Lin, Cori Nakamura (12/15/2022)

Mary Doi: Okay. Hi. Today is December 14th. This oral history is being recorded at the Japanese American Citizens League Chicago office, located at 5415 North Clark Street in Chicago. The interviewer is Mary Doi. The interviewee is Cori Nakamura Lin. 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. This makes for a cleaner transcript. Here's some, little bit of direction. 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. Please make sure your cell phone is 00:01:00silenced now. Okay, thanks. All right. Well, got through that. So let's begin. I'm just going to talk a little bit about what this grant is. This is a JACS grant, the Japanese American Confinement Sites grant administered by the National Park Service. It's funded to-- The project is a, a larger project that's going to include a fictional narrative film and a K through 12 curriculum that tells the redress history through an innovative healing and justice framework. And these oral histories are going to be used to inform the narrative film, so you know-- And, and they will be reposited at the JASC Legacy Center. So that's a little bit of background about the scope of the project. I was lucky to talk to you yesterday and really get a headstart on this, on this interview. We went over things like your age, occupation, your family's history with camp, 00:02:00you know how you got involved, when you got involved in the community, and when you learned about incarceration and resettlement. Then we moved into discussion of redress, and you talked a little bit about that, but I for-- I didn't have an opportunity to ask you about your reaction. When you heard that there was a redress movement, did you have any reaction or any thoughts about that?

Cori Nakamura Lin: So I was thinking a little bit of our conversation that Mary and I had yesterday because there was another question that was similar to this, which was asking about my reaction to learning about incarceration overall. And in my response to that question, I had at the time been like I had known at a certain point but it didn't really hit me until later of what it really meant, and I think my response to this one is similar in that I had grown up knowing that there was something, there was Redress that happened. I grew up kind of 00:04:0000:03:00like knowing that my family had talked about reparations and we had like a few items of art pieces, Japanese art pieces, and a big wooden chest in my home that my family called our like reparations chest and our like reparations screen. And that was kind of like, I knew that reparations had happened, but I didn't understand the full impact of what both reparations meant as like a deep community harm or what that meant for my family to have received that until much later. So even as a child, I think I knew that Japanese-- that we had gone to camp and reparations happened, but it probably wasn't even until like my twenties that it was really starting to sink in and contextualize within the context of like American history. And then beyond, like even within that, the Japanese American Chicago community being a distinct and unique thing and understanding the impact that resettlement had within the Japanese Chicago community I think was later in my twenties. And I think that because of like that very long drawn out, knowing what happened and then understanding the significance of that later, I feel like I didn't have like an immediate reaction. Like I can't tell you kind of like, I was happy or I was sad, but what I have now is kind of this like really slowly like built up understanding of like, I had all this surface level understanding of things that I felt like were impacting me, but now tying each of those, like giving them each a little root that links down into the traumas that happen in our community and what trauma healing looked like, like that, now I feel like I was like, oh, now I have an actual understanding of what happened to our community. So in some ways, like my general reaction is like sometimes I feel stupid. Like I do often times feel like dumb for not knowing these things that feel really important to my life or that it took me a really long time to, to learn about them. I, like I had the internet, I had access to all this information, but feeling like it took a 00:05:00really long time for that to build up in my understanding and comprehension of what the Redress full movement was, like both of its impact and like each of the components and historical pieces and organizations that were a part of that. But I'm trying to kind of address that feeling of ignorance by understanding that a lot of this knowledge has been held from us. Like in Illinois, before the TEAACH Act, like it wasn't taught in schools. I was also homeschooled, so that's not really an excuse. But so my, my mom you know, as a Sansei didn't feel at that time that it was really important to share this story. And so I feel like those are all things that were factors from, yeah, assimilation and like her feeling of her own story that now we, we share and talk about it as important. So yeah, long story short, but like I, it really felt like it was a slow buildup of understanding that I feel sad about, but I'm also trying to just like 00:06:00acknowledge that that's kind of the way that things go sometimes.

