind of cool, maybe I can get a job at a place like that as a paralegal.

So I applied for a jobs all over the country, and I only got one bite, which was a position that was supported by the VISTA program that was in Chester. So that's where I went, I went to Chester as a paralegal, and that's how I got started working in legal services, and then I ended up staying there for a long time. And then what happened is after a number of years doing that, I kind of realized, you know, I'm doing kind of the same work that the lawyers here do, except I'm not getting paid to be a lawyer. But I could be a lawyer, I just have to get a degree. So I decided to go to law school, and I went to Temple at night and kept working at Community Legal Services. And then I had a couple of jobs right out of law school, and then I went back to Legal Services, but the other jobs I had were kind of to cleanse my resume a little bit, so I wasn't just doing this Legal Services stuff, but then I went back. And so a lot of that was just not part of any plan or anything, but I enjoyed doing that kind of work, and it was valuable. Not like I was making a lot of money or anything, but it was good work. And then one day, this colleague told me I should apply for this opening in this new project that was focused on language access. And I was like, why would I apply for that? I don't know anything about that, I don't know what you're talking about. He's like, "Oh, you'd be great for this. I can help you figure it out and everything, why don't you apply?" So I applied for the job, I got that job, and it was dramatically different from all the work that I had done before that. It was different in terms of what the focus was, and kind of legal hooks. But it was also different in terms of who I was representing. Because then my client demographic changed to being largely immigrants and refugees. Which was really very fascinating to me because they related to me in a totally different way as an attorney. It was kind of a lesson in itself about how they would relate to, as a professional versus how your so-called American clients related to it and the value they put on your service and just kind of a social relationship, so it was kind of fascinating. And the work was really kind of pathbreaking legal work at the time, I mean, this was 2000, it was pretty much a new thing.

So I got pretty good at that and got involved not only with things in the city, but also statewide, and I started getting involved in national advocacy work and helped found an organization of other advocates that were doing that kind of work, which was all relatively new area of work by people in different places, so it was really important to be able to share information and train each other and things like that. So that kind of gave me this expertise that was pretty noteworthy nationally, which put me in a good position to get hired by the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, to do basically a similar kind of work but from an enforcement side, and also dealing with helping the federal government improve the way it provides services to people who don't speak English well. And so, same thing, I was able to have a positive impact on the way in which work was done in my office, some of the issues that were taken up, and really helped push the work forward there from Washington. So that's kind of how... it's a long story, but it's pretty random when you think about it. So I felt pretty fortunate that because I kind of started out working almost with what my father had told me years ago, like, well, "Nobody said you were going to have fun. You're not entitled to have fun, you have to make money, you got to support your family and stuff like that, that's what your job is for." You know, to be in a position where it was fulfilling and you're able to have an impact and accomplish things. So I was very fortunate in that regard. I never made a lot of money, my mother used to tease me that, "Why don't you get a job like Dennis Morikawa?" who was a partner in a big law firm, and it was like, "Mom, what do you want to make a lot of money for? You and Dad never wanted to make a lot of money. You want to accomplish something good, not make a lot of money." So I never made a lot of money, but it's not like we were starving or couldn't take care of the kids or anything like that. It all turned out well.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2023 JACL Philadelphia. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 11>

RB: And I understand you recently retired. How many years were you with the Justice Department, and are there any moments in that particular position as particularly memorable? I don't know if you're allowed to talk about casework or any sort of highlights of that position that you'd like to share?

PU: So I was there, I think, fourteen years. And so our office was in D.C. because the whole division was located in Washington. And my wife had no interest in moving to Washington, which I didn't think to ask before I took this job. [Laughs] So I got an apartment down there and I would just go back and forth every week and stay down there during the week and come back on the weekend. Which, it turned out, being kind of a funny reenactment of what my mother did, because she used to... my dad used to drive her down to the Wilmington Amtrak station and she got on the train, go to D.C. and do, work on redress, stay there at a hotel, like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, come back to Philadelphia or to West Chester on Thursday and work from home Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and then go back. So it was the same kind of thing, isn't this kind of funny?

