Densho Digital Repository - In Memory of Cherry Kinoshita Interview

Densho Digital Repository
Seattle JACL Oral History Collection
Title: In Memory of Cherry Kinoshita Interview
Narrator: Dr. Kyle Kinoshita
Interviewers: Brent Seto, Joy Misako St. Germain
Date: March 2, 2022
Densho ID: ddr-sjacl-2-34

<Begin Segment 1>

JSG: Hello, I'm Joy Misako St. Germain. I'm a past president of the Seattle Japanese American Citizens League. And thank you, Kyle, for agreeing to be interviewed for the Seattle JACL 2021 Legacy Fund Grant project. This project is funded by a national JACL Legacy Fund Grant. It's aimed to preserve the rich history of legacy of the Seattle JACL, hrough preserving historical documents as well as supplementing the written materials by adding recorded oral interviews about pivotal leaders who played important roles in the chapter's history. The interview team today is Brent Seto and me. Brent will be the lead interviewer. This session will be about Cherry Kinoshita through the lens and recollections of her son, Dr. Kyle Kinoshita, as well as about Kyle himself, who is a notable JACL leader. Before I turn the session over to Brent, I wanted to provide a little bit of information about Cherry. Cherry was born in 1923 in Seattle. Cherry was incarcerated at Puyallup Assembly Center in Washington and in camp Minidoka in Idaho. During Cherry's two and a half years at Minidoka, she wrote for the newspaper called the Minidoka Irrigator. Cherry is best known for her activism in the 1970s with the Seattle JACL work on redress, spearheading grassroots efforts to lobby Washington state lawmakers on the injustice imposed upon thousands of Japanese Americans during World War II. And at sixty years old, she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree with honors in sociology from the University of Washington. Thanks again, Kyle, for your time with us today. I'll now turn over the interview to Brent Seto. Thanks, Brent.

BS: Thank you, Joy. And yeah, hi everyone. My name is Brent Seto. I use he/him pronouns, and I am one of the Seattle JACL interns for this year. Just a brief introduction about me. I'm a junior at the University of Washington double majoring in Political Science and Law, Societies and Justice. I'm passionate about activism and advocacy, and I'm heavily involved in the student government on campus. I'm originally from San Jose, California, and I wanted to intern with the JACL because I'm a Yonsei, or a fourth generation Japanese American, but I actually know very little about JA history or culture. And the JACL provided me with the opportunity to connect with the JA community and learn more about myself and my identity. But, yeah, getting started with the interview, Kyle, is there anything that you would like to add to our intro to Cherry? What was her personality like and how was she remembered by others?

KK: Yeah, thanks for the introduction. Thanks for the summary, that's helpful. I think I'll just go ahead and start saying a few things about my mom. And that'll kind of transition into how she impacted, I think, the community as well as me personally, which might tell you a few things about her. In terms of her personality, I think that obviously as a son, you remember your mom as very loving and very nurturing. I think that one of the things that probably isn't, wasn't as visible -- because she was a visible figure in the community -- is that family was really important to her. And by that, I mean, extended family, because we were pretty small family. I was an only kid. But if we're talking about family on her side of the family, my cousins who are the Sansei members, sons of her brothers who are now in Chicago, or whether you were talking about extended family on my dad's side. He originated from Gresham, Oregon, Portland area, and all the families down there, they had, they were berry farmers. But it's interesting, just in terms of how she was. I mean, she is really, really fondly remembered by the members of the family on my dad's side. When she passed, you could really kind of tell that, how much love and attachment that they had to her even though we were in Seattle, and they're in Portland. I think it must have been the way that she came into the family before I was born.

Just a little bit about that, she was incarcerated at Minidoka, but so were the Portland people, Portland area people. And there are lots of stories, by the way, of both kind of that Nisei generation of both cities being really thrilled, because it was like, "Oh, my gosh, we get to meet all sorts of new and interesting people." And part of that, I think, was figuring out who to go out with. And that's where my mom met my dad, because they were kind of interested in Portland people. After the... during incarceration, she was released to Minnesota. And it just so happened that my dad, who I'll talk about later, was drafted and went into the Military Intelligence Service, MIS, was based at Fort Snelling, Minnesota, so they were able to stay in touch with each other. 1948, they got married when the family went back to Oregon, and so my mom was there for a while. And I think there, that's where she became quite attached to the Kinoshita side, and they to her. So, what happened was, my dad was the youngest kid in the family and didn't really, wasn't able to have a stake in the farm. So, jobs were kind of hard to find in that way. And, that's how they made their way to Seattle, to stay with my mom's side of the family. So that's a long way of saying that they're just really close ties, the family. The Yonsei members of my dad's side just have tremendous respect for my mom, and just have a lot of fond memories, and were very inspired by my mom's activism. And the times that we see each other, they don't hesitate to remind me every time about that.

