Doi, Lisa (12/13/2022)

Mary Doi: Okay. Well, thank you for signing the release form. Now we'll begin the interview process. Today is December 13th, 2022. This oral history is being recorded at the JACL Chicago office, located at 5415 North Clark Street in Chicago. The interviewer is Mary Doi, the interviewee is Lisa Doi, her daughter. This interview is being recorded by the JASC Legacy Center in order to document the Japanese American Redress Movement in Chicago and the Midwest. This interview will differ from a normal conversation in that I won't use verbal cues and responses. Instead, I'll use facial expressions to communicate my interest in what you're saying. It makes for a cleaner transcript. You can decline to answer any question without giving a reason. You can take breaks whenever you need them, and you can end the interview at any point. So is that all clear what 00:01:00your rights are? Okay. Please make sure your phone is silenced, and let's begin. Why don't you state your name and just give me a brief bio about what you do?

Lisa Doi: Sure. My name is Lisa Doi, and I'm the president of the Chicago Chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League. I also am one of the staff organizers at Tsuru for Solidarity and am on the curatorial team at the Japanese American National Museum and I'm also a doctoral candidate in American Studies at Indiana University. And my research there looks at Japanese American pilgrimages and memorial practices more broadly.

Mary Doi: Yeah, so thank you, Lisa. I know that you wear many hats and have a broad exposure to topics in Japanese American history, which is great. This project focuses on the Japanese American redress movement from roughly the 00:02:00seventies to the 1990s, and its relevance to contemporary concerns. Please give a short background, short overview of the JA, Japanese American redress movement, including its beginning, the multiple strategies and how it's relevant to today.

Lisa Doi: Sure. I would say that, I think that, I would place the start of the redress movement into a broader pattern of changes around Japanese American understandings of the wartime incarceration. So I think that there were a few publications that came out right after the end of the war within the Japanese American community, outside the community. That was Citizen 13660, No-No Boy, Americans Betrayed. But then there was about a 20-year silence where there wasn't a whole lot of new research or writing about the incarceration broadly. 00:03:00And then I think a bunch of things happened in the mid to late sixties, one of which was the very early stages of the redress movement. So I would say there was the first pilgrimage to Manzanar in 1969. There were the first Day of Remembrance programs in 1970 and '71, and then there were also new books, so Years of Infamy by Michi Weglyn, that came out around that time that just tried to sort of show the way the different Japanese American individuals, organizations, collectives were coming back to understand this history. I think one of the ways that some people on early pilgrimages talked about them, it was largely Sansei who were not incarcerated, who were leading the pilgrimage efforts. And they might say they were looking for camp. And I think that's both 00:04:00literal, actually, at that point, these sites were not national historic markers. So it literally meant going into the desert to figure out where Manzanar was, but also looking for camp in this more metaphorical way, of trying to understand what had happened to their parents and trying to make meaning of that. And so I think that in that milieu, the redress movement was one of those things that started to emerge. And I would place its origins with efforts from some people within the Japanese American Citizens League to start a national campaign for redress. So I think it was first introduced at the 1970 JACL Convention as a resolution. And I'm totally blanking on the name of the guy who introduced it, but he ended up passing away pretty within a decade, he didn't make it to the commission hearings, but his sister testified in Chicago.

Mary Doi: Is that Edison Uno?

Lisa Doi: Yes, Edison Uno. So Edison Uno was really the early champion within 00:05:00the Japanese American Citizens League around this. And then from that first resolution in 1970, JACL nationally conducted a survey of members to try to understand where the community was on the issue. But then I think it was also a moment where... We were in a unique moment where there were four Japanese Americans in Congress, well five, including S.I. Hayakawa, who was a Japanese Canadian. There were four helpful Japanese Americans in Congress who could think through a legislative strategy for federal redress. And they pushed forward this commission process. And I'll actually also say that I think one of the things that was important that happened before 1981, was a more state and local level redress efforts. So there was first apologies at the state and city level on the West Coast. So the City of Los Angeles apologized for firing all Japanese 00:06:00American workers at the start of the war, or state level apology, or state level actions, that I think helped to set the groundwork for this bigger federal effort. And then I think the sort of traditional way you might frame it is that there were three major efforts within the Japanese American community. So JACL took a legislative strategy, NCJAR, which was based out of Chicago, because William Hohri was here, who took a more judicial strategy of a lawsuit.

Mary Doi: What is NCJAR? Is it the National Committee on Japanese American Redress? Is that NCJAR?

Lisa Doi: Yes. Thanks. And so they took a strategy of filing a lawsuit, and then the third group was really a California based group, Nikkei for Civil... Well, 00:07:00that's what they're now, NCRR. At the time-

Mary Doi: I believe that was the National Coalition of Redress and Reparations.

Lisa Doi: Redress and Reparations.

Mary Doi: Yeah.