Mary Doi: You know I realized I, I made an error here that I should actually touch upon some of these other earlier time periods.

Cori Nakamura Lin: Mhmm.

Mary Doi: And, and you don't have to give verbatim descriptions--

Cori Nakamura Lin: Okay.

Mary Doi: --but I know that you got involved in the community say, via your church, that you went to, CCP, Christ Church Presbyterian--

Cori Nakamura Lin: Mhmm, yeah.

Mary Doi: --and you went there because?

Cori Nakamura Lin: Of that my-- So I started, my first involvement in Japanese American community in Chicago was that I grew up going to a historically Japanese church called Church of Christ Presbyterian in North Park area. And my grandparents went there, my mom went there, my parents met at that church. My dad was not Japanese, but they met at this, yeah, Asian church that they started going to I think in like, maybe the eighties, seventies or eighties? And at that 00:07:00time were a lot of like social groups were kind of connected to the church, sports, Japanese sports groups. So that was kind of like the center of my family's connection and involvement with the Japanese American community in Chicago, and that particular group, at least from my awareness, was not very politically involved and were not... A lot of the folks there had not been significantly involved in the redress movement.

Mary Doi: So you, I believe you said that you went there from roughly first grade through fifth grade?

Cori Nakamura Lin: To that church?

Mary Doi: Yeah.

Cori Nakamura Lin: No, I actually grew up going there my whole life.

Mary Doi: Oh, your whole life, okay.

Cori Nakamura Lin: Or, sorry, my whole childhood life until I left. Until I left. So, I, from basically birth until I was 18, I went to that church. Mhmm.

Mary Doi: Okay. All right. Got it. And if you're-- You're about the same age as my daughter.

Cori Nakamura Lin: Mhmm.

Mary Doi: So you were born way after the redress movement.

Cori Nakamura Lin: Mhmm, mhmm.

Mary Doi: So it's not something that you remember your parents doing, but it's, 00:08:00it's history to you.

Cori Nakamura Lin: Yes, it is.

Mary Doi: So then we talked about how and when did you learn about the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans, so can we review that a little bit?

Cori Nakamura Lin: Yeah, yeah. So I guess I spoke about this before, but like I had grown up knowing that my grandfather, who was the only one of my grandparents who was incarcerated, my Grandpa Tom, was, that he was in camp. That was something that like my family kind of like colloquially talked about of like that time and then the time after. Like, we were in California and then we were in camp and then we were in Chicago, and that was kind of how... what I knew. Like I think it was probably in high school when I was like, oh, "Camp is something that was connected to the war" and that was not something that we had a choice in. And it wasn't until maybe like my twenties that I was like, oh, this is actually something that is deeply impactful for all of the Japanese American community who were here during that time of incarceration, regardless 00:09:00if they were incarcerated or not. And then also like being like, oh, all of this feeling that I have around my Japaneseness is connected to the way that my grandfather was incarcerated and his feelings about America because of that incarceration and what happened after that. So it was like the same thing where it's like I always grew up knowing that it happened, but my understanding and my deepening of what it truly meant and how it impacted me happened slowly over my teens and twenties.

Mary Doi: So can you go into a little bit more detail about that, that growing awareness?