So, more about her personality, I think that maybe helped kind of explain a little bit her activism. My earliest memories were that we had a big old white house in the Mount Baker neighborhood. And it kind of had to be a little bigger, because my grandparents on my mom's side stayed with us. I remember them being retired. And I guess it was that, and I'll talk about them later, they had a dry cleaning shop before the war, and lost everything in incarceration. So I think... I don't think my grandfather on my mom's side really started his career and just kind of lived with us, as well as a bachelor uncle. But what I remember was that she always wanted better. That was so clear to me, in hindsight, she always wanted better. After having me, she went right back to work so that they could have two incomes, not just to support my grandparents, but I think that... I just remember that there are things that you could tell that she was bound and determined to build a better life for us and family and, I guess, particularly me. In addition to working outside the home in a variety of jobs, kind of secretarial types or mid-level kind of bank jobs. And by the way, this will come up later, they are not ones that I think she aspired to. I have the feeling, obviously, that she aspired to more, but it was most important to support the family and to build for the future. She pushed in that regard. I think she helped my dad started his own business. My dad, even though he had a college degree in agriculture, I think it was, learning the technology of food processing, couldn't find a job in that area. And so he became an auto body man working for Kono Garage, which was on 12th Avenue. But she pushed him to start his own business and worked really hard, even though she had her own job, in getting that business going, and getting us established in a house, saving up for my college education. And so that was really, I think, the early part of what I remember her in the '50s and '60s. I think that that is something that is so clear about my mom and just in terms of her personality. So maybe I'll stop here picking up where you want, maybe to get into a little bit how she got active.

<Begin Segment 2>

BS: Yeah, no, that was a fantastic introduction to her life. And then in 1977, she became, Cherry became the president of the Seattle JACL. So, you talked a little bit about some of her values and characteristics that pushed her towards activism, but what factors motivated her interest in becoming involved specifically with the Japanese American community here in Seattle?

KK: Well, I think what I'll do is I'll talk more extensively like that, maybe in kind of a later question I'll talk more specifically about her role in redress. But I think that her presidency in 1977, and, you know, later on again I'll talk about it, I think she was national vice president at one point during the redress movement. But the presidency in 1977, I remember pretty clearly. Back then, when you became an officer in JACL it was a lot more formal than these days. Because I remember going, they have, every year, what was known as installation banquets, which meant a pretty big banquet where a lot of speaking, and I remember going there just as a family member. But in some ways that was kind of a milepost. Because it was interesting that early on, I talked about how hard she was working to get our family established. I remember, as a young kid, the fact that she had political and activist leanings. One of the first things I remember was that she became and tried to contribute to, in the early '60s, the anti-nuclear the movement for nuclear disarmament. And I think, I suspect that the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombing impacted her a lot, just in terms of what she saw. She also -- I think this played into it -- had gotten some medical treatment for a skin condition in the '50s, and back then they blasted her skin with x-rays, which had a really kind of bad effect on her health. And I think those two things kind of intersected to her becoming interested in the anti-nuclear movement in the '60s. And I remember tagging along with her to someplace or other where they were running a mimeograph machine -- which, that's way before your time -- but it was basically this big drum like thing that they used to print off, kind of, leaflets. And the leaflets were about disarmament. I remember her talking to somebody in that office -- which clearly was some activist office regarding anti-nuclear movement -- saying that she would do this and that, but she wouldn't picket. And that was kind of where she drew the line. She wasn't gonna picket, which, growing up in the Japanese community, I could see why. I mean, you don't want to stick out there.

But there were other things that kind of clued me in nowadays that she was kind of bound for her role. She was not one of those Nisei that didn't say anything about incarceration. Lots of sons, they had these stories about hearing about camp and talking about this and that, or so and so meeting in camp. And at one point -- I think I must eight -- I finally said, "What is... what are you talking about, this camp?" Because I thought maybe it was a vacation that they hadn't taken me on or something. So, my mom sat me down and actually told me about the incarceration, which was really kind of unusual. You hear stories about Sansei not hearing about incarceration until much, much later in school or something. But she told me about it. And growing up in kind of Cold War America where, "This is greatest democratic country in the world," blah, blah, blah, I remember being as a kid, totally shocked, completely shocked that my entire family had suffered through that. And so, in hindsight, you can kind of tell that this was not something that she was going to be quiet about.