Lisa Doi: Yeah. Now they're Nikkei for Civil Rights and Redress. I think one of the things that, from a Midwestern perspective, I've always been curious. I think NCRR talks about themselves as the most grassroots organization, and I've been curious about what that means. And I had a really interesting conversation with Miya Iwatake recently about it, and she was involved in NCRR in the eighties, and their legislative visits. So both NCRR and JACL coordinated legislative visits with members of Congress. And I think that NCRR was very grassroots within a specific geography. And so I think that it's interesting to 00:08:00hear her frame their grassroots efforts within a very California-based legislative approach, when I think JACL would say that their efforts were really to try to reach as many... Their strength was that they had Japanese American Citizens League chapters and members all across the country. And while NCRR really mobilized the grassroots of the community in California, JACL was able to find one person who lived in a particular congressional district in Florida who could get a meeting with their congressman, who could get that one vote, and who could flip that person. So it wasn't as maybe broad based, but it was much more strategic, I think, in the picking of very specific places where there is not a large Japanese American community. I think this is something that JACL still says today, is how many members of Congress represent the 15 states of the 00:09:00Midwest District Council versus how many members of Congress represent California. We've got 30 senators in those 15 states. You've got two senators for the state of California. And so what does it mean legislatively when you're trying to pass a bill to have just a few people, but they're spread out, and they can really reach a wide number of members of Congress? So maybe I've digressed from your original question, but...

Mary Doi: No, I think that's fine. Can you tell me how the JACL decided to go the legislative route? You mentioned the five people in Congress. Was there any person that had this aha moment, that if we do it X way, this is going to happen, if we do it Y way, this is going to happen?

Lisa Doi: Yeah, I think that's a great question. I was not alive during the redress movement, so I don't know. But from reading some of the writings of Japanese American Citizens League leaders, I think the directive for the 00:10:00commission study route really came from the members of Congress, and maybe particularly Senator Inouye. And I don't think there was necessarily community support initially because I think members of the Japanese American community largely felt that they knew what happened to them. And I think there was an effort to convince Japanese Americans, and I think this happened in Chicago really strategically, that it was part of this process was also to educate the public. And so there was, I think, a very coordinated effort in Chicago and in Los Angeles, which are just the two that I am aware of, to really reach out to media. And so as the commission hearings were happening, to make sure they were being covered in the press, and to make sure that the nightly news in Chicago was running stories on the redress hearings that were happening as they were happening. We have a clipping from the Chicago Sun-Times in an article that came 00:11:00out the same week of the hearings, talking about the hearings. So I think there was this really strategic media outreach strategy as well.

Mary Doi: I've heard that some of the early efforts were to go directly for individual payments. How does that fit into the narrative of the redress movement?

Lisa Doi: Yeah, well, I think the commission strategy put the commission as the first step but not the last step. And so then the commission would come forward with a recommendation. I think there was some strategic thought that the commission would be seen as this more neutral or unbiased assembly of people who could make a recommendation. I think the individual payments question, I think, was always one that was controversial, not in a necessarily negative way, but just that there was a wide diversity of feeling. There were people who felt that money was the only thing, it wouldn't be serious. It wouldn't be a serious 00:12:00apology without money behind it. And there were other people who I think felt that no amount of money could compensate them for what they lost. And so it was demeaning or belittling of their experience to have to put a dollar amount to it. And then I think there were people in between, or people who just didn't have strong opinions. So I think there were a lot of perspectives on the monetary payments.

Mary Doi: You mentioned that the JACL approach was a legislative approach. Why do you think a legislative approach was taken, as opposed to direct appropriation of an amount of money?

Lisa Doi: I think that there was some consensus that an apology was essential. And so I think having both Congress and the president, through a bill, acknowledge that this deserved federal recognition. I think that is, to me, the overall strategy of both JACL and NCRR, of getting a legislative apology, is to 00:13:00say that these multiple branches of government have acknowledged the wrong that was done.

Mary Doi: And you also mentioned Senator Inouye. Did he play an especially important role in going the commission route? Did he bring any kind of knowledge to the table, really, are you forcefully for that approach?

Lisa Doi: Yeah, I think that's beyond my knowledge, but I do think in analyses, particularly Mitch Maki's sort of political science retrospective analysis of how this happened, he points to the fact that there were these four members of Congress who were really influential in speaking to their experiences, because two of them were incarcerated themselves. And I think also the significance of having veterans be really behind it, both a veteran like Senator Inouye, but 00:14:00also every day Japanese American veterans who could talk to members of Congress, many of whom, at that time, were also World War II veterans, was really influential. So I don't know, I don't think I can speak much to if Senator Inouye had particular influence, but I think the four, two senators and two congressmen were very significant.

Mary Doi: Well, what I've read is that one thing that Senator Inouye brought to the table was a really strong sense of how something becomes a bill and then how the bill becomes the law. And it seems like, to me, that was part of the strategy, the commission strategy that Dan Inouye lays out. And so it may have taken longer than appropriations, direct appropriations, but I think ultimately it was a much surer bet because he did say the general public has to know about 00:15:00this. It's our community secret. But why would a senator advocate for redress and reparations for Japanese Americans without knowing what he can tell his or her constituents? Does that sound about right to you?

