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AO: Our interest in Japanese and American, in cultural activities involved our support for the Seattle Cherry Blossom and Japanese Cultural Festival. And one of the things that we did when I was president was to get involved with organizing a group to revive our earlier efforts to establish a Japanese cultural and community center. So, Kip Tokuda and Ron Mamiya were the chairs, co-chairs of that committee, and I provided the support by doing the minutes, and setting the agendas, and creating a hospitable meeting space for the committee members. At the time, Kip Tokuda was a state representative, and he was able to obtain a million dollars from the state legislature to help restore, renovate the Japanese language school. And it soon became a meeting place for many groups as well as a place where people could learn the Japanese language. And they had a judo class and they had taiko. And so today, it's a very important part of that community. We supported the Civil Liberties Act, which then state representative Kip Tokuda proposed, and it passed and today it provides funding for many educational projects about the World War II experience of Japanese Americans. We supported actions by the state such as Hands Off Washington to restore, to provide equal rights to the LGBTQ community, and we supported same sex marriage. And that was a little controversial, but we supported that bill. And we also passed a resolution at the national convention to support the LGBTQ community. We were involved with the Seattle School District, which I was very happy about, when we appointed Sam Shoji to serve on the Seattle district wide committee for desegregation. And fortunately, the school district did approve the Seattle plan to start desegregating the public schools.

As we moved along, in JACL, we noticed that we were mainly older people and we really needed to have some young members. So we became actively involved in recruiting young people into the organization so that we could sustain the organization. And as a result, we had as new members some exceptionally competent, and talented, and energetic young people. It was great to see fresh faces, fresh ideas, and new energy. And so we're now in the process of having more young people on the board. And some of them have gone on to, some of them have gone on to become leaders in state government, city government. And most recently, one of our members, Toshio Hasegawa, won election to the Seattle Port Commission. So we were very happy that she won.

I became a political junkie early in my life as a young mother watching television a lot. I was inspired by Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, was devastated when they were assassinated. But their message stayed with me. And they talked a lot about social equity, racial justice. And as a result, I became involved in many campaigns, political campaigns, for those who are running for the state legislature, governor, city council, and mayor. I also worked on several political campaigns for men who were running for the presidency. So I've continued to be a political junkie. I follow the news very closely. And many of the younger members are also very interested in politics, which is very encouraging. And I see many potential city council members and state legislators among that group. They organized events such as seminars for hapa issues, mixed race issues, seminars on Black Lives Matter. And one of our members, Sarah Baker, organized a large seminar for parents of gay and lesbian children that was held at North Seattle Community College. And it was great to see parents there because there was an effort that... there was a feeling that many parents needed to know more about gay, lesbian, their gay and lesbian children, and to support them. And Sarah is just a great leader and she just graduated from Seattle U's master, to receive a master's degree, and I see great things for her. We have Gabrielle Nomura Gainor, who worked for the Seattle Opera, and did a lot of work to inspire them or to encourage them to work on racist issues involving Madame Butterfly, Miss Saigon, and so forth. And so, she was really a change maker.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2022 Seattle Chapter JACL. All Rights Reserved.