Cori Nakamura Lin: Mmm mhmm, yeah! So I never did Kansha, but my little sister Kristi did participate in the JACL Kansha program, and I remember like that she did this a little bit before I moved back to Chicago. So like I think we had all kind of like understood now, like at this point, maybe like in the mid-2010s, like what the significance of incarceration was, kind of how assimilation had happened and why we grew up in the suburbs of Illinois... I mean, the suburbs of 00:10:00Chicago rather than in like, in a closer Japanese American community. But I remember learning like a few facts like while my little sister was going through Kansha. Things like you know, before... Sorry, I'm like losing my train of thought if I'm talking about resettlement or if I'm talking... Or is it like Resettlement, or Redress, or incarceration. But don't worry, to talk about the impact of incarceration, that when folks were leaving, I remember learning, maybe not through Kristi, but through a workshop that someone did about mass incarceration and the, the links between mass incarceration and Japanese American incarceration, that when we left camp we had to sign like you know, these papers that said that we would do all of these things including like try to speak Japanese as little as possible and also like try to make the Hakujin like neighbors feel comfortable by not clustering together. So like all of these 00:11:00like coded languages that I saw in my head as like things that like people like my grandfather felt like were the right things to do, not just things that they were being made to do, but also like the right ways to do things, and that kind of like linked back to the way that I was raised where I felt like I was, it was very prioritized to become an American and to not speak Japanese. Which are things that I have a lot of grief about now in this life, but am now understanding that that grief comes from this kind of forced assimilation that happened upon, during World War II like anti-Japanese sentiment rather than the way that I grew up, a contextually disconnected from this history in the suburbs. I was just like, we just made this choice to be here and this is something that, that's happened. But, so now I feel very comforted kind of linking the things that I feel like are the losses that I've experienced in my family to the losses that like lots of other people have. And maybe they don't 00:12:00exactly look the same, but it's something that we can kind of link to a common cause, which is the U.S. military.

Mary Doi: So Cori, could you tell me a little bit more again about your experience being an intern working with refugee girls and how that impacted your understanding of your family's history?

Cori Nakamura Lin: Yeah. Yeah. So when I was in college, I interned with a Chicago organization that works with girls who had recently immigrated to the United States from like a refugee context. And so it was like a youth program, so we're teaching about curriculum, and doing like a mini U.S. history segment during the summer. I remember the teacher who I was working with really wanted to do a segment about Japanese American incarceration. And I was like, "Oh, yeah, like my grandfather was like there during that time. Like he's actually in 00:13:00Chicago, like he could give a little video where he could share to the like, the young people specifically about his experience." And the teacher was really excited and she was like thrilled and she was like you know like, kept talking about how it was like such a big deal to be able to hear from like a survivor of incarceration, and I think that was the first time that I had like heard or like conceived of my grandfather as being like a survivor of incarceration and like understanding like how big of a deal that was and to be able to then see my grandfather, we just did it via like Zoom or Skype maybe at the time, but he shared like his experience and was able to like say it directly and the young people could ask like a few questions. I remember being like, understanding our story as being something significant and especially seeing that kind of linked to how these other young people were like you know have had all of these like very intense and recent war experiences themselves. But to just like see that 00:14:00being held as important things that kind of not necessarily are linked but are shared stories of experience in the United States that are significant, that felt really important to me, I think.

Mary Doi: So can you talk a little bit more about how it felt important, kind of the dimensions or the ranges of emotion about learning, about the "Aha" moment that you had?

Cori Nakamura Lin: Yeah. I mean I think it's like the, when I think about why does it feel different to have suddenly seen my grandfather as a survivor of incarceration is I think that the way, and this is something that I was sharing with Mary yesterday, is my grandpa was the youngest boy of his family and so he's he will acknowledge this a little bit sometimes, but the more to other incarceree stories I hear from, it really feels significant that my grandfather had a lot of positive memories from his experiences of camp. Like he'll talk about being on a baseball team, he'll talk about being in Boy Scouts, he'll talk 00:15:00about being able to be with all of his friends for the first time in like a camp, a truly camp-like setting for him. And a lot of the pressure and stress I think of subsisting and surviving for their family were put on his older sisters and his mother. And so for me, growing up without a lot of those other stories, I think as a child I had the idea that camp was this thing that just happened, much as like my grandfather lived in California, and then he lived at camp and then he lived in Chicago, whereas I think understanding that we do live with the impacts of incarceration, like I've grown up with the impacts of incarceration. And so, I feel like learning more about like what really happened beyond just from my grandfather's perspective and seeing how other people were like, oh, that was a bad thing that was you know, monumentally and like fabric shifting for the Japanese Americans, it just felt maybe a little bit of relief. I think 00:16:00these questions about feelings are a little bit hard for me because in the moment I don't think I even recognized that I was having a feeling at that time. Like it's really me upon looking back and being like, wow, things have really changed in the last 10 years or in the last like five years, and I feel like grateful that I know and have experienced these things now. But like a lot of the changes of the way that I think and feel about incarceration have happened really, really small and really slow and my, sometimes my emotional reaction is like years after the fact that I learned that is like causing that reaction. Mhmm.