But there are other things along the way, I think that... she was clearly sympathetic to the civil rights movement, even though she wasn't active. I remember clearly an incident as a kid where somebody, some kid in the neighborhood, she heard them use the N-word, I believe they were goofing around. And she made her point to sit me down and talk about how bad that was, how horrible that was, which I, of course, never forgot that. I also remember, in the late '60s, how... I was a Boy Scout and very typically grew up in the Cold War and all the fear about Communism taking over. She was vehemently against the Vietnam War from a very early stage and pretty vocal about it. And she, I was kind of taken aback when she basically said, how bad supporting the Vietnam War was, which just kind of confused me until much later when I grew up a little more and kind of saw that.

So, I think that as I grew up and basically later high school, went off to college, I think she had more time then to be able to get active in the JACL, which she did. And I think we went to, my uncle and cousins were in Chicago, and in 1970 the convention was there. And so we actually all went. My dad, me, it was kind of a vacation. I hadn't seen my cousins for a long, long time. And so she was there at that convention, at which point the idea of redress was introduced by Edison Uno in San Francisco. And even though she didn't talk about it it's pretty clear that that impacted her. She was on the board of JACL in the early '70s, and I know that -- I read about in this book, by the way, which I'll quote from later called Born in Seattle, which if you want to know about redress -- she facilitated a couple of meetings where they, early on some of the people who launched redress talked about it. I don't think at that point that she was a leader in the redress movement, that came later. But I can't help but think that she was pretty sympathetic to it. So that kind of gets you up to where, at a certain point, being on the board, and I would imagine being more and more vocal, that that's how she ended up to be president for the year, 1977. So, I'll stop here.

BS: Yeah, no, that's pretty fascinating.

<Begin Segment 3>

BS: And then you talked about how Cherry was outspoken about the camps for a Nisei, which I imagine also made her very passionate about the Japanese American redress movement. So, can you describe the movement a little bit and then also go into Cherry's role in the movement and how she became involved in what she did?

KK: Yeah, I will. Because, obviously, that's kind of the main part of her legacy and what she's remembered for. I'll say something right here which I'll sort of clarify. I wasn't... I didn't participate with her and the redress movement for a variety of reasons. One was, in the '70s, it was kind of a thing where JACL was kind of known as a Nisei organization. Whereas the Sansei, if they were politically active, they were kind of involved in sort of radical causes on college campuses or in the community. And you know that the Nisei, even though we were sympathetic, were just kind of establishment for us. So even though much later, of course, Sansei got active in the redress movement, it wasn't seen right at that point as a Sansei issue, except for the fact that we definitely would find opportunities to talk about incarceration. So, just kind of that caveat, that a lot of what I learned about redress, and what happened afterward, was actually kind of after it happened. So I think that, from what I read, and again a lot of it was reading about it in Born in Seattle and hearing about it after she passed and things like that, from what I can tell, is that she was, of course, sympathetic. She helped out in the '70s. There were a number of individuals, one of the main people was a Nisei named Henry Miyatake, who was one of the ones who initiated when it was really the driving force in the '70s. And I think she helped out, but she didn't yet get to the point where she was actually known as the leader of redress or a strong leader of redres. She was one who just one who helped out.

From what I can tell is that when that changed was at a certain juncture in the redress movement -- which I don't... I'm trying not to get too much of the details -- In 1979, Representative Mike Lowry, who was a liberal congressman representing the seventh district, after a lot of work, was ready to introduce a bill in Congress for redress. And I think the Seattle people were quite excited about that. What happened was that those folks who were associated with redress were probably more cautious and conservative, kind of derailed it, quite frankly. Instead of letting the bill go to the floor, instead they introduced an idea for, to launch a congressional commission to investigate incarceration, I guess, to see whether or not it was unjust. And that may seem a ridiculous statement, but there was still the belief that there was military necessity for the security, and that was why the Japanese Americans were incarcerated. So the Congressional Commission, which was the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, CWRIC, was launched. And the bill in Congress was to actually do that instead of approving redress. From what I read is that some of the original leaders of the redress movement in Seattle were infuriated at this point. In fact, Henry Miyatake, who was the leader and who also, I guess, had some family difficulties, kind of step back from the movement.