And I think in terms of noteworthy stuff, it was kind of an interesting experience as a lawyer to make a transition from being a legal services lawyer where the nature of your work is kind of pushing against the system and trying to change things and representing people that are kind of excluded from power and authority and everything, to being inside the government, carrying a good amount of clout just because your client, instead of being Joe Blow as the United States of America, and it was very interesting, especially in the beginning, interfacing with people on the outside. And you call people up and say, "This is so and so from the Justice Department," and realize that these people are really paying attention to what you're saying because you're from the Justice Department and being able to compare that very directly to making those kinds of calls or sending those letters from Community Legal Services and they were like, yeah, whatever, "Thank you for your input."

So that was a big change, and one of the things is because I had, at that point, a lot of legal experience, a lot of connections, ties to other people and so on, I kind of brought that with me to that work. And so when we would get complaints, I was doing investigations. I mean, to me, it was natural that if you're doing an investigation of a court system, that I would turn to my former colleagues, and people in similar programs, wherever this complaint was filed, or community based organizations that were like those that I had worked with in Philadelphia, and directly involve them in helping to gather evidence, and reaching out to witnesses and analyzing what the situation was. Because one of the difficulties of working in the Justice Department on local issues, especially if they were in the legal context, because a lot of the complaints that I worked on were against court systems. So one of the challenges as a lawyer is that you're dealing with a state entity that operates under state law, state constitution, that you're not familiar with. Because I knew Pennsylvania, and to a lesser extent New Jersey law systems. But when you're in Washington, you could be, one day you're working on North Carolina, another day you're working out of Los Angeles County, and it's like that. You have to get your bearings and understanding the terminology and the power structure and everything. So having those connections to those sources of information and partnering with them to get a really good understanding of what the problem is and what the remedies are, and then being able to negotiate a good resolution of problem, and then to enforce that agreement with continuing input from those same entities with something that I helped establish as a good way of doing business and enforcing the law. And it's something that some people within the Civil Rights Division, it was very foreign to them. And the whole idea of being, they thought it was like being biased that you would reach out to certain organizations to look for evidence and to fashion remedies and stuff. And to me it was like, how can you think you're going to understand a problem and design a good solution without having the people with the expertise with the day-to-day operations of that police agency are like, what the power structures are like, what the history has been over the years and put everything in context and make for more effective change.

So that was all kind of good stuff, and one example of that was very early on when I started working there, I helped arrange a meeting with the managers from my section with my former colleagues and people like my former colleagues that were attending National Legal Aid and Defender Association Conference in Washington. So I said, working with them, I was like, "Let's get your people together, put together an agenda. I'll bring the leadership from my office there, and you can lay out what you think the office should be working on." And so they did that, and it was, my managers thought that was pretty cool because they were getting really high level feedback from people who knew what they were talking about, and were actually actively working on these things. And a list of things, problems that they wanted attacked either within the government, or for the government to focus enforcement activity on through the different civil rights offices in different agencies. And one of the things that they complained about was language access for their clients when they went to court. And I still remember that the chief of my section was sitting at tables up in the front, and when they mentioned that, she turns to me and she said, "Oh, looks like you got a new assignment." [Laughs] And I started working on that actively, and I remember spending a year and a half or so drafting a letter that was to come from the assistant attorney general in charge of the Civil Rights Division. I was going to go to the chief justices of all the state courts and the state court administrators to tell them that the Civil Rights Division is very concerned about practices that we were seeing in courts around the country with litigants being unable to have access to the court system, because they don't understand English, and the courts basically said, "Well, that's your problem, you need to figure out how to communicate with the court." "It's not our responsibility." And so the letter kind of said, "That's not acceptable under the Civil Rights Act, and we hope that you're going to work to fix this." It was just a letter, and again, it kind of exemplified the difference between being an advocate on the outside, being on the inside, where I was able to help, along with other people. It's not like I did it by myself, but to go up through all these layers of leadership, to get the person at that level to sign the letter, and why it took so long, but that letter was kind of an earthquake in the courts around the country when it came out. And they had engaged in some pretty fierce lobbying, including with the attorney general, to stop us from sending this letter out because they kind of understood we were working on it. And I ended up spending most of my work time before and after the letter, working on cases involving court systems. And it's something that had, in that time period, had a measurable impact in the sense that the courts are doing much better, and the expectations have changed. Not that the problem is solved, but things are much better than they were before and the culture is different.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2023 JACL Philadelphia. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 12>

RB: So as an employee of the federal government, were there restrictions on what kind of advocacy work you could do on your own time? Because I know that, I think, prior to that position, you had helped to found Asian Americans United, obviously you've been involved in JACL for a very long time, I think maybe APABA as well. But I'm just curious, how did that work out? Can you maybe describe some of the activities that you were doing outside of your career?