Lisa Doi: Sure.

Mary Doi: Okay.

Lisa Doi: Sorry, I don't really know much more about Senator Inouye, but that seems very reasonable.

Mary Doi: Moving to today. How has the Japanese American Redress Movement served as a model for other communities fighting for redress and reparations? And then, why do you think it's important for Japanese Americans to support current reparations movements in other communities?

Lisa Doi: Yeah, I think that one of the things that's hard, in terms of the question of a model, is that I think it's a very particular set of circumstances 00:16:00that shaped the success of the Japanese American redress movement. And I think there are large ways in which those successes are not replicable. So I mentioned having these four Congress people. I also think that it was a time in which Japanese Americans who were incarcerated were still alive and who could still talk about their own experiences. But I would also say, I think one of the pieces, one of the things I've heard about this legislation is, for example, in terms of the individual payments, you had to be alive when the bill was signed to be eligible for payment. And I think one of the pieces that's important about that is it preempted the possibility of a legislative precedent for communities where there are older histories of racial violence, where there are not living people who could still directly petition for individual compensation in the same 00:17:00way. So I think when you think about contemporary movements, like around H.R. 40, which is a piece of legislation that's been introduced every year since 1988 for a similar commission study around the legacy of slavery in the United States. One of the things that H.R. 442 did is preempt the possibility of being used to support that work because there are not people who were enslaved who are still alive today. So I think that there are many things to learn, but I think that there are also ways in which the Japanese American experience is an imperfect model. And I think what's more important is that Japanese Americans maybe think in the spirit of solidarity or approach humbly the idea that there 00:18:00is something to be learned from Japanese American history for others. I think there's much to be learned for ourselves, but I'm cautious of the idea that it serves as a model for other communities. In terms of why, why should Japanese Americans support other communities efforts at reparations? I think there, to me, that becomes this bigger question of what is the legacy of the World War II incarceration experience more broadly? And how do we come to understand that legacy, especially 75 years later? And in a way that can encompass redress as part of this longer history. And there, I think to me, that's a legacy of repair, and a legacy that asks both... It may ask, how does the federal government, what does the role of the federal government play in a process of repair? But more importantly, it considers how do communities like the Japanese 00:19:00American community begin an internal process of repair and an internal process of healing? And I think that that's a long process. We're sitting here 75 years later. We know it's a long process. And that to me is sort of why. Why would we want to be part of this similar process for other communities?

Mary Doi: You mentioned that you're also a community organizer with Tsuru for Solidarity. Can you tell me whether Tsuru for Solidarity is working on reparations fronts for other groups, and what else it's done to demonstrate solidarity?

Lisa Doi: Yeah, so Tsuru for Solidarity was started in 2019, largely as an organization that was opposed to immigration detention facilities and still is. And so I think as Tsuru has grown over the years, we've had three primary focuses around child and family detention, broader issues of detention, 00:20:00incarceration and policing, and then redress and reparations. And I think one of the strategies, in terms of how do we approach each of these three lines of work, is around this question of healing. And so I think that something like protest, Tsuru often does direct actions at detention sites. We would say protest itself is an act of healing. And so what does it mean? What does solidarity mean to us? It means that we're not doing this just because we oppose this detention site. That is one of the reasons, but also because we know that this kind of act of protest is also an act of intra-community healing and inter-community healing. So it helps to heal intergenerational trauma within the Japanese American community, and it helps to bring communities of color together within the U.S. context to work collaboratively towards a really just future. 00:21:00Particular to work around redress, Tsuru, probably since 2021, has been working on a range of issues around reparations, especially through support of H.R. 40, but also in other ways. So initially we were asked to solicit letters of support from the Japanese American community, largely from staff at the ACLU, for H.R. 40, as it moved to a House Judiciary Committee hearing in the summer of 2021. So I mentioned earlier that H.R. 40 has been introduced every year since 1989. In 2021, it made it farther in the house than ever before. So it made it to a committee hearing, which is the first or second step, I guess, in the legislative process. And we were able to solicit over 300 letters of support for H.R. 40. And these testimonies came from Japanese Americans all across the 00:22:00country, and were really moving expressions of support for this piece of legislation, and really moving testimonies to the significance of the redress movement on individual Japanese Americans. And I think in this age of internet petitions, 300 names maybe doesn't sound like a lot, but this wasn't just a sign-on letter, this was something where people really had to sit down and were asked to share personally what this piece of legislation meant to them. And we went for that strategy because we wanted people to be able -- much like the commission itself, the commission hearings themselves, which brought hundreds of Japanese American testimony from all across the country, we wanted to give people the opportunity to say in their own words the significance of this legislation and why they support it. So that was in 2021. In 2022, earlier this year, we started a new coalition called the National Nikkei Reparations 00:23:00Coalition, which tries to bring together a range of Japanese American communities in collective support for Black-led movements for reparations. So we've done a series of educational programming. We actually have one tonight. So that's been our effort. We're also about to send a letter to the White House. So at this exact moment in terms of a legislative strategy around H.R. 40. In the legislative calendar, a bill has two years or a full session of Congress, which is a two-year session, to move from a committee hearing to a full house vote. So the time for H.R. 40 to move out of committee and to a full vote on the floor is about to come up. It's going to come up at the end of the year. And so we don't think it's going to happen. And even if it did pass the house, it doesn't seem, 00:24:00at this moment, that it's going to pass the Senate. So there's likely not going to be legislative movement on H.R. 40 probably in the foreseeable future, but there is still an option to have, instead of a congressional committee, a presidential committee. So there is the option for an executive order that could advance this. And so we are, as the National Nikkei Reparations Coalition, going to send a letter to President Biden with the support of dozens of Japanese American organizations to say that we support this shift in strategy. Well, that's not what the letter's going to say. The letter's going to say that we urge President Biden to pass this executive order, to sign this executive order, because it's something we think he should do, and it's something that's very much within his executive power to do. So that's the state of H.R. 40 specifically at the moment.

