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CN: So speaking of the future, you kind of mentioned that when you became president that you saw, like the Seattle chapter is kind of like an aging organization. And you had like, just talked about continuity between the past and present. So I was just wondering what some of your thoughts are about Seattle JACL? And like the next hundred years and in the future, where you see it going?

RC: Yeah. So I think, the organization, yeah, it's aging. They managed to bring on younger people since I left. I mean, the value for the organization is still there. When the organization was younger, it was, like I said, there was at least part of it that was a social outlet as well. And to the success of the civil rights movement and organizations like JACL. Like I said, younger people today have a lot more outlets, they can do a lot more things. And JACL really isn't part of... they don't, they wouldn't participate in JACL for like social activities. So it's really shifted more in terms of giving those people a bigger voice and being able to take a stand on things that they're passionate about. And this, I had, well, a lot of people had kind of this little this sentiment before I became president, before I kind of took a break from JACL. But a lot of issues now are not as focused on Japanese Americans, just because Japanese Americans were very fortunate in... they've been able to do pretty well, I would say. But I think that where the organization will go and kind of has the focus, is to say... whereas if you look in the '60s or '70s, there would be a much tighter focus on what is impacting Japanese Americans in particular. I think it rose out from there in terms of some of the same issues exist, like discrimination, or anti-defamation, and things of that nature, but you had to broaden your scope in terms of it impacting other groups, other people that may be impacted more heavily for different reasons.

So like, you have to focus more on how are things impacting not just Japanese Americans, but the first obvious thing is branching it out to like, Asian Pacific Americans. And I saw an interesting article from Naomi Ishisaka today in the Seattle Times, and she was talking about is it time to separate out, to not use the term "Asian Pacific Islander" or "Asian Pacific Americans" anymore? And I kind of think she's right, because what happens is, I think when you start to bundle in people, they, you start to think of them as one, but actually, Pacific Islanders have much different issues still. Like they're more likely to be impacted by discrepancies in education and the education system, for example. And there's other ways that they're more likely to be impacted. So I think that was even, at that time, when I was still involved, like a decade ago, it was fairly obvious. Like you need to broaden the scope just beyond Japanese Americans, you need to, there was talk like, do we look at... do we try to involve the Shin Issei, or new people that immigrated from Japan that are part of a different kind of immigration. So they might have come in here for education, whereas like the earlier Japanese Americans came just to be able to make a living in hard manual labor. So but I mean, even beyond that, obviously you go to supporting, like, African Americans, and then Hispanic Americans with different ethnicities, but then you also break into like, how are, how do we get more aggressive or assertive at impacting people that are, like, discriminated against because of their sexual orientation or because of their religion or things of that nature? And I think that if I were looking at things today, aside from pure discrimination, I would really... I kind of thought about this, I just did not, there was not enough bandwidth during my year, but I would have thought about what kind of things... how do you attack things... at work, I would say much more upstream, shift to the left.

So for example, like, yes, we could see that certain groups are, there's a big wealth, discrepancy, income discrepancy between different groups. So if you keep shifting to the left, figure out why that is, and keep going to the left until you can't go any further to the left. So like, you may say, like, oh, okay, it's because, there's different factors, it could be because they don't have the same level of health coverage. So why is that? It could because they don't have the same level of education or the same quality of education. So why is that? Keep going to the left until you can't ask why anymore. That's kind of where I would head in, I would look, I see the organization broadening out in terms of the kind of discrimination that they focus on, but I would kind of think about like, okay, what kind of other things are leading to systemic discrepancies between different groups of people and causing these inequalities? And keep going 'til figuring out, okay, how do we get people better education, better access to education, to quality education? Things like that. I don't know. Is it like, looking for more government funding for students to get, like, enough money for college? Is it giving teachers or whoever, like, more help in terms of students in the classroom or something of that nature? I don't know the answer, but I know that the answer, or the way to solve these inequalities, which was fundamental to kind of the purpose of the JACL, at a very high level is to keep drilling on some of these things that are not at the surface level, like if I call you like, a racial slur, or ethnic slur or whatnot, it's very at the surface is very in your face. How do you take it a step further now that things are, you kind of get past that surface level and go much deeper and solve much more complicated systemic problems? That's kind of where I see the organization going.

CN: Think, yeah, I think that's really interesting. Just, I was kind of thinking just about how like Japanese American activism today like, there's like Tsuru for Solidarity, it's like a lot of solidarity movements, like rooted in the experiences of Japanese Americans. And just, I don't know, my sister went on, like the Kakahashi trip a couple years ago and she was kind of critical of how it split up Japanese participants and non-Japanese participants. So I think it's interesting, just hearing you talk about, like, how there needs to be some branching out in working with other groups.

RC: Yeah, I mean, like, so the thing is, I could walk into a place today and someone could say, like, call me a "Jap." So that's pretty rare today or much more rare. And the thing is, the general consensus now is shifted in the U.S. to that. Like if you told most people that they would have an adverse reaction, so things are, they're not blatant now, and, and I think solving the problems now in terms of inequalities is much more, they're far more complex, and that's why they kind of haven't been solved, but to really kind of try to figure out what's the root cause and what are some root solutions that are... I think that's kind of the, that's what I would focus on now.

BT: Camila, anything else?

CN: I think those are all my questions. If you have anything to add, Bill.

BT: Ryan, did you want to add anything else? Well, Camila and I will get together and we may send you some follow up questions, or we may not, we'll send you an email.

RC: Okay.

BT: But I just wanted to add one thing real quickly, though, because I think, Camila... it's kind of interesting. I think it was 2004 or 2006. And Ryan, was, I don't know how old you were back then, but you told me you were thinking about running for national president. And I said to you, "That's pretty good, Ryan, but you're pretty young. How do you think that's going to be, how do you think that'll be received?" I don't know if you remember what you told me.

RC: Yeah. Well, I remember aspects of that conversation.

BT: You said something to the effect that, well, the way I looked at it is everybody in JACL is always talking about youth, youth this, youth this, youth will be our future, and it's kind of like, well, our future is now. It's time to put their money where their mouth is. It's like, if they're not going to take me seriously as a leader, then, basically, then I don't want to have anything to do with this organization. But it was basically you putting it on the line, saying, you can't argue to give power and leadership to youth and not actually do it. And I was really impressed by that, when you said that. Anyway, I want to thank you for your time, I know you're really busy at work. And this is, especially right now at the quarterly point. And Camila, I want to thank you again, because your interviews are always good. And we'll have this as our recording. And otherwise, thank you. And if there's nothing else, then we'll catch you later.

RC: All right, yeah. Thanks for having me.

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