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EK: And, I guess, the next individual who would want to go, you're more than welcome to step forward.

KY: I'll go. My name is Karen Yoshitomi. I'm executive director at the... currently executive director at the Japanese Cultural Community Center of Washington. But my relationship with Elaine goes back to my time with the Japanese American Citizens League, mostly at the district and national levels since I was on staff for the regional office. Elaine... gosh, I think Ann mentioned it earlier before when we were just chatting informally, about how we became involved with JACL, and I think it was through volunteering for national convention on a committee. And I'm pretty sure that Elaine was probably part of that group of folks that was putting out a call for volunteers to help with either assembling programs or getting advertisements or what have you. And so, I mean, I met Elaine before I even started working for JACL, but most of the time that we spent together was because of her involvement, either with Education Committee, or with, more specifically, teacher training workshops that we did throughout the district. But then also because she was leadership on the District Council, attending meetings and national, whatever, functions and so forth.

So we spent a lot of time not only doing JACL work, but then we were roommates oftentimes, and so I got to... you know, it's interesting. On the outside, Elaine is a very calm and pleasant -- always, always very pleasant individual, but she had a very complicated life. And, in the evening, as we're in the room, and we're both nervous about the workshop or whatever that we have to do the next day or preparation, we have personal conversations like girl time or whatever chats. And you really get to know what drives a person sometimes when they share maybe their personal experiences and the things that they've gone through. And for Elaine, she was all about... even through her difficulties, personal difficulties, both physical pain, emotional pain, that her life wasn't just her life, that she wanted to help the disenfranchised, the marginalized, the people who didn't have a voice.

And it wasn't the outward leadership of, "I'm going to be doing this, so follow me." It was, "This is how it's done." She was a great strategist, right? I mean, she was good friends with Sheldon Arakaki because she was the power behind his campaign to get elected for national office. She's the one who knew how to count where the votes were going to be and what the issues were going to be in terms of what was important to what district. So her leadership was exactly this mentorship, or this educational piece. She wasn't about developing policy or enforcement or going through and challenging things in court and that kind of thing. I think Elaine was all about education, and education being the pathway to sort of shedding light to clearing pathway to change. I think that that's what motivated her. And I think she's the only person that I know who had so many lifelong friends across the nation. I mean, when you're in a national organization, and you have like conventions that are held in all different locations, right, and in some obscure places, Elaine had a friend in every court, every city of a convention, because she had been involved, I think, for so long. But that's the kind of person that she was, is these lifelong friendships that no matter what came up, where it came up, she had connections or she had some way of making that bridge through her just very nice, compassionate way that she did things. I mean, there's a soft spoken person, but she was not a pushover, that's for sure [Laughs]. Anyways, I'm sorry. I'll turn it over.

EK: Oh, my goodness, no, thank you so much. Especially, I mean, I'm excited just from everything you said about Elaine and the questions that we're about to dive into soon. So, thank you.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2022 Seattle Chapter JACL. All Rights Reserved.