Mary Doi: I have two questions prompted by what you said. You used the term intergenerational trauma. Can you explain that a little more?

Lisa Doi: Sure. Intergenerational trauma, I think, was initially sort of the theorized by psychologists who study the impact of the Holocaust on second, third, fourth generation children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren of survivors. So people who did not experience the traumatic event themselves, but who are the children of those who survived. And it has expanded as a psychological theory beyond just that community of Holocaust survivors into a more broadly understood concept to speak to that experience, the idea that the traumatic consequences can continue beyond just the generation of people who were alive during the time. So in the Japanese American community, I think that 00:26:00the scholars who have studied this, who have used that language, I think are Donna Nagata at the University of Michigan, and Satsuki Ina, who's one of the co-founders of Tsuru for Solidarity. So for example, Donna Nagata has done a multi-generational study of intergenerational trauma. So she did a Sansei study looking at the experiences among Sansei and she has just finished a study looking at the experiences of Yonsei, or fourth generation Japanese Americans to understand how they understand their experiences of intergenerational trauma.

Mary Doi: My second question is, you mentioned that in some ways the letter writing was a kind of a hearing, and when we've talked to people about attending the commission hearings, they can talk about what it felt like to actually be in the room. So is that something that happened to you as you collected the 00:27:00letters? And what did you feel?

Lisa Doi: Yeah, I guess one of the academic questions I think about often is this question of interiority, that there are very few forms or historical records that ask you to divulge how you feel about something. Often things are very factual. The U.S. government really likes to tabulate data. So when you look at the archival record of Japanese American incarceration history, you have a lot of, there's a lot of statistical analysis. I recently came across this report that enumerates all kinds of things. The purpose of the report was to account for every single person who entered and every single person who exited a War Relocation Authority camp, and the means of entry and exit. But it also included all kinds of weird statistics. But that doesn't capture how people 00:28:00felt. And so I think in listening to, I've listened to the commission hearings in Chicago, and in listening to those testimonies, yes, a lot of them are very factual, this happened, then this happened, then this happened. But I think more than many places, it also includes either direct statements, like, "This is how I felt about that," or such evocative statements, that you get a sense of feeling. And so I think similarly with the letters for H.R. 40, there was, again, a lot of people who said, this happened, then this happened, then this happened, but also the chance for people to say, and this is how it feels at this distance, at this temporal remove, that I think is not maybe how you generally get to encounter history. And I think that that's one of the things that's really powerful about testimony. And I think that's one of the things 00:29:00that's really powerful about the commission process, or that I've heard is really powerful about the commission process, is it gave everyday people the chance to express their feelings. And I think that whether that's through a study commission, through H.R. 40, or just something that people do for each other, I think that kind of story sharing or that kind of listening or that kind of testimonial practice is something that I think was really essential to the Japanese American community, that I think can happen without the federal government being the facilitator, when you think about Black-led movements for reparations today,

Mary Doi: You brought up this, the federal government. Was the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 the repair that we needed?

