Densho Digital Repository - Tomio Moriguchi Interview (Densho ID: ddr-sjacl-2-23-2)

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TM: But I guess one of the questions was why did I join JACL? Well, you know, when we were in business from 1946 on, the First Hill Lions was a very active business organization. And so people like Dr. Toda and Frank Hattori and others asked me to join the First Hill Lions. But they met every week and I said," No, that's just too much time." And also my brother was kind of in and out of the First Hill Lions membership. So about the same time I ran into people like Ben Nakagawa, or Don Kazama, and Min Masuda, and they said, "Why don't you join the JACL?" So I said, well, I'd better join something, so that's how I got a little bit involved with JACL. And then two things happened. When I became, I don't know, I think, elected vice president after a couple years, and then Min Masuda was the president that year, I think 1969 or 1970. And he was approached by MOHAI, the Museum of History and Industry. And there was a lady that was in charge, and they have a number of collections from the Japanese community, nothing in depth, but they had dolls and they had pictures. So it was her idea for us to kind of display that as the Japanese community, I don't know, history. And so Min says, "Okay, Tomio, you're vice president, so you're in charge of this." So, okay. And so I made the mistake of going to educators, though, because then Ben Nakagawa was an educator, I think, vice principal at that time, and his wife, Joan, you know, they were all in education, and then they introduced me to people like Larry Masuda. And they said something like, "Well, you know, dolls and pictures are nice, but you got to tell the story about the incarceration." And I says, "Oh, gee, that sounds like a lot of work." But anyway, that's how, why the Pride and Shame exhibit turned out to be what it is. The lady director at that time, I forgot her name, I could look it up, but she was very upset because she just assumed we would put up pretty dolls and, you know, pictures, all the nice things. But when we came up with the idea that we want to show the incarceration, that's not exactly what the had in mind. One instance is Roy Tsuboi, you know, helped with the graphic, and one of the graphic we did was, we use the old poster that says, you know, "Japs go away," or something like that. So we put that on the one of the exhibit, the next morning, it was all covered. So, you know, that's... the point I'm making on that is, the exhibit, to me, I learned a lot. And I think it was successful because we told the history of the Japanese incarceration, which the museum people probably wasn't even thinking of, or didn't want us to do. But as you know, Min Masuda wrote a proposal, and we got a hundred or 150 thousand dollars to convert it to a traveling exhibit, and we went around the city. And I guess, to me, it was a very interesting learning curve. And I'm glad that it was... I don't know how to say it, solidified the local Japanese Americans who were not all JACLers. And, Bill, you know, some history behind that, that not all the younger Japanese were into.