Mary Doi: Yeah, I think that you know, while it may have a domino effect on your understanding of what this really meant, that that's probably not unusual to not get it right away.

Cori Nakamura Lin: Mhmm, I definitely didn't get it right away. Like a lot of these things with my family, I didn't, I didn't get it.

Mary Doi: Yeah. Thank you so much for talking about that. So when, as you were learning and understanding more about your family's experience, how did this affect your identification, or how you self-identified, what you thought about yourself?

Cori Nakamura Lin: Yeah. So like, I've shared in different oral history pieces or at different points, but I'm mixed Taiwanese and Japanese American, and so I really grew up in the suburbs of Chicago disconnected to at least like strong incarceration context and history with the idea of, or really struggling with me being an Asian American just like period. And so it really wasn't until in my teens and twenties that I was like really like grappling with the effects of incarceration and with the effects of the Japanese assimilation journey in the Midwest as a whole, which is not exactly the same as our incarceration trauma, but is like deeply connected to it. And that's when I feel like I was able to 00:18:00start asking these questions that had been sitting with me for a long time about like, why am I this way with other Japanese folks? And being able to see in other Japanese Americans like the ways that assimilation or isolation or mixedness has affected them and kind of putting that in the context of Japanese imperialism that forces us to think that Japaneseness is one way and the U.S. militarization of you know Asians and white supremacy. Like asking those questions with people that I trusted with these big frameworks around it, that's what finally helped me be like, oh, this is why it was so hard to feel Japanese is because the ways that I think Japan and the U.S. have set up to be Japanese aren't the way that I am Japanese American or the way that my identities have 00:19:00kind of like culminated together. And so being able to talk to other people who didn't fit into those boxes precisely were like, oh, yes, the box is fucked up. If I don't, I don't know if I could share this is where it, it is, but yeah, that, that I think was like the really big shift was like the, being able to do that within the last five years in this container.

Mary Doi: That's, that's very illuminating. So we're moving on now to the Resettlement era. So you mentioned that your dad, your grandfather, sorry, came from Amache to Chicago. Can you talk a little bit more about the resettlement era and your family's history there?

Cori Nakamura Lin: Yeah. Yeah. So my, like I said, my grandfather was the youngest, and so we had I think a couple of uncles who did enlist and were in the, in 442. I think it was something that like his brothers or sisters had, were able to leave camp early because of school and then they settled in Chicago 00:20:00and were able to find some housing there. And I think it was not at the same exact time, but then my grandfather enlisted, he spent some time in the Navy, and then wanted to go, I think he ended up somewhere in the West and wanted to go to New York to go to school. He had his... what is it called, the...

Katherine Nagasawa: The GI Bill?

Cori Nakamura Lin: Yes. He had his GI Bill money and was wanting to go to photography school. He had been in the Navy as a photographer. And so then he was like taking the bus, didn't have any money, got to Chicago, ran out of money there, like just kept going to like-- He heard on the street that some folks from camp used to like hang out at this bar, so he like went to that bar and then he ran into some folks that he like knew from camp. And they were like, "Oh, we're all staying at this boarding house together." And he was like, "Oh my God." And they were like, "Okay, well--" The, the family who ran the boarding house met him and like, were like, "Okay, we'll let you stay here." So then he 00:21:00ended up staying at that boarding house until he found a job I think through the JASC, and then he ended up staying here in Chicago and he never left. Well, he eventually moved back to the Bay after he retired. But that is how my grandfather came to Chicago is he basically tried to get to New York and then he got stuck. But yeah, he, he told me he slept in like a bus terminal for a little while and he like kept his bags in like a bus lobby. And he like basically waited around in Chicago until he found folks from camp and then they took care of him.