Lisa Doi: I think the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 was really essential in the 00:30:00process, but it was not the ending of the process. So I think when I talk about the Redress Movement, I am very careful not to say it ended, the movement did not end in 1988. The Civil Liberties Act was passed then, but there was so much more that continued to happen, but I think it's very hard to understand the counterfactual in history, what would have happened if that bill did not pass? But I think regardless, there has been a lot of healing work that has happened at a community level subsequently. So I think maybe the most tangible example, and this is fairly tied to the bill, was, I was talking to, a few years ago, someone who worked at J-Sei, which is a Japanese American community center in the Bay Area that mostly works with older adults. And that's also what they did in the late eighties and early nineties. And so as people got their checks in 00:31:00the mail, it provoked this emotional response that maybe was unanticipated. And so J-Sei, and I think I've heard similar things at Heiwa Terrace here in Chicago, started to have sort of group therapy sessions, essentially, to help Issei and older Nisei who were receiving these checks, process the emotional response they were having to these checks. And so I think that that's just an example of what it meant beyond just the federal response. That was triggered by the federal response, but it then provoked this community-based response. And I think especially the more years after 1988 we get, the more that the response has become about what we as a community can do for each other, for ourselves. Although I do think it's important to, I see the JACS grant, the Japanese 00:32:00American Confinement Sites grant, which this oral history is being funded through, as a very direct legacy of the redress movement and legislation. So it started out as the Civil Liberties Public Education trust fund, but once that appropriation expired, Japanese Americans have been able to lobby for continued appropriations, moved to the National Park Service and became a pool of grant money to do projects like this. And I think that that's really also an essential way of understanding the legacy of the Redress Movement.

Mary Doi: So maybe going back to how you felt. Were there, in two areas, any testimony at the Chicago hearings that stand out for you? And equally, when you read the letters, are there things that stood out?

Lisa Doi: Yeah, I love this one testimony from the Chicago hearings, from Shizu 00:33:00Sue Lofton, where she has so many lines that I think are just deeply evocative of how she was feeling. So early on in her testimony, she describes herself and her husband, and also I'll say, she and her husband got divorced, the husband she was married to when she was incarcerated, they got divorced after coming to Chicago. And she talks about how it was really the emotional burden of their experience. They couldn't work through that together, and that really led to their divorce. But she describes them pre-war as simple, non-political Nisei who dreamed American dreams then, and this idea of what it meant to her to dream American dreams then and to put this temporal break between who she is now and who she was then. And then I think the second thing she talks at length about her experience through the eyes of her daughter, who was about two years old at 00:34:00the time, they were removed from their home. She sets up this whole story about her daughter and how concerned she was that her daughter would be taken away and what would happen to her daughter and wanting her daughter, whoever took her daughter to treat her kindly. And so she talked about making sure she was potty-trained and making sure she could spend time alone so that she wouldn't be a burden to whoever took her. And then she talks about how they prepared for this journey by train from L.A. to Manzanar, and they get to Manzanar. She says on the train ride, she's been able to keep her daughter happy and engaged and playing games through the whole train ride. But by the time they got to Manzanar, it was late and her daughter was tired, and her daughter looked at the barracks where they were going to sleep and said, "Let's go home now, Mommy." 00:35:00And it was just such this... I could so empathize with her and her emotional experience, and what it means to center it through this daughter and her daughter's experience. So I think that's definitely the testimony that stands out the most to me in Chicago. I think in terms of the hearing the testimonies from last year, I think your testimony stands out where you write about your mom, who's my grandmother, and how she was not somebody who testified during the 1981 commission hearings, but who was someone who you always felt was very angry. I think you used the phrase, "Pissed as hell," about what had happened to her, and how this anger was not necessarily something that is publicly acknowledged often within the Japanese American community, but that you, I 00:36:00think, wanted to express that anger on her behalf in some kind of recognizable way. And I think, again, in this direct articulation of an emotional response to say, "My mom was really angry about what happened to her," and to be able to put that forward as legitimate emotional response. To me, I think that's what I hope testimony can do in terms of repair and the potential for repair.

Mary Doi: Can you expand a little bit about what repair looks like, and how it's being managed in our community now?