And I think it was at this point where I understand my mom being, came forward to assume her leadership role. She recounts in Born in Seattle, that she had gone to a regional JACL meeting where this commission was talked about. And there was a lot of anger at the fact that redress was going to be sidetracked for several more years and at a time when Issei were dying and not getting the benefit of it. She tells a story about the fact that on the plane back to Seattle, it dawned on her that commissions have hearings, and in hearings, people testify. And long story short, she went back to Seattle and began to organize all sorts of people from the JA community here in Seattle. And I imagine that she had some influence in other cities to testify at eventually what were hearings here in Seattle. If you ever read some of the testimonies, there are some of the most gut wrenching and heartbreaking stories that you will ever read. And these stories would have never come to light had not there have been these hearings and had not people like my mom organized people to come and make statements in that way. And it was, I think, at that point that she began to be recognized as a leader.

At that point she then began to, I guess I would say, relentlessly, start pursuing the incarceration -- or redress, not incarceration. She became active while the national process was going on. Three separate regress actions locally, redress for Japanese Americans who had been fired by Washington State, redress for City of Seattle workers who had been forced to resign because of the incarceration, and just a tremendously interesting story about how she was, became involved, along with Mako Nakagawa, another JACL leader, in redress for twenty-seven young Nisei woman school clerks who had worked for Seattle Public Schools. That was quite a dramatic story, which I won't get into. But, you know, that in itself is just a fascinating story about how she managed to get these ten very shy Nisei women, who had no inkling and no inclination to speak out, at the school board meeting in support of redress.

<Begin Segment 4>

KK: So, I'll tell one last story about what I think told a lot about her dedication for redress. And it was kind of an interesting story too about how I learned about this. After the fact, when Born in Seattle was written, of course, she had multiple copies. And she very kind of nonchalantly said, "Oh, if you want to read about redress, here's this book here." And I said, "Oh, okay." Well, I come to find out her name is written throughout this book about how she played this leadership role. So I opened the book just to see what was in it, and I opened to this one page, which was kind of later in the book. And it was kind of the 11th hour push in 1988 to get this bill passed. And part of her relentless nature and why she was known as being so relentless, there was a story about one of the bills that were to go to Congress. And the fact that there were assurances made that this bill would actually go. She was the only one who stayed up in a hotel room reading the bill to the very end. And at the very end, she discovered that they had gutted the part about monetary compensation. And of course, she got on the phone, she got very upset. She alerted everyone and their cousin about the fact that, "This is not right. You cannot..." The story goes is that if she hadn't been the one to read that bill all the way through, another bill would have gone through, and it wouldn't have been the case that Japanese Americans would have got some compensation, which later turned out to be in the form of $20,000. That wouldn't have happened.

Back to the story. I opened this book, and I'm reading about the last minute lobbying before the redress bill went to the floor, and I went on this passage that said you have people lobbying the Washington congressional delegation to all vote for the redress bill, and I'll read just a few paragraphs. It says, "Of all the Washington State delegation, Representative Chandler, who was a conservative congressman, was the most difficult to convince, deciding to vote for H.R. 442 the day before the final House vote." And that was the redress bill. "Cherry Kinoshita, Tomio Moriguchi, and Tom Goto met with Chandler. In late summer, Chandler was still reluctant. Kinoshita asked if his position could be characterized as quote/unquote, 'qualified support.'" Unquote. "Chandler answered, 'Before you quote me and give the wrong impression, just say to your group that you went away disappointed.' As the three lobbyists stood up to leave, Kinoshita, in last minute desperation, turned to Chandler and said, 'When it comes time to vote, please remember that if for no other reason, you should vote for the redress bill, because it is the right thing to do,' and they left. Not sure whether the congressman would heed her words, Kinoshita later watched the congressional debate on television. On C-SPAN, as the House debate progressed, there was representative Chandler at the podium saying, 'I have thought about this with my mind for a long time, and until this week, I was undecided. But when I turned to my heart, I realized that this has got to be done. Let us do it. Because ultimately, it is the right thing to do.'" And the vote passed in both the House and Senate. And that was like, "Oh, my gosh, spooky." I turned to that page, and I thought, oh my gosh, that just said so much about my mom. And that was really, what it was about if it boils, gets down to why she was so relentless. I think later on, she was asked, you know, you kind of made your life, you could have been comfortable, why did you spend eighteen years working on this? And she said, "Because it was the right thing to do." And she says, "It was because this country supposedly was founded on certain ideals, and this country had to live up to them. And that's why I continued to persist all those years." So, I'll stop there again.