PU: Yeah. So there are restrictions when you work for the government. And I remember, I think when I was asked to chair the Resolutions Committee for National JACL, I had to get approval from the office, like I had to submit this formal memorandum about outside activities to describe what this entailed, for somebody to make a determination about whether it could put me in a position where I'm in conflict with the government. Because if it did, then I couldn't do it. So I had to explain when I wrote this memo and get it approved for various levels of command there, that the Resolutions Committee isn't responsible for taking positions, it's just responsible for cleaning up ideas that other people have and not advocating for them, but cleaning them up so they can be debated and decided on by the national council. So they said, "Okay, that's okay under those circumstances." And there would be other things where if you were going to go to a certain event, you had to make sure that nobody was kind of giving you something to go to an event that might create some other kind of conflict, and would have to do a memo on that and get approval.

And so I think, you know, I continued being very involved in JACL, but not so much as an advocate, but more as somebody who was providing that kind of neutral administrative assistance within the organization as a volunteer. And I remember I was also, when I was working there, that I was able to participate as a chaperone in the Kakehashi program, and that very difficult to do. [Laughs] And why? Because the Japanese government was paying for part of our costs. And that's a big no-no, to have a foreign government giving you something as a Justice Department lawyer. So we had to go through a lot of clearances and change the way the money flowed, so it wasn't coming from the government. And I forget the details, but somebody else had to pay for the transportation. I don't know if it's JACL, or how it was done, and they got reimbursed by the embassy, so it'd keep us one step removed from that. Yeah, and things like National Asian Pacific American Bar Association, and then the Asian bar entities in D.C. and Pennsylvania, I was involved in them and would go to their activities and stuff. But they were, you know, largely kind of professional organization kind of things that wouldn't raise any eyebrows so long as I wasn't necessarily sticking my nose into an issue that they were working on. And one time... actually, that was before I went. So I had helped them on an advocacy issue when I was in legal services. So they put out this big report on language access, I helped them a lot on that project. And then they wanted to redo the report, I don't know, like ten years later. And I started having discussions with them about, you know, providing input on the new one. And then somebody yanked my leash and said, "You cannot do that." And I'm not sure if that was during a different administration that was more restrictive on our activities, but yeah, so I couldn't comment on their drafting or their committee work. And anything I did had to be very kind of under the radar kind of feedback through other people. But yeah, so that's kind of how that went.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2023 JACL Philadelphia. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 13>

RB: I think we'll return to some of the questions around advocacy, but I want to talk a little bit about your family. You've mentioned this Mary a couple of times in the interview, but can you talk a little bit about how you came to meet your wife, and any anecdotes about...

PU: Okay, well, apparently, I did not meet her at Oberlin, and she won that argument. I still think if I ever go through some of my old boxes that have college papers, I'm going to find a flyer that has her name as a guest speaker, but she denies it. So the alternative story is that when I was a paralegal I did landlord/tenant work, so we represented tenants. And one of the things that we did, aside from like, representing individual tenants had disputes with their landlords, is sometimes we do like tenant education or outreach or assisting tenant organizations. So, one of the places where this kind of crossed over with community stuff was a lot of the Southeast Asian refugees were resettled in a really kind of poorly thought out way. Put into poor housing conditions, and bad neighborhoods, and so on. And so one of those places was Admiral Court in West Philadelphia. So we picked up some clients from there, and I remember we went out to the apartment house, and to meet with some of the tenants and look at some of their apartments to see what kind of condition it was in, and those conditions were pretty bad there. But in any event, my wife, Mary Yee, was also there. And you know, she was there kind of trying to help the tenants organize, and so that's the official story of where we met. And so that would have been... I guess that would have been in the 1980s. Yeah, like the early '80s.

