Densho Digital Repository - Arlene Oki Interview (Densho ID: ddr-sjacl-2-37-1)

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KK: Okay. And hopefully everyone is on. Great. I'd like to welcome everyone to our Legacy Grant interview of Arlene Oki. As everyone on the call knows, the Legacy Grant is aimed at helping to preserve our 100-year history of Seattle JACL. And what we've been doing are interviews of leaders who have played a role in JACL over the last couple of decades and capturing their perspectives. And in your case, Arlene, you've been president, but you've been on the board for many years and have seen many changes and many people. So that's why we thought your memories and your perspective would be pretty important to preserve. So, you kind of know how it goes. I think I'm going to give it to Elaine's capable hands. I'll just be listening. Once in a while I might have a question, but Elaine is going to maybe get us going. Okay. So, Elaine, it's all yours.

EK: Perfect. Arlene, it's nice to see you again, but brief introduction. Once again, I am the... I'm a UW intern for the JACL Legacy Fund Grant project. And like Kyle said, I'm just here to really be able to engage with leaders like you who have such grand accomplishments and have so many stories to tell about just the legacy of the JACL. And so just to go right into it, if you don't mind just telling us a bit about yourself, just a brief introduction.

AO: Okay. I grew up in Spokane, Washington, became a registered nurse after graduating from the Deaconess School of Nursing. And I went back to college, went to Whitworth University to receive a Bachelor of Science degree. I then married and we moved to Seattle when my husband got a job at Boeing. And I have three wonderful daughters, Francine, Corrine and Alison, and a son in law, Brian Ing, and seven grandchildren. And my oldest granddaughter is now married and she has two little ones. And unfortunately, she doesn't live in Seattle, so I only see them... she just left after a visit here for two weeks. I work at... I was a stay at home mom for a long time and then I became involved with school politics because I was very concerned about the education that my children were receiving in Seattle Public Schools. So, I joined the desegregation committee, feeling that an integrated classroom would be better for them. And following that, I was asked to work on a campaign for Charles Royer, who decided to run for mayor. He won and I was asked to be an assistant in his office. So I worked there for almost six years, and then was transferred to the Human Services Department where I worked as a planner. I did a lot of work with the Southeast Asian refugees and helped establish the Veterans Consortium when we became concerned that so many veterans were showing up in jail and at the shelters, homeless shelters.

I joined JACL when I was asked, when I was asked to take minutes for their meeting. And it was a period when this discussions about redress were first starting. And that first meeting was very unsettling because everyone was yelling at each other and it was very difficult to take meeting notes. The members of the board at that time were deeply committed to redress, but there were divisions within the community about whether to support it. And what type of redress reparations would be given to our community, to those who were incarcerated in the camps. So I joined JACL and have been involved for many years. I am mainly a cheerleader, and a supporter of people in my organization. We've had some fantastic leaders, and they were really good mentors to me. And they were mentors, but they were also good friends. In those early days, we did a lot of social activities, we had parties. Of course, we had our annual banquet. And we would hang out at the Bush Garden after the meetings, and some would participate in the karaoke sessions. So, it was not only a commitment to work for social justice, but also a way to get a sense of community, a feeling of belonging, feeling like I belong to a group. And my sense of identity was greatly strengthened as a result.

So, as I said before, I'm mainly a supporter, and among the significant things that I supported were resolutions at the national convention. And one of the resolutions, which offered recognition to the wartime draft resisters, was very controversial, and we were able to pass that resolution at the national convention. However, it resulted in tensions between the Seattle JACL and the Nisei Veterans Committee, and that tension was there for quite a long time. I was so happy when Norman Mineta presented the Seattle chapter with the American flag that was flown over the capitol when the Civil Liberties Act was signed into law by President Reagan in 1988. When JACL moved out of its office, we took down that frame. Actually, Bill Tashima and Tom Kometani were the two who thought of the idea. And they dismantled the frame's flag and gave it to the Nisei Veterans Committee, and it still stands on a wall in the Nisei Veterans Committee clubhouse. And that kind of eased the tensions and we started attending their banquets, their luncheons, and meeting at their office.