<Begin Segment 5>

BS: Yeah. And then you said that although you did not participate in the redress movement yourself, I imagine you still supported your mother's work. So, could you talk a little bit about the actions of your father and the family, during this movement, to assist Cherry?

KK: Yeah, sure. I think it's interesting. For someone who was so active, you would think that everyone in the family would be, and he was actually not very active. But he was kind of quiet, much more easy going, and I kind of take after him in that way. But he worked incredibly hard at building up the business that he had. And the business was, ended up being pretty successful. It was an auto body shop, and he had a partner for the mechanical part, on Broadway. And it was actually one block south of Seattle Community, Seattle College today. And he just very quietly supported her. I can't imagine that he wasn't very supportive of everything that was done, because of course he was incarcerated. He was drafted out of the camps, and he was part of the Military Intelligence Service, and a veteran. So, I think, a part of that hard work was not only to support me until I got out of college, but actually to support her endeavors. Because I think that a certain point in the '70s, she stopped working from home, at a separate job. She helped, of course, manage the business and kept the books and all that other stuff. But redress became her work. And so, he was always there. Whenever there was a dinner or an award that my mom received as a result of redress he was there.

I remember vividly one kind of incident. For some reason or other in 1988, the convention, JACL convention was in Seattle. And I wasn't active then because it was a whole other story, getting my K-12 education career going as a beginning teacher and you're a teacher that's basically a job and a half, you don't have time for anything else. But for some reason, I stopped in at home, you know, my mom and dad's house on Beacon Hill, I can't remember, to pick up something. And I said, "Where's Mom?" And he was fixing his own dinner. And he just kind of matter of factly said, "Oh, I think she said she had to fly out, go to Washington, D.C." Well, what that was, was that during the convention, it was announced that President Reagan was going to sign the redress bill. And so JACL leaders who were here at this convention in Seattle, got a plane ticket and flew off to Washington, D.C. And that's where she was. She was at the signing ceremony where President Reagan signed the bill. But that kind of told you, my dad kind of followed along. He wasn't kind of into the details at all, he was just kind of doing his job and worked hard. So anyway, yeah.

BS: Yeah, no, that's, that's funny.

<Begin Segment 6>

BS: And then, I guess, what are some of these, like, your fondest memories of your home life with Cherry, with your mom?

KK: Oh, I think it was a lot about work. But again, she was pretty nurturing. And in hindsight, I just can't imagine how she did it all. You read about today, the working woman and how do they have it all, family and all that. She managed to do it. I mean, she would work at her job until 5:30, and sometimes in the summer for babysitting, I'd go to the downtown YMCA day camp, and she'd pick me up, take the Metro bus home to South Beacon Hill, and then immediately start cooking dinner. And my dad, because, you know, he worked pretty hard, he didn't get off till six at his shop. Then we came home and ate dinner around 6:30 or 7:00. And it was only 'til I grew up much later to say that normal people back then kind of eat around five o'clock. So she did that, she made a home. And, once in a while, they were still trying to save up to keep my dad's business afloat, we would go on vacations not that often. I remember the biggest trip in the world was going to Disneyland when I was twelve. And that was really it in terms of... the first time I ever saw on a plane was when we went through Chicago in 1970. So anyway, she was one who just took care of things and took care of us. So, those were kind of my memories of Mom, and I'm pretty sure that was true with a lot of Nisei, so anyway.