Mary Doi: Wow. That's a good story about social networking.

Cori Nakamura Lin: Yeah. Mhmm.

Katherine Nagasawa: Did he ever tell you the name of the boarding house he stayed at?

Cori Nakamura Lin: No, but I'm sure he knows it. Like he still talks about the people. Like I asked him the other day a question about something and he was like, "Oh, it was like with this man and this man and this man, and we all stayed at the boarding house together." I was like, "Okay!" (Laughs)

Mary Doi: Do you think you could ask him?

Cori Nakamura Lin: Yeah. Yeah.

Mary Doi: Okay, and then you can tell us.

Cori Nakamura Lin: Mhmm, yeah.

Mary Doi: Yeah. And ask him the name of the bar that he went to.

Cori Nakamura Lin: Okay, I'll see, I'll see if he knows both of those.

Mary Doi: Yeah. Yeah.

Cori Nakamura Lin: Wait, wait let me write it down.

Mary Doi: Let's see, what else did I ask you? I believe that you worked on a project with Katherine Nagasawa for the Japanese American Service Committee where you looked at Reckoning. What, what becomes a Reckoning digital exhibit. Can you tell me a little bit more about how you got hired and what that job entailed? And I'll ask Kat if she has additional questions.

Cori Nakamura Lin: Yeah. Okay. Let me think, how I got hired and then what did the project entail. So, I mean, I feel very lucky to have been brought onto the project. I was living in Minneapolis at the time that Kat first reached out to me. That, Kat had met, I believe, my older sister, Jami, at a, I believe maybe a JACL event or some sort of Japanese American creative community event and like, 00:23:00was able to get my information. And we met and talked and just, it seemed like it was a really good like, interests, creative styles right away. And so Kat did decide to bring me on to the project, and that was one of the first things that we worked on together before then doing the, we did the resettlement and reparations projects together. So, I believe at the beginning of when we first met, I was in Minneapolis, but by the time that I joined the project I had already moved to Chicago. And so working on that project was really fun. I look back a bit, like the first meetings that we were doing were just very like creative meetings before the pandemic, and then during the pandemic working with a lot of the interview and research material that Kat had done. And you know, Kat is like one of my favorite people to work with. She's like such a talented producer, but I think also artistic director. So it was, it felt very strongly 00:24:00like a partnership of that I got to work very closely with the materials and even times like share feedback on wording that I felt like were the direction of Kat was leading the story. And then Kat was very involved in my illustrations as well as I was drafting up images. We also storyboarded and created kind of like a visual tone for both of the different projects together. Kat had so much feedback and like I, it was like very collaborative talking about images and pictures and facial expressions all along the way.

Mary Doi: So did you come in knowing these histories?

Cori Nakamura Lin: Mhmm. So that is a, a good question, and I felt differently about the resettlement versus the like fight for redress projects. Like I felt much more that I knew the resettlement story. Like it felt like the resettlement story in many ways was my... Different versions of what my family experienced. Kat like very carefully selected three different family experiences who had kind 00:25:00of like different reactions or emotional journeys or experiences with incarceration that she braided together. So they felt different but like compendium... Companion pieces? To what I've experienced. But the redress and the fight for redress felt very different. Like I knew that redress had happened and I knew that we had benefited from it and I knew that it was like a long journey that we had to like, in my head, members from our community had to like share their deepest stories and deepest traumas in front of the United States in order for us to get reparations, but that was kind of the extent of what I knew about it. So I think the things that I really gained was an understanding of the different branches of the fight, the legal, the research, the, the ones that were more, yeah like, judicial, and also like the different mentalities that 00:26:00folks had around it. That, I think it was really important for me to learn how in opposition more radical folks were to the idea of like yeah, asking for small reparations at one point, because I feel like that those are kind of conversations that I have now within Japanese American organizers is like, what is a concession versus what is real change, and to be able to really dig into the steps that folks made along the way and the ways that some things worked and some didn't. But in some things, like you know the more people who are opposed to folks giving testimony, like that ended up being a really impactful thing. So I felt like I learned a lot of details and like applicable richness that I had no idea before the project.

