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BS: And that brings us to the next part. What motivated your interest in becoming involved with the Japanese American community, like after college, I guess? What drew you to the Seattle JACL, and then what drove you to become a board member?

HP: Oh, man. It's kind of a long story. But the short version is after I moved back to the States from Korea, and I lived in Korea from 2004 to 2006 -- I'm really dating myself here. But, so after that I came to visit -- I had a few friends that were living in Seattle, actually, and so I was just like, "Well, I want to just move there. Because I have no money. And I don't know anyone else really on the West Coast, where I could feel like if I really wanted to go back and forth between the States and to Seoul, that Seattle would be the best place to do that. I just really felt that there were more pan Asian American experiences in Seattle. And also the history of organizing with the Gang of Four: Bernie Whitebear and Uncle Bob, Larry Gossett, and Roberto Maestas. Those are the people that I had actually interacted with when I first started organizing. Bernie Whitebear had passed away, but I had been introduced to his sister, Laura Wong-Whitebear, who's a been very good, I would say, ally to JACL. So when I came to Seattle, I didn't have a job. I was looking for one that's very quintessential Seattle where you were working at two different bookstores in the U District at the time. Like when Barnes & Noble was a thing in U Village. That's no longer here, and neither is Half Price Books in Roosevelt. So, I would bike between those two. And so I'd go past UW all the time. And just kind of funny, like that area still is very much the same streets, but they're totally different, right? But I wound up actually getting more engaged with politics after having worked at a tech company. I really hated it. It was like glorified data entry. And I just was, I was making a fine salary and benefits, but I really felt like my soul was dead inside. So I was like, "I gotta get out of here."

So I wound up taking a paid internship with Nick Hanauer and Eric Liu, they're two kind of like, kind of thought leaders in the region. Eric Liu is a Chinese born American who's written some books and served in the Clinton administration as a policy adviser and a speech writer. And so that's what got me interested and kind of got me started. And Eric wound up actually tried to run for state senate. And so I was managing that campaign. Very green, very, very green. But I got to know a lot of Asian American organizers and influencers like Kip Tokuda, Hyeyeon Kim, Ruth Woo. I think Sun was in there, too, Sun Yang. But really, what was kind of the point for me was Auntie Ruth. I had met her just a couple times and I thought -- I obviously was very intimidated by her -- because they always talk about how, oh, you know, "She thought up Gary Locke's career." And every single Asian American person that was around during when he was governor always talk about that as if it were the heyday of Asian American politics, which I guess in some regards can be viewed that way. But for me, just being able to have her as a mentor, just someone -- and not really like a mentor in a formal way, more like someone that I could get to know, someone that felt like family, that didn't care that I was Korean, or didn't care that I was adopted. Didn't care. She was just like, "Ooh, fresh blood. Let's get you involved in stuff."

So that's how I got more involved with JACL, it was because of her and then also because of Joan Yoshitomi. Joan has really been through a lot this year. But we still keep in touch, tangentially as much as we can. And also my friend, Kristina Logsdon, whose husband Voltaire Atienza-Wilkinson used to be on the board of JACL, and so did Binah Palmer, who is a communications director over at SEIU 925, she was on the Civil Rights Committee, I think she was the chair of Civil Rights Committee for a while. And I was working for the Win|Win Network at that time where Kristina Logsdon was and George Chung was, when they were still there. I was on contract after working for Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer, with them doing some organizing work on a grant from the Gates Foundation, focusing on an education policy as a way to sort of demystify government. And our goal was really to kind of steep ourselves in the Pacific Islander community because that's where we really need to talk about kind of the hidden achievement gap or opportunity gap -- I don't know what we're calling it now -- but the gap.

And so I just felt like it was... I have to say that the Japanese American community and the Filipino American community were way more willing to accept me into the community. It was a lot harder to break into the Korean American community because I don't have their -- I wouldn't say stereotypical cut out version of being a Korean American by having immigrant parents or being a part of an immigrant family. I mean, even though I am immigrant, I didn't have the choice of coming to this country. But I had a Korean passport, I had a Korean name. And that's why I reclaimed my Korean name, because that's the name I came to this country as. So, for me, it was about taking my power back, and really trying to dismantle white supremacy in a way that it can be very invasive, and very toxic in small amounts. I mean, you look at what's been happening with BLM and also within the labor movement, that it is very, very much alive and it is something that we have to continue to resist. And when people talk about, like, the Japanese incarceration, and they talk about other, like slavery, and chattel slavery, and Jim Crow laws, and it's just a different version of it, it's become more sophisticated and integrated over time. And for me, having grown up in that instance of being completely siloed off and isolated because of where I was placed as a child, that is, to me a quintessential experience of white supremacy. So getting involved in the JACL movement, I think for me was, that could have been me. If I came here at a different time, if I were Japanese, or even during that time period, Koreans would have, they would have a note saying, "I am not Japanese American. I'm not Japanese. I'm Korean," so as to not be incarcerated. So, for me, that was really eye opening.

And as somebody once told me, when they recruited me to become more involved in leadership at JACL, "It doesn't matter, we're all pan Asian. It's okay." Bill. [Laughs] That was... I tried to hurl three excuses as to not be JACL president, and one of them was I'm not JA. Isn't that kind of like a, like a prerequisite? He's like, "No." So that's what happened. I got taken out to lunch and then I became president somehow. [Laughs] So that was super great. That was really fun. And I've had the best experience doing organizing and policy work through the JACL. But that was mainly also because I worked for Jim McDermott at the time, who was this really old congressman, who had... you have a question here about Wards Cove Act. So, I worked on that after my predecessor, who's Damian Cordova out of the Cordova family, had stopped working there and I started after him. So, lots of small connections that come involved with that. But I got to know the JACL very, very well, because the convention was here at that time when I was still working for Jim. And so, putting together a resolution, I was like, "I don't know what the resolution looks like. But if you send me a copy, I'll just do it." And so I think it's just a matter of not necessarily just like the racial identity portion of it, but also the values and the... I would say the values that align with mine were really more centrally based in that type of movement, and that political positional power that JACL has. I mean, there's lots of history, obviously, in different little pockets that are involved, too, right, between, for example, Nisei vets and JACL and "no-no" boys. Again, not my community. But what I find interesting are the, I always find systems and institutions very interesting, and how people operate within them, and how they either uphold them, or how they dismantle it. How to make it more accessible to people who are not normally exposed to that type of environment, when, because you just don't know when you're in it, and it's designed to be that way. So sorry, hold on.

BS: Oh, yeah, thank you. That's super helpful.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2021 Seattle Chapter JACL. All Rights Reserved.