Maybe one more story, I'll tell about my mom that sort of completes something. I was gonna say this early, and I'll just share the screen. When she was interviewed later about why it was that she was so dedicated... this, by the way, is a PowerPoint slide that I use because -- I think you might be asking about this later -- one of my side jobs is that I am an instructor in University of Washington Bothell Principal Preparation Program. In other words, I train principals for their job. And in talking about leadership, I talk about the fact that you really have to... 'cause it's a hard job -- and you have to take stands. And a lot of times you have to take stands in support of doing the right thing for kids. You have to really understand what you're, what you are about as a person, you'd have to be able to reach back and talk about what was it about your family and your upbringing that gave you the courage and the stamina to do that job, and I used my mom's story as an example. So, I think that this is a picture from her annual, Lincoln High School. And you can tell she was class of 1941. She graduated in June of 1941. You can tell she was an all-American Girl, and this was kind of the Lincoln Lynx Girls Club. And she tells a story about that time and talks a little bit about her aspirations. The boys in the family, my two uncles, they had aspirations to go to college. And of course, our family was really poor. I mean, the dry-cleaning business that they had in Green Lake barely kept the family afloat. So, they were able to earn money because back then you could sign up and get a job in the Alaska canneries. Go up to Alaska for the summer and earn money. You couldn't do that if you were a girl. So, she thought and thought and thought because she wanted to go to the University of Washington in the worst way. So she went to a counselor, the story goes, and said, "I have an idea." And she said, "What I will do is after high school, I'll go to secretary school, get some secretary skills, and get a job and earn money for tuition." So the counselor, I'm sure was patient and kind, and he said, "Well, Cherry, you can do that. But the reality is that no one is going to hire a Japanese girl to do secretarial work." And I imagine that that was just something that she never forgot, first of all.

And then later, here's a picture of her in camp. Joy, you mentioned the fact that she worked for the camp newspaper. The camp being kind of a small town of 10,000, they had their own newspaper. And that's her right there with the newspaper staff. That's also her right there. She's sitting next to a Nisei war hero, Ben Kuroki, who wasn't in the 442. Interestingly enough, he was in army air force, and he was a tail gunner in B-24 bombers and became a hero that way. But the story goes, that she tells at Densho, is that she was put in charge of writing these kinds of women's columns. It was called "Feminidoka," I guess it was. And she said she'd write dumb stories about how you kept your hairdo intact in all the dust that was blowing around and stuff like that. She relates that one day, she was sitting in front of the typewriter and kind of a wave of emotion went over her thinking about how completely unjust this was and how she ended up here. And she didn't write a feminine column that time, she wrote a reminiscence that ended something to the words she said... couldn't quite remember. But she ended the article and said, "We're nothing but birds in a cage." Describing how they felt being in prison. So, in any case, I can't help but think that after all that she went through in redress, and all that she went through thinking about incarceration, and then attaining victory, why else would you at age sixty decide to go back to the University of Washington as a student and get your BA in sociology, which she did? Cum Laude. I mean, I thought to myself, if I was that old, I don't know if I'd want to go back to school and do that. But she did, because, again, that was part of her dream. Not only was she going to get justice, she, by god, was going to get that college degree that she had tried to get 1941. So anyway, so that's about my mom.

<Begin Segment 7>

BS: And I think just looking at the time, was going to shift to you, Kyle, because you are also a very important member of the JACL community and have your own contributions that we would like to talk about in your own right as well. So, could you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you became involved in the Seattle JACL?

KK: Sure. I think what I'll do is kind of explain why it is that actually, I'm only somewhat recently active in the JACL. I joined the board in 2019, and that was only after I retired from my K-12 education career. The thing of it was, is if you talk about my story, it wasn't really directly involved with JACL or in that way the JA community. My career was I became an elementary teacher in the 1980s, and as I began my teaching career and interacting with the kids, I found that one of my biggest motivations for being in education was the idea of justice. There are kids and are still kids who are underserved by the system. They don't get what they need, and it kind of consigns them to continuing to be as part of an oppressed class. So that always, always, always was a part of my thinking and motivation for being in education. As I taught, I thought, "Hmm, I'm having an impact on my classmates, maybe I can have an impact on a bigger group and a bigger system." So that got me to go to school and get my principal credential. And so, I was a elementary principal for thirteen years. And after a while I had that same inkling. You know, I'm working and I think I'm making a difference, maybe I can make a difference in a bigger setting. So that's when I got my doctorate and became a district level administrator, was an Executive Director of Teaching and Learning in the Marysville school district. And then in the last three years of my career I was Chief of Curriculum Assessment Instruction. Although the title is Chief, it was on the same organization line as Assistant Superintendents in Seattle. And in the last three years, one of the things I did that I'm probably most proud of is I relaunched an Ethnic Studies Initiative, which is still going on. I forgot to mention that one of the biggest influences because of my mom is that as an undergrad in the '70s I got what was one of the first ethnic studies undergrad degrees. And a lot of it had to do with being exposed to these ideas by my mom. So, I've always had that influence even though it hasn't been in JACL, it was in K-12 education. I think what she kind of inculcated into me was that if you work at anything, you better work to do the right thing. And lots of what I did in K-12 was that. Sometimes it put me at odds with different people. Sometimes, it was kind of hard because there was pushback. But I think my mom's example taught me that, "Well, okay, that's the way it is. That's what you need to do."