Mary Doi: So this is something that you, that Kat was your teacher in some 00:27:00respect, but in order to develop the images and maybe the narrative, you, you two collaborated on how it was going to be told?

Cori Nakamura Lin: Yes. And so I think that what would happen is that Kat usually had all of the writing and research done, and in a lot of ways, this is how I work with writers, poets, or illustrators, is that they have, and Kat is really great at this, is having an idea of the arc of where the story is going to go and key points that she is trying to highlight. And so that's usually where she would come with, I would come usually with, I, I wouldn't say vibes, visual imagery like shapes, colors, tones, text that I think would like move the images in the same direction, and then together we would come up with something that we think could carry the visuals through. So for the first story of 00:28:00resettlement, we talked a lot about like what is like a key visual image that we could use and we landed on kintsugi, the idea of like visually it being very nice to have nice bold colors that we could then weave together with gold, and from a visual standpoint, me being like, yes, that's like a very beautiful image, but then also culturally embedding the idea of like from brokenness, building something that is different and new and sometimes more precious. We thought that that really aligned with the, the idea of resettlement and the Chicago community. And then for the redress project, similarly, I think we went back and forth and shared a lot of ideas and then came up with the idea of your sense of story as a glowing orb inside of yourself. And so that story starting out as like a little burning flame inside of like the Issei and the Nisei and then being shone brightly out during the, the redress hearings and then that orb 00:29:00kind of being shared and igniting in others. Those are the ways that I think that Kat and I would go back and forth between images, story, and then creating a visual storytelling tool.

Katherine Nagasawa: I just wanted to chime in with a question. Cori, why do you feel like it was stronger to land on more of an abstract concept like for visuals, and then also how did you build in animation and movement into the images and why did you decide on that?

Cori Nakamura Lin: Yeah. So I, I always love abstract symbols because I feel like as a storytelling tool in the ways that I want to tell story, I feel like they're more impactful. Like I think that there's something about the way that our brains can attach to symbols way more than they can to like concrete things, at least in the context of something that I think spans so much time, so many 00:30:00characters, so many people, and like even the way that like something as simple as a story can transform in myself like over the past five years. Like I think that it's a really, really complex thing that we're trying to make passable to people. We're trying to like, take this like giant thing, which is our intergenerational trauma and how we're dealing with it, and we're trying to like make it something that we can pass around and like share with people and like be a little tool. And so in that way, I feel like an abstract symbol is very strong. The more simple it is, the more people can kind of like twist it in themselves, make it apply to them, and also... Yet change it and let it grow. I oftentimes think of for things like resettlement and redress, we're taught, we're telling stories through four, almost five generations sometimes, and I would like these stories to go for five generations in the future. And so if 00:31:00we're going to do that, we need to really be pulling, I think, the spirit of the stories in a lot of ways and finding like great good ways to get like the, the details and the context and like the important information, but then also like have like easy things that we could like just share and pass on. So I think that that's why I like having the depth of research in combination with illustrations that hold abstract symbols, 'cause I think they help us do both at the same time. And then similarly, we did add some animation to the redress project and I think that was like in one way something fun that Kat and I thought would be fun to do together, but I think adding a little bit of movement and just like I think, reactions, like that's what a lot of the animations are, kind of showing people experiencing surprise or like having like a little bit of a tearful moment, and I think those things... I think about students and how we could 00:32:00share those. Like, I think it, it creates a little bit of a... Yeah, like a little piece that maybe can help people remember. Or, I don't know, I'm a child of gifs and memes and stuff, so like having a, a little animated figure I think is just a good storytelling tool.

Mary Doi: Kat, do you have anything else to ask?

