Densho Digital Repository
Seattle JACL Oral History Collection
Title: In Memory of Tatsuo Nakata Interview
Narrators: Akemi Matsumoto, Emily Momohara, Joy Shigaki, Arlene Oki
Interviewers: Brent Seto, Bill Tashima
Date: February 6, 2022
Densho ID: ddr-sjacl-2-32-2

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BT: So getting right into the conversation then, please talk a little bit about yourself and your background and then tell us how you met and how you worked with Tatsuo and what your lasting impressions were. And anyone's free to just jump in.

BT: Joy, why don't you start?

JS: I'm Joy Shigaki, I'm here and I'm a Yonsei, born and raised in Seattle. I got involved in the JACL, probably in the late '90s, you know, you're gonna get roped in, and then really kept my involvement because of our civil rights work, and was president a couple of years following both Tatsuo and Bill, so I guess that was 2005. Confirmed that for me today. You know, it's so interesting with the bio, like just recognizing how young Tatsuo was, but also how wise and grounded he was. I think a lot about just sort of, you know, he's not from Seattle, and I think there definitely was this question, and always is this unstated thing about if you're not from Seattle, what your, sort of, roots are, who your family is, and then why you're coming to organizations in the JA community. Not that that is explicitly a reason that you can't be at the table, but I think it also is one of the challenges that I think he always was very mindful of and respectful of, but also what made his leadership also really extraordinary and coming into our chapter work, but also a real connect and a commitment to community. Which I think, given how he, his experience in Cincinnati as a mixed race kid, and particularly the kind of experiences he had around racism, and just a lot of lack of understanding of who he was as a person from -- this is, again, from my memory -- like was so formative to him. So long and short, we did a lot of work in the civil rights work, and really building cross racial solidarity work and envisioning something really different in the chapter's history. So I will stop there and pass it on to either Emily, Akemi, or Arlene.

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