Lisa Doi: Yeah, that's a great question, in terms of what does repair look like in our community. And I'm not sure that I can fully answer it, but I think, for 00:37:00example, one thing that comes up often in Tsuru for Solidarity is this question of how do we have challenging conversations with each other? And in particular within Tsuru, sometimes it's around maybe different generational approaches to ideas or to topics or to questions, and how do we have hard conversations in a way that centers staying in community with each other? And an example of this that I think is both at a Tsuru level, but then also I've seen happen locally, is this question around abolition, which is I think a very hot button issue today. But I think it ultimately asks about questions of safety, and how do we understand what safety means in a way that doesn't rely on policing and prisons in a way that is an assumed common sense response. And so what does it mean to 00:38:00have a challenging conversation around abolition? I think that there are some folks in Chicago, especially JJ Ueunten and Anne Watanabe, who've really pushed forward that conversation, where, I guess just to get to of local example. A few years ago there was an elderly Japanese American woman in Chicago named Grace Watanabe who had had money taken from her by staff members at her nursing home, and she didn't have any family, and she also had dementia. And so there were a lot of questions within the Japanese American community about what we could do to support her. And I think a lot of people's initial response was really to focus on prosecuting the woman who took the money. And I think Anne and JJ, and some other folks, really facilitated a small conversation of -- intergenerational in the sense that it was a group of Yonsei women or women and 00:39:00non-binary people -- and a group of Sansei women who were having this small dinner conversation around, is this something that as a community we could talk about in terms of other responses to Grace Watanabe's situation? Other responses, meaning responses that don't rely on prosecuting the woman who took the money. And I think it was it not necessarily successful, it was successful that people were willing to do it, but it wasn't necessarily successful in the sense that I don't think we... there was not consensus, we were not able to come to consensus. But I think even just the idea that you would be willing to have that conversation, to me, is an example of a challenging conversation, because I think that there's a lot of people who would've been afraid, myself included, to 00:40:00raise that question to older folks in the community because I would have been either embarrassed of what might happen or I think I would've been worried that I would have been seen as a disappointment to older folks, that somehow I wasn't doing what I was supposed to do. I was causing too much of a ruckus that I wasn't behaving the right way. And so I think that ultimately, this is a long-winded story, but I think one of the things that I've come to understand is really significant in terms of repair, is the idea that in spite of differences, or in the face of these challenging conversations, what we are ultimately agreeing to is ultimately agreeing to stay together in community. That to me is where repair can happen, is that when you no longer are afraid that starting 00:41:00those challenging conversations means losing people you love. And that, to me, is what I think is reparative and transformational. And I think for so many Japanese Americans of my generation, again, because it's the thing that I best understand, there is this really, often an alienation from Japanese American identity. And again, tying that to my academic work on Japanese American resettlement. So how Japanese Americans came to Chicago, and not just Chicago, but cities across the country, including on the West Coast. There was this very concerted effort of forced assimilation. And so, to me, to say that what we're trying to do is stay in community with each other is really unlearning the consequences of forced assimilation. And that's, again, why I think it something that may seem very trivial in terms of having this dinner conversation about 00:42:00Grace Watanabe's case, why I can see that as a reparative conversation, because it was trying to repair this idea that we need to keep our heads down and not rock the boat and just go along with what we're supposed to do. And that we can have hard conversations in community, and that we can continue to prioritize, continuing to keep each other within that community. I think that it flies in the face of a lot of unsaid tendencies within the Japanese American community.

Mary Doi: So it seems clear that for you, repair is an ongoing process. To me in a way, it's like grief, that it's an ongoing process that's going to rear its ugly head when you maybe least expect it. And it's not a straight line process, 00:43:00straight line to being no longer in grief. What are some of your final thoughts from this conversation?

Lisa Doi: Yeah, I think one of the things, one of the ideas that I'm kicking around in my academic work is this idea of "irei" which I think to me comes from someone who studies Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Lisa Yoneyama. But it's an idea... So it means "soul consoling." But I think it's an idea that I see resonances of within Japanese American incarceration because "ireito" is what Issei clergy men named the monuments at Manzanar and Rohwer and it's like "soul consoling tower." So there's this idea of these monuments that care for the souls of the dead. And so I think about remembrance as a practice of caring for the souls of the dead. 00:44:00So when I think about what is the legacy of Japanese American incarceration history or the Redress Movement, I'm also thinking about how do we care for the souls of those who died, who were parts of these movements. And I think taking that memory into something actionable within our community or across communities, to me, is that soul consoling work, the work of healing, the work of repair. And then I think also about, there's a professor at USC who's also a Buddhist minister, named Duncan Williams, who often talks about healing America's racial karma. And this idea that Japanese American incarceration history fits into this much broader history of racial violence, of incarceration 00:45:00within the United States. And so what does it mean to see that bigger history of racial violence, and to place Japanese American incarceration history into this broader conversation, and to be part of that much bigger project of racial repair and racial healing? I think it requires having a good intra-community foundation. But the ultimate form is in this inter-community process. So I think those are some things that I think about in my academic and organizer capacities.

Katherine Nagasawa: Mary, do you mind if I just chime in real quick?

Mary Doi: Right.

Katherine Nagasawa: I just wanted to respond to some of those ideas, Lisa, because it reminds me of an interview I did with Kathy Biala yesterday. She used to be Kathy Nakamoto, and she helped prepare witnesses. She was the psychiatric nurse that helped with the practice workshops, helping with the drafting of the 00:46:00testimonies and whatnot. And there's a couple things that you mentioned that remind me of what she was saying. So when you were talking about, to stay in community with each other is really unlearning the consequences of forced assimilation. And the idea that we're not going to just stay silent or keep our heads down, we're building that resiliency or ability to have these challenging conversations as a community. She also mentioned that as how she sees repair, that it's not like the healing ever happens fully, but what repair means to her is strengthening the Japanese American voice to be able to speak in the future. So an exercise of voice and speaking. And then to your point about the healing America's racial karma and seeing incarceration within a broader history of racial violence, it was interesting because she was part of the movement then, 00:47:00but didn't totally see it as part of a broader injustice. And she was like, I think that myself and others in the movement maybe saw it as an injustice that we needed to rectify, but not connecting the dots. And now in her work today, she is seeing it in a broader sense or understanding racial injustice and racism and how our story fits into it. So anyways, just wanted to put that out there and see if you had responses to her. I also had a couple other questions about Kansha as a legacy of redress, Mary, I don't know if you wanted to touch on that as well. Because that's something we've been talking about, the two of us.