Katherine Nagasawa: No. Feel free to move into the next.

Mary Doi: Okay. So let's get back to the, to the last phase of this long arc of history, the redress movement. Can you tell me what you knew about it going in, say before you started to work with Kat on Reckoning and then what you came to learn and your reaction to what you were learning?

Cori Nakamura Lin: Mhmm, yeah. I think before the Reckoning project, I had known 00:33:00very little about the redress movement. Like I knew that reparations happened and I knew that we had to, at some point someone fought for them, but I didn't really know who did it and how. I think... Well, okay, and I, I knew that, that the hearings happened. In my head, I also didn't know to what extent they happened in Chicago versus in New York or California. And so, I think the things that I had learned were some of the things that I shared, like I think about learning about the, the three different groups who were kind of heading the movement together, understanding how the JACL and JASC in Chicago were supporting or involved in those things at the time was kind of helping me weave and link my Chicago Japanese American involvement to kind of this like national experience of, yeah, I understand folks' opposition to the JACL more after 00:34:00learning about the redress movement. What else was I learning and feeling? I, I think I had, I remember feeling... I guess a lot of like appreciation and like the release of grief. Like I think that's something that I, I knew before. Something that I knew before was that before the redress hearings, Issei and JA folks didn't really talk about our camp experiences that much and that the sharing of them had been like a really big deal for folks to publicly and like with each other share our grief. And so I think that like, looking at the photos that Kat shared with me, seeing like a few, like hearing some folks talk about that time, and also like looking at folks being emotional, and also, yeah seeing photos of Chicago Japanese folks in seventies, eighties clothes, like I feel 00:35:00like all of those things together just like released a lot of grief in me that I have around stuff that is maybe not just incarceration related, but it's like I feel like the JA community even now still endures a lot and we don't really talk about the stuff that's hard. And so that felt like an echo to me to see that. Like those are things I, I still think we should talk about-- that we, we should be doing more sharing emotion publicly. And then, what else was I learn-- Oh, yes. Learning a lot about the conflict between the groups and different mentalities, both of like a strategy standpoint and then also from a like, a personal standpoint. Like who are we appealing to when we're asking for these things is a question that I have benefited from. Like I, I've benefited from JAs living in a context where America has acknowledged what they did to us was bad. That's been my whole life experience. But to put myself in the place of someone 00:36:00where it was like, before that happened, would I even want that? Is that something that I need for resolution? "Is apology the thing that I need?" is, I think just like a really good question for me as an activist and as someone who is currently organizing, yeah, against whatever the government is doing in, in different contexts right now? Like I do believe that we should have reparations, but it's also... Asking questions beyond what does it mean to get this apology? And those are things that I think I ask now. My grandfather has received his reparations, I've grown up after that fact where I am asking some maybe questions about like what do I, what do we as a people need from the United States of America? And yeah, I think to be able to ask those questions from this point here before reparations happened is just an interesting loop, time loop. 00:38:0000:37:00Kat, I'm making a lot of hand motions, if that helps.

Mary Doi: So you've mentioned the apology, is that all that reparations was?

Cori Nakamura Lin: So, I think... Mary asked me this question yesterday, which was like, what was the most impactful part of redress? I shared that, I think for my family, when I talk to my grandfather about it, it seems like for him the apology and the national acknowledgement that incarceration was wrong, Japanese American incarceration was wrong was the most impactful to him. And I think he says that from a standpoint as someone who enlisted right after the war, someone who was, you know worked very hard but was able to find a lot of financial and business success for himself in Chicago. And so at the point when I think we received the reparations, he was a successful businessman. And so the finances, the money that they received felt important, it felt like an apology, it felt like a physical thing that we were given after so many-- everything was taken away. But now in his old age, the thing that he remembers is the apology. And that's something that I see echoed a little bit in other folks in Japanese community that I talk to where it's like, the money's important, but the fact that we were publicly acknowledged as not having done anything wrong, that this was like a bad thing that happened to us and we overcame, that is the thing that seems to have really done like a conscious shaping thing for the Japanese American community that I also see as like... When I see non-indigenous or non-Black folks struggle with why we should give reparations or have any sort of 00:39:00things like, like Affirmative Action kind of things for folks who suffered a lot. It seems to come from a place of them really not understanding the harm, the harms that were done to folks and it seems like there's this like, this victimhood that when you're in the dominant culture it's easy to apply upon people. And I feel like the thing that Japanese Americans reparations did, is it helped for us in a very small way flip that idea for both the public consciousness and our own that we were not, that we... Bad things were done to us and we didn't deserve that, and that's what I want for other people as well.