RB: And how long were you two together before you decided to get married?

PU: Well, we kind of did things a little backwards. So she had a daughter at that time who was, like, two years old. We later had our son, Kaz, and things have been, a lot of kind of pandemonium with little kids throughout that period. And then me going to law school at night, which meant I had no free time for anything the whole time. So we got married after that, so after I graduated from law school, and that would have been 1990. So that's, Kaz would have been two at that time, and Olivia would have been like, seven, things were a little bit less crazy at that point, and I had a job and everything. So yeah, it's 1990.

RB: And I understand that you got married here at Shofuso. Can you describe the decision to be wed here and any memories that you might have of the actual wedding day?

PU: Well, my father was connected to Shofuso. I don't know if it was, it was probably at that time, he might have still been the president of Shofuso. And, you know, we were kind of struggling financially and living on the cheap, so we were thinking about where can we get married or have a gathering, gather together people, not cost a lot of money. And so we thought about this place, and said wow, it's beautiful there. I mean, it's a perfect setting to have a wedding, although it has to be a really small wedding because there's not much space there. And we got the approval to do it, and it was significant because nobody had been allowed to get married here, actually, on the grounds before that. And it was like it was a beautiful setting, it still is, and it's still kind of humorous. If you look at photos taken, like at the wedding, they almost look like they're fake because the background is so beautiful. You're like, oh, that must have been Photoshopped or something, because it's like a painting in the background, it's so pretty. But we had a very small ceremony that you could fit in this little space, and then we had a reception in Chinatown. And so it was it was nice.

RB: And so you mentioned that your father wedded in 1990. Do you recall how your parents first got involved in this space?

PU: No, I don't. [Laughs] I don't.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2023 JACL Philadelphia. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 14>

RB: Do you remember when you first heard about Shofuso and perhaps when you first visited here?

PU: Yeah, I don't really remember when I first came here. I mostly remember the wedding, but he knew that he was involved. And I know some of the other Nisei that we knew were also involved in the Japanese House. But the details before the wedding, lost to the fog of time. [Laughs]

RB: So your parents didn't talk too much about the work that they were doing here?

PU: I don't think so, I don't think so.

RB: From your perspective, I guess if you have a hard time remembering that, if you can't answer this, but did you see this as a Japanese American community space, and was it more of a space to teach Japanese culture to non-Japanese folks or something different?

PU: Hmm. I mean, it's funny when you put it that way because I think one of the things when you say "community space" that's kind of characteristic of the JA population outside of the West Coast, they don't necessarily have any community space. I mean, there were exceptions, like I feel like a place like Chicago, that there was this geographic physical community. But I don't think that ever really existed. So you could look at this as being kind of a symbolic place that connects to Japan and has ties to the community and so on, but it's not like we would come here to have meetings or come here to have family gatherings or anything like that, it wasn't that kind of space. So it was kind of different. But I know that my family and some of the other families did have that connection and didn't see the importance of protecting the space and building space and so on.

RB: Do you recall when your parents stopped being as involved in this space and what the instigation for that may have been?

PU: No.

RB: I know that in the previous conversation, you told me that your mom, and possibly yourself, were members of the Japan-America Society board.

PU: Right.

RB: And I'm wondering if you have any additional details that you'd be able to share?

PU: [Laughs] No, I can't say I do. I'm sure she's the one that somehow got me on that board. I was probably not a very productive board member there. There was a period of life when we had the kids and they were, especially when they were younger, that wasn't a whole lot of time to do activities and stuff that was a significant investment of time.

RB: Do you have any guess as to why she would have wanted to be involved with the Japan-America Society?

PU: She was more of a, kind of a strategic person, so I could see her seeing a benefit of having these ties to a more kind of corporate centered group. I think because of, especially because of the work she did on redress, that she was much more conscious of the value of having different organizational and social relationships and how that could relate to advocacy and just helping to get things done where you need to collaborate with other people and organizations.