Mary Doi: So was talking to Kat last night about Kansha. Can you explain what it is, where it started, what it does?

Lisa Doi: Yeah, sorry. Maybe before I talk about Kansha if I could just quickly 00:48:00just. Oh, I think on what Kat had mentioned, I think one of the things about NCRR is that I think NCRR... My knowledge is coming from talking to people who were involved in NCRR afterwards. So in their description of themselves, I think one of the things that they would say is the NCRR, more than other Japanese American organizations, did try to make this bigger picture case, and that that's why they talked about redress and reparations. And so I think that it totally makes sense, to me it makes sense that you first have to do the internal work, or the internal to the community work, before you're then able to do the external work, to be able to situate it into something else. I think about my own understanding of Japanese American incarceration history as being deeply 00:49:00rooted in the work of previous generations, that I am not having to come to this for the first time. I'm able to more quickly metabolize what other people are saying. I think one way I might write about that is in this idea of "engi," the idea of I am the product of all that has come before me, and so I can more quickly metabolize an understanding because of all the work that has been done before that. So the Kansha project is a project of the-

Katherine Nagasawa: Lisa, do you mind if I just ask a follow-up really quickly? I was just curious, for you personally, did you always [inaudible] as connected to other racial justice issues? And if not, when did that all start to crystallize for you? Was there an experience or something you read or I guess when did you start connecting those dots?

Lisa Doi: Yeah, I think I did see Japanese American... In most of my cognizant lifetime, I do think I saw it as related to other issues because I think one of the first strong memories on my own, not on my own terms, it was still very much mediated by my parents. But I remember after 9/11 going to a protest, a solidarity protest. So I was in fifth grade at 9/11. I just think I was at an age where I could have some of my own understanding. Obviously, it was definitely a geopolitical issue that was way above my head in a lot of ways. But I think because that was such an early part of my understanding of Japanese American history, it did put it in conversation with other communities in a very direct way through more of my life. That I think if I had been 10 years older and maybe had my first... This is not 10 years prior to that. If I had been 10 00:51:00years older and one of my first moments have been getting people getting redress checks, what would that have done differently? If my first memories were from 1991 instead of 2001, how would that have differently shaped my understanding? But I think because a lot of my understanding of Japanese American history was in the aftermath of 9/11, I think there was this much more public narrative within the community about solidarity work.

Katherine Nagasawa: Was the protest organized by the JA community, or was it you as the JA and your family showed up to a broader protest?

Lisa Doi: My recollection of it, and again, I was a fifth grader, was that it wasn't necessarily organized by the Japanese American community, but there were Japanese American speakers, and I think maybe Bill Yoshino spoke and I think Sam Ozaki spoke. Bill Yoshino was a staff person with JACL National at the time and 00:52:00Sam Ozaki was a board member of the Chicago JACL chapter who also was incarcerated. So I don't think it was necessarily organized by Japanese Americans, but we were not the only Japanese Americans there. And it was a community effort at acknowledging a sort of similarity, not just my family's acknowledgement. Those are the things I remember.

Katherine Nagasawa: Gotcha. And then moving into the Kansha, I think what we're interested in is thinking about Kansha as one of the legacies of redress, and how it has activated Yonsei in the Midwest who otherwise might be dealing with the consequences of forced assimilation, and feel very disconnected from 00:53:00identity or community. So when you're talking about what Kansha is, could you talk about it in terms of a legacy of redress and the work that was done then?

Lisa Doi: Sure. So the Kansha Project is a program of JACL Chicago. It was started in 2012, and it's a program that brings young, so 18-to-25-year-old Japanese Americans from the Midwest to Little Tokyo and Los Angeles, and then to the Japanese American National Museum. So I participated in the program in its first year in 2012. The name "Kansha" means gratitude. But we have this great definition that we did not make, but we borrowed from someone about the idea of gratitude as not being there's a gift giver or someone in whom you are indebted and you have to give back to them. But this idea that you have this maybe sense of receiving something and then passing it forward, or pushing it out beyond 00:54:00yourself, but not just directly back to JACL Chicago, that you're then taking it out into the world. And I think, again, it's a question of what is the legacy of the Japanese American incarceration experience? Because this trip is very much centered on Japanese American incarceration history. What does it mean to teach this history to young people who are all Japanese Americans, but not everyone had family members who were incarcerated, whether their family was in Hawaii or people who are the children of more recent immigrants? But I think one thing that is fairly common, for folks growing up in the Midwest, although there is a fairly large Japanese American community in the Chicagoland area, I think a lot of people who are my generation grew up without really a strong sense of community. And so I think we've come to understand Kansha over time as much 00:55:00about community building as it is about teaching history, and seeing the idea of building a community of younger folks as essential to the project itself, and essential to the future of the Japanese American community.

