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BS: And it is clear from your anecdotes that Tatsuo cared deeply for civil rights and equality. Can you discuss some of the work he's done for civil rights and speculate maybe as to why he cared so deeply about activism?

EM: I think part of that is because of how he grew up. I think he stood out so much as a mixed person, I think in Ohio, he probably wasn't viewed as being mixed, he was probably more viewed as just being on the Asian side. Even though, on the West Coast, there's more and more folks who were mixed. In Ohio, even in Ohio, now, I think I've met two other mixed Japanese Americans and their siblings. [Laughs] So there's just, there's just, one, not a lot of AAPI folks, and two, especially then, I think some of the things that he had to go through in school, and, you know, getting jobs and just existing, made him realize what discrimination is like, let alone kind of the hardship that he had, you know, with family that Arlene alluded to earlier. So I think that, like most of us, what we end up... the topics that end up surrounding our professional careers, sometimes are the things that it's not how did we get into activism or how did we get into politics, it's like, well, with his genetic makeup and location, he couldn't not think about what it was like to be a hapa Yonsei. He couldn't not think about what it was like to be a person of color or a mixed person, because it was so much of how he walked through the earth, that, you know, if you're going to do meaningful work, that, you know, that's just ever present. I think, yeah.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2022 Seattle Chapter JACL. All Rights Reserved.