RB: I think that sums up those questions.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2023 JACL Philadelphia. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 15>

RB: We're almost done here, I don't have that many more questions for you. But at this point, I'd love to ask a question or two about your mom's work during redress and any recollections that you might have of the redress period? First off, of course, your mom Grayce was very, very involved with the redress movement of the executive director of the Legislative Education Committee. Was your father also involved, were you involved in any capacity, and can you talk a little bit about the role that your mom played?

PU: So my father was involved, basically, was a support person. He was the driver and the housekeeper, things like that. And he just kind of provided the personal support space for her to say, "Fine, go. That's important, go do that, I'll help out." Having to kind of manage the household and so on, with her not there half of the week, because she was staying in Washington that half of the week. That's how he kind of helped out. It wasn't like she was free the other half of the week. When she was at home, she was also submerged every day, seven days a week, day and night, doing redress work, whether she was at home in West Chester for an office in D.C. So the fact that he was trying to support her and allow her the space to do that was kind of what his responsibility and role was, and he was fine with that. So before she took this position, her work in redress had kind of stepped up gradually over time, so she had been recruited to be on the national JACL Redress Committee, and was doing that work. And then she was coordinating the local redress committees on the Eastern District Council. So she was responsible for the chapters, I think it was probably five chapters at that point in the Eastern District. Kind of coordinating, gathering information, forwarding information and sending information down to the chapter level, apparently doing a good job at that. Because a decision was made that needed to form this separate nonprofit to house the lobbying work and protect the 501(c)(3) status of JACL. So that decision was made, we need to raise money for the Legislative Education Committee, and people... because it was around that time that she retired from the Lower Merion School District, from her school social work position, and so they recruited her to do this work initially as a volunteer because their fundraising had failed. They were supposed to raise, I think, like a quarter million dollars to get the ball rolling, and they raised forty thousand. And so they knew they couldn't actually hire her, so they asked her to volunteer for six months to get things started. And so then she started this grind of going back and forth, and helping to strategize and meeting with Nikkei members of Congress and interfacing with JACL leadership and also the grassroots chapters and so on. During that, so this would have been 1985 to '88 when that whole lobbying campaign was undertaken, and so for me -- and I'm really sad about this in retrospect -- is that was the same time that I was going to law school at night and working during the day at Legal Services. And so she was doing that and I was just trying to keep my head above water, going to work, and then going to class at night and basically reading all weekend. So I didn't know very much about what she was doing. It was more what I learned about after the fact, and it's sad because I could have been helpful or more supportive of that, but I was consumed with survival with what I was doing at that point. I didn't know that much about or get involved that much in what she was doing.

RB: So I know two other Nisei leaders here that were pretty involved. Judge Marutani, of course, with his role in the CWRIC, and then also your uncle Tak, I think he helped to make some introductions to some of the Republican congressmen and senators and he was a donor to the redress movement.

PU: Yes, yes.

RB: Can you talk at all about either of those, did you talk to Uncle Tak about what he was doing with redress or do you have anecdotal information you can share?

PU: No, I mean, I just know that my mother would have gone to him and pushed him to donate a lot of money, because she knew that he had money, more so than our family did, because he had been, he was a successful farmer. And yeah, I mean, part of what her function was was to kind of figure out how to tap into the networks that each individual JACL member belonged to, to find connections from those individuals to members of Congress. So that's what they would kind of figure out how to do, how to meet people, how to get letters written to members of Congress, how to get meetings scheduled because there were influential constituents like my uncle that would be heard by congressional staff people. So, yeah, I know that she would have been engaged in those activities with him, and just like she was with everybody else she knew in JACL, but maybe with him she could twist arms a little bit harder because he was her brother-in-law.

RB: I heard that Tak also donated a significant amount to help with the restoration of this group, and I don't know if you had heard that.

PU: I didn't know that.

RB: Yeah, Miyo confirmed that, but we had seen his name on the donor roll.

PU: Oh, cool.

RB: All right, I think that was it for the redress questions.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2023 JACL Philadelphia. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 16>

RB: One question I wanted to circle back on, can you tell us a little bit about how Asian Americans United came about and what was your role as a co-founder?