Mary Doi: How does Kansha help some people actually shape an identity, assume an identity? I think that Kansha, I said to Kat, is a liminal experience, that you are not only outside of Chicago in a new space, but you are learning new things, meeting new people, and it just seems to be this blank canvas that is painted in many different ways. So beyond community formation, how does it impact identity formation?

Lisa Doi: Yeah, I think I was very lucky to grow up with a very strong sense of 00:56:00Japanese American identity and Japanese American community. And that it wasn't just... Over time, I've seen it as a relationship to community institutions, a strong internal identity, and then also this familial traditions, that in all three areas, I had a very strong sense of being Japanese American. I think that's very unusual. And I think there are many, not to say it's only people who are multiracial or multi-ethnic, but I think that amongst my generation and myself, are multiracial or multi-ethnic. And so I think that is just a very simple example of how someone may have, over their lifetime, felt like they weren't really Japanese American. And I think to have, at minimum, a place that says, "No, everyone here is Japanese American." And maybe you've never used 00:57:00chopsticks before, or maybe you can't speak any Japanese. You don't need to know any of that to be Japanese American. You don't need to know anything about Japanese American incarceration history to be Japanese American. I feel like there's something else I was going to say, but I can't remember it anymore. So I think that, to me, is the identity piece, is having this affirming space around being Japanese American. Here's what I was going to say. I sort of had this, an experience on a pilgrimage last summer. And this is not unique, but it's not something I felt a lot in my own family, but someone, an older woman, a Nisei woman who'd been incarcerated, said to me, not about me, but we were having a conversation about her grandchildren who are all multiracial. And she said something like, "Oh, it's so sad that there's not going to be a future Japanese 00:58:00American community because everyone's mixed." And my response to her was, "Well, what if it means that there's an even bigger future community because you have all these other people who are now invested in Japanese American history, or you have this even larger Japanese American community?" But I think, what do her grandkids, how do her grandkids understand themselves as Japanese American? And not that this woman is malicious in any way, but to have a grandmother who's like, "Oh, you're not, well, you're not Japanese American because you're multiracial." What does it do to their sense of self or their sense of identity? And I think that maybe it's not something we've necessarily talked about on Kasha, but I am curious, what happens when that's something you hear in a small way in your own family? And I think that goes back to this issue of alienation that a lot of Japanese Americans have felt growing up, especially amongst Yonsei in terms of why challenging conversations are hard, because there isn't this 00:59:00rootedness in community that exists already, that people are so excited to get a taste of it, and they're afraid that they could lose it. And so I think that's why there's this fear about the possibility of being kicked out of this community.

Mary Doi: And how do people that have participated in Kansha take their experience forward?

Lisa Doi: Well, right now, three of them are working on this project. So I think that there are lots of ways that people have taken their experiences from Kansha in large and small ways. I think that there's a lot of leadership within the JACL, within other Japanese American organizations, and even just students who are in college, writing a paper about it in college, and subsequently, I think 01:00:00that there are lots of ways that people have taken their Kansha experiences out into the world.

Mary Doi: Well, that's a lovely legacy of redress. And unless Kat has any more questions, I'm going to thank you for talking to us today.

Lisa Doi: Yeah.

Mary Doi: Kat?

Katherine Nagasawa: Yeah, I just had one quick follow up. I feel like, Lisa, you have a bird's eye view on the Yonsei generation in Chicago and the Midwest, because you've been a leader and have seen people, and often been the person who's invited them into the fold. So I'm just curious, beyond Kansha, are there other ways you've seen Yonsei become activated in either the history or other racial justice and reparations issues? If not that's fine, but I was just curious if there's anything else [inaudible] pilgrimage that you find gets 01:01:00people invested and activated?

Lisa Doi: Yeah, I think that's a great question. I think that's one of the things that both I think Tsuru and Nikkei Uprising... Nikkei Uprising is another group of younger, but more explicitly progressive Nikkei in Chicago, have started. I have not been involved in Nikkei Uprising for about the last year, but was involved in its formation. And I think there, and with Tsuru, I think one of the things I've heard is that it presents a different way of being Japanese American, a way of being Japanese American that is maybe more political or more based in active dissent or... Active dissent that I think maybe counters this idea of "gaman" or "shikata ga nai" or ideas that some people might object to. And so I think seeing what I've heard there, seeing other people do this has 01:02:00been exciting, whether that's on social media or in short films, that has been what draws people in. So I think, to me, Nikkei Uprising is another really great example locally in Chicago of newer formations within the Japanese American community.

Mary Doi: Ty, do you have any questions?

Ty Yamamoto: Oh. No, I don't.

Mary Doi: Okay.

Ty Yamamoto: Thank you for asking.

Mary Doi: Well, I think that that's it. I think this is a wrap. Thank you so much for taking the time out to give this oral history, and thank you so much for bringing your own experience into what you talked about today.

Lisa Doi: Thank you. Thank you all.

Katherine Nagasawa: Yeah, thank you, Lisa.

Lisa Doi: Yeah, thanks.

Mary Doi: We are done.