So, 2019... she passed in 2008, and I still had quite a bit of my ed career left. But 2019, when I retired, I thought, now's the time, I should do two things. One, is to start giving back to the Japanese American community that had nurtured me, and do things that maybe would preserve my mom's legacy somehow. Although this was not my aspiration, the way it is sometimes in JACL is that if you've got the time and you can do something, you end up either on the board or being an officer. So this year, 2022, I'm co-president along with Stan Shikuma. And I reflect once in a while -- it's only been a month and a half since I've been co president -- that "Wow, okay. Here I am. I'm actually doing something that I'm in a position to carry on the legacy of my mom, and I better make the most of it." So, there it is. This is one of the projects, by the way, in and of itself, that I work with Joy, and I work with Bill Tashima, and that's why this is a project that I don't mind working hard at. Because I get to actually preserve the legacy of folks like my mom, who I think is pretty important not to forget some of the things that she was about.

BS: Yeah, that's fantastic. Thank you for sharing that story with us just now.

<Begin Segment 8>

BS: And something else I was wondering about is I've talked with some of the other interviewees on this project about the concept of solidarity. And it's interesting to see everyone's different thoughts on it, and how their own identities influenced their views. And recently, you were a moderator of the webinar series, Uprooting Anti-Blackness in the Japanese American Community. So, I wanted to ask, what are your insights on solidarity?

KK: Well, I'm just really so happy that I was able to -- at that kind of historical juncture -- make a contribution to the JACL work which really... when this project came about, it was, came about in the middle of the racial reckoning of 2020, the really big outpouring of sentiment in this country that occurred after the murder of George Floyd and other members of the Black community. And some of us -- and I just really recently had gotten active with the JACL -- and some of the members of JACL both the Sansei, and some of the Yonsei and Gosei members, saying, "What can we do? What can we do where we get to take some responsibility as all of this is going on?" And so long and short of it, there are a number of Yonsei and Gosei folks, one of them, I'll just mention one, although there are a number. Gabrielle Gainor Nomura, who was one of the people that we interviewed, was one of the ones who spoke to the conscience and said that, "We really need to do something, and to do our part, that we need to do something that brings our community in support of what's going on in the Black community." So that was the genesis of the idea of the series, Uprooting Anti-Blackness in the Japanese American Community. It was one of those things that kind of happened at the right time because of the fact that I just come off of working in Seattle Public Schools and supporting the Ethnic Studies Initiative to bring ethnic studies curriculum to Seattle students. But one of the reasons why I had some passion about that was because of the fact that my undergrad degree is in ethnic studies. So, in other words, that was part of my undergrad education, and looking at the multiple histories of the peoples of color in this country, and how they came to be and their history.

So it wasn't difficult for me, because back in the '70s, if you were an ethnic studies student, you were also politically active and the group that I was with at Western, and some of the folks at UW were active in various causes, and supported Native Americans, the Black liberation struggle, and struggles in the Latinx community, like the farmworkers. But primarily causes in the Asian community here in Seattle. One of the biggest causes -- and this was interesting, the Asian American movement in Seattle started in 1970, I think, when a group of Asian activists -- they were a little older than me -- began to protest the lack of representation in the Seattle College, what's now Seattle College, it was Seattle Community College at that time. There were demonstrations and there were arrests involved. And just as an aside, not only did that inspire me, but I remember sitting at the dinner table and it was clear that these were just part of the kind of '70s protesters that were just very prevalent at that time. And I remember my mom very distinctly, she, at the dinner table, began to talk about this. And she began crying because she was so upset at the fact that these demonstrators were arrested. In other words, she was just so supportive, even though she was a Nisei and not one of these young radicals, that these activists, people like Al Sugiyama and his brother, would actually stick out their neck and actually do this. And she had so much respect for that, and the fact that they were arrested was something that really impacted her a lot.