PU: So that would have been in the early '80s, and so I think a couple of us felt this need to, you know, have an organization, a local organization here that was a little bit more politically conscious and more community-oriented than the other organizations that existed here that related to community, and so Mary and I and Debbie Wei and Ming, her husband, I think she went, Fernando Chang Wei and maybe a couple other people that are not, I can't recall at this point who actually initially said, "Let's talk about this," but I do remember that where we met was at the Community Legal Services offices that I worked at. I remember going to meetings in our conference room at 1312 Locust Street. And so it was a small group of us, and we sat around and tried to figure how what we wanted to do and started working on it. And so, as I said, I think that would have been like '84 or '85 that we were having those initial meetings. And so I participated in that, and can't really take any credit for anything that happened after those initial meetings, because, again, the air got sucked out of me by law school, which was starting at the same time. So I stepped back from that, but Mary and Debbie continued to push that forward. And I just remember having some incidental contacts with AAU in the very early years when they would have summer programs. They were kind of youth-oriented, because I remember some of the programs were housed in our neighborhood in West Philadelphia, where you'd have high school kids that were running programs for little Asian kids. And with a focus probably on the refugee families. So things like that were, things were kind of getting off the ground and people were starting activities and trying to figure out principles that AAU would operate under. And it was all very informal and unpaid work at that point. But then at some point there was a transition made where people were getting grants and hiring staff and so on, and things kind of went on from there.

RB: Thanks for that.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2023 JACL Philadelphia. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 17>

RB: Just have a couple reflection questions, but before we get to that, was there anything in any of the topics that we've discussed that you feel we should have asked more about? Any periods of your life that you'd like explore further?

PU: Yeah, I guess one thing would be kind of my involvement with JACL after I was a kid, if that's relevant.

RB: Absolutely. So I mentioned earlier how I was kind of born into the organization, I used to go to activities and stuff, and then even some meetings when I was tagging along as a little kid with my parents. But I also know I got recruited to be on the chapter board in 1993. And so '93, I would have been done with law school and still I think that's, I would have been back at Community Legal Services, at that point, working in the Kensington office. And so I was on the board, but I was still pretty busy, you know, with the kids and all that and I don't think I was very productive on the board at that point, but I'm pretty sure it was my father that had recruited me, so I didn't really, I couldn't really say no to him. So I was on the board, and then, as you know how these things happen, after a while, if you start helping with some things, and pretty soon they'll say, "Well, you should be an officer." [Laughs] So I ended up being the president of the board. Would have been, I don't know, maybe '98, '97, something like that. It was the same year that we hosted the convention here. Which, you know, my experience was very different from yours and my outlook about hosting a convention, because I thought it was just like, why would you want to host a convention? It's so much work. [Laughs] And so many meetings, and there was so much that you had to figure out and so many people, you had to get involved in, like, figuring out the venue and the program and raising money and planning out all this stuff, which to me was like, it was a huge problem to solve.

Anyway, so I was the president then, and, you know, I remember helping to make some connections for speakers and stuff like that. I think, I'm pretty sure it was that year, coincidentally, that I was able to make a connection to the Assistant Attorney General Bill Lann Lee, who was in charge of the Civil Rights Division, and get him to come up to give his speech at the convention. But, I mean, despite the work, the convention itself was a really nice experience, it was, I think, the first time I went to a convention, other than when I was a kid, so I kind of enjoyed, you know, the activities there and meeting people and so on. And it was also a setting where, because of who my parents were, I started what became a long term process of getting feedback from other people about who my parents were, which kind of reinforced, you know, the kind of legacy of their involvement, both of them, and not only the creation of the Philadelphia chapter, but also, you know, to work within the district, and work that they both did at the national level, you know, for decades, and the kind of respect and love that, you know, people would express that knew them from years back. I mean, it's, especially with my mom, like her history began when she was, like a college student, that she participated in JACL oratorical competitions, first one was when she was like nineteen years old, and she was really good. So one year, she won the national competition, and I think another year she was in second place. And so people would always come up to me and say, "Oh, my god," and tell you stories about your parents and what they did and what they were still doing.

And I remember one of our past chapter presidents, you know, we would go to, between the chapter meetings and the Eastern District Council meetings, it was Bill Kishi, who was a past chapter president, one day said at a meeting, he says, "It's pretty easy being a chapter president, you just have to come to the meeting and do whatever Grayce says, and that's how we decide things." Of course, he laughed. So I say that because there was just an environment there that was very kind of hospitable and comfortable and friendly, and provided space for people to do things and to participate and be involved in leadership and so on. So I know that I think it was in 2000, that I was appointed to the editorial board of the Pacific Citizen, which would have been the first kind of national position that I had. And I did that for one two-year term, and then I ended up being a governor for Eastern District, which put me on a national board, which I did for one term, and then I didn't want to do it anymore, because I realized it was really hard. And you could probably appreciate this now, that if you take four weekends in a year to attend board meetings in San Francisco, because we're so far away, it really takes three days, you know, that are totally blown up by the board meeting. And then the district meetings that you have to go to and the chapter functions, it's actually very time consuming to be the governor, and it was really like, I could really feel it. So I didn't want to do it again at that point, because there were too many things that needed to be done at home.

But I don't know whose idea this was, but somebody asked me to chair a Constitution and Bylaws Committee one year around that time, in the early 2000s, so I did that. And that was kind of fun and interesting to kind of figure that out and learn, you know, parliamentary procedure, and so on, and to kind of use my legal skills, and also to kind of start thinking about how to figure out how to work with a committee of people that's very divergent in terms of their skills and time and interest and so on, to figure out how to review amendments and let them be kind of debated intelligently and decided thoughtfully. So they asked me to do that a number of times, so I kind of got established and very familiar to people at the international level with conventions and so on, because of that role. Because you have to chair the National Council meetings when that business is taken care of. And at some point, I asked if I could switch to another committee, because I thought it was getting stale. And I needed to, you know, make space for somebody else to do it. Because I realized at that point that the convention committees should be utilized by JACL as a way to recruit people and kind of cement them in the organization and also promote and develop leadership within JACL. And it doesn't work very well if you get chairs that just kind of sit there, you know, for ten or twenty years, you need to put part of your energy into learning how to do it, but at the same time identifying people that you're working with, or people that you can recruit to serve on a committee to replace you, and to create their own pathways and pull in other people and so on.

So anyway, I switched to Resolutions and did that for several years. And then I kind of switched back again, several years, and then I periodically got involved in other things at the national level, the most noteworthy of which recently was just kind of randomly getting sucked in to serve on the Legacy Fund Review Committee, which was, has been in because it's not quite done yet like over two years later. This is the most difficult, challenging task I've ever done in JACL in my life, because it always, it was so contentious, and it was a difficult topic, and I was pretty isolated on the committee. And I had spent a lot of time and energy and it's very, it was a kind of issue where it was very document heavy, there were a lot of legal issues. There are a lot of financial questions and the record that we had to work with going back to when the Legacy Fund was created, which my mother was instrumental in, following a successful redress effort, it's not something you could just dabble in and understand how things should be handled. And because most of the committee was pushing in a direction that I came to the conclusion was the wrong direction, it just became very time consuming to do the analysis and argue about things and push different ways of doing things. And you know, that kind of coming to a head at the last convention, where we had a pitched battle, to a National Council meeting over, adopting a new policy about how the endowment was managed. And unfortunately, the skirmishing continued since the last convention, and hopefully it will be wrapped up this summer, so we can put it to rest. Yeah, and then, you know, at the same time, in a couple of weeks, I'll start serving again, as the governor on the Eastern District Council, so be back on the national board. And partly motivated by what I saw at the board meetings that I attended to fight at the Legacy Fund, and how I realized that, you know, now that I do have more time, because I don't have to go to work every day, that I should put some more time in to try to help, contribute to improving the leadership within the board structure for a couple of years. So that's the JACL part for me. [Laughs]

RB: Thank you for your service. Hopefully it doesn't take another three days of convention debates this summer. Okay, I do need to run now. I don't know if there were any other questions, other reflections. We covered a lot of ground. Yeah, all right, thank you.

PU: Okay, all right. Good, thank you.

RB: That was great, thank you so much. We really appreciate it.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2023 JACL Philadelphia. All Rights Reserved.