So fast forward... oh, I forgot to mention that some of the other struggles that you'll read about in Seattle's history is the fact that when they placed the Kingdome, which is a forerunner of Lumen Field, right next to the International District, there began to be wholesale evictions of old Filipino, former farm workers and cannery workers as well as Chinese families. And it was in preparation to gentrify the place, and that got the Asian American community quite actively protesting, and I was a part of that, as well. So fast forward to 2020. Kind of having that knowledge, I was glad that I was able to contribute to helping to put together that series, which turned out to be, I think in many ways, impactful. It managed to attract, because the one advantage of Zoom was the fact that we were able to get people to attend as far south as California, the East Coast, we even had somebody from Japan who attended our sessions. Somehow, she had gotten wind of it. So anyway, it sort of came together. I'm glad I became active at JACL, just at that time, and I was glad that I had some background to make that contribution. So that's a story of how that happened, and we're continuing to find ways, or try to find ways to make that contribution, because we think that if you want to talk about JACL today, that's one of the things that I think we need to do is to make that ongoing contribution to civil rights.

<Begin Segment 9>

BS: Yeah, and then just asking about another one of the movements, what are your thoughts on the recent Stop Asian Hate movement and what's been going on in the Asian American community as well?

KK: Yeah. I think that, just in terms of what that's about, I know it's been well discussed. But my ethnic studies education clarifies to me that in some ways, first of all, we shouldn't be surprised. And second of all, it's part of a 150-year-old pattern that Asian Americans seem to be involved in, which is that there's a societal crisis of some kind. And if there's some kind of connection anywhere to Asia, Asian Americans end up playing the role of scapegoat. And that's whether 1880s where the Chinese were blamed for economic difficulties and riots happened, of course, it happened during World War II at the outset, when war hysteria was so prevalent and it was easy to escape to scapegoat Japanese Americans as security risks. Happened in the '80s when the Japanese economy became strong just at a time the U.S. economy was in recession, and we had anti-Asian sentiment leading to the murder of Vincent Chin. So the same thing happens today. You have, sort of, geopolitically a crisis, and a pandemic that has its connection to Asia, and you have politicians who then for a variety of reasons decide to make Asians again scapegoats. So, what I think about it is that again, I think that we have a responsibility to be able to make those connections for Americans to say that this is just another reason why we need to understand endemic racism in this country. It's another reason to make the connections between racism here against our community and racism against the Black community, Latinx community, immigrants, the Muslim community. It's just another message to say that our responsibility is that we really had to make those connections and educate people. Again, I was... thought I was fortunate to be able to make a contribution. Because I was still connected with K-12 education, I got calls from people in various districts, people that I had known, who said, "Hey, can you do something for us here?" So at last count, I think I made, I've made twelve presentations to school district audiences, mostly teachers and school leaders, about what is this anti-Asian racism all about, and what can we do about it? So, again, I'm really glad that I'm now, in working with JACL, have an opportunity to make that contribution as well.

<Begin Segment 10>

BS: Yeah, and then, just being conscientious of the time, I'm noticing that we're reaching our end, so this will be my last question. But, as co-president looking to the future, what direction would you like to see the Seattle JACL go in?

KK: I think I began sort of intimating it in that I think that our history, even though some people say, "Well, the incarceration was 80 years ago, and anti-Japanese racism even farther back than that," as an organization, JACL I think has really a responsibility, not just to the JA community, but to the American population in general. That was a textbook case of how you vilify a people, make them scapegoats, and justify racist treatment. And, as an example, that's one that I think we need to say, that this kind of happening is not something that we're yet past. It's happened, of course, to the Muslim community post 9/11, and I remember my mom making a... she was actually interviewed by the times, and I think if you Google, you'll find an article where she's featured in the Times talking about how the anti-Muslim hate is just the same as what we experienced prior to World War II. The same thing is true in terms of the treatment of migrants. So we have a responsibility to keep that sort of torch alight to say that as a country, we have the responsibility to continue to fight and continue to really beat back the racism that various communities still experience, and in our case experienced again if you look at the last two years. So, I'm hoping that JACL plays that role. And I'm also really gratified by the fact that you have Yonsei and Gosei members who have decided that that's important, and who've decided that they too have to figure out ways to actually keep that porch lit and really find ways for the JA community to make a contribution to really make this a more just society.

BS: Yeah, I totally agree with that. And then is there anything else that you wanted to share with us that we did not cover today?

KK: Oh, I'm sure there's quite a bit, but I think that for the purposes of our interview and hopefully doing some justice to providing some insights about my mom, hopefully we've done that tonight.

BS: No, yeah, I definitely think we have. You've done a great job talking about yourself and your mother. So, thank you, Kyle, for your time and sharing your stories with us. And thank you, Joy, as well.

JSG: Yes. Thank you so much. It was very inspirational, very informative. And I learned some things about you and Cherry as well, and your dad.

KK: Thank you.