Mary Doi: Great. So you've mentioned that you have things in your house that you call like the redress screens, the reparation screens, and the reparation chest. Do you think it came, do you think your family bought those with the money that they received or can you explain why you call them that?

Cori Nakamura Lin: Yes. So I grew up, we have a beautiful ornate screen that has like some cranes on it, probably made out of shells or something. It's like one of, in my head, when I grew up, one of like the Japanese-y things or pieces of furniture that we had. We grew up calling them, that screen as well as a chest that my mom has, a couple of chests, as our reparation furniture. My mom is a sansei, and so I think in the... Okay, tell me the dates, in the seventies, eighties, when they received the, the, the reparation money?

Katherine Nagasawa: Nineties.

Cori Nakamura Lin: Nineties, I'm sorry.

Katherine Nagasawa: That's okay.

Cori Nakamura Lin: I'm really, really bad with dates. That wouldn't make sense at all, what I said earlier. But in the nineties when they received the money, my mom got a little portion from her, from her grandmother and then got a larger portion from her father to, that he distributed for her and her siblings. And so using that money, she bought this, these yeah, the screen and then the chests. 00:41:00And I think for our family at the time, it was like we were a new family, she had like you know, recently bought a home, and so was, you know building her home with these things, but then I think for us, it's also, yeah just like a, a memory piece of that those things are always kind of with us. But that, we don't really talk about them like their reparations pieces. Like we don't say like, "Remember the history of incarceration with this screen," it's more of just like, "Oh yeah, that's our Japanese thing that we got with our reparations money." Mhmm.

Mary Doi: So in any sense, were these sacred objects? Like could you open the chest?

Cori Nakamura Lin: No, they were like everyday use objects. Like they were really just like pieces of furniture in our house. And like yeah, we didn't treat them with sacred story or anything, they just looked more Asian than some of the other things that I grew up in my suburban household.

Mary Doi: So do you think--

Katherine Nagasawa: Sorry, I was just going to say, the first illustration of 00:42:00reckoning is them opening up the chest, you know, the kids.

Cori Nakamura Lin: Yes, yes.

Katherine Nagasawa: That's amazing. I love that you had the chest as an Easter egg from your own childhood.

Cori Nakamura Lin: Mhmm, yeah, and, and also too, that it's like... The house that I drew those children in, like they're wearing like Cubs gear and it's like there's like maybe like a little, like a bamboo screen, this like hanging thing, but like everything else in their home is like very American, or like their clothes and everything. And that's like... That was, yeah, me putting pieces of story into the, the pieces that we did for the oral history.

Mary Doi: So pieces of your family's story or your--

Cori Nakamura Lin: Yes. Or something like you know, my family was not a Cubs fan, right? So, but in my head I'm like, the people that I grew up with who were mixed Japanese American were you know, baseball fans. Like some were Sox fans too. But you know, those were the things that we cared and talked about so that's how I wanted to show their parents' generation.

Mary Doi: That's great. Well, now this question might make more sense. I asked 00:43:00you before how did you react to hearing about redress and I believe that you would say learning about, more about internment and resettlement, these reactions don't happen immediately but they, they grow and they contextualize. So how did you react to learning about redress?

Cori Nakamura Lin: Mhmm. Well, since I think the details, or at least like the full... The more full context I've received recently, and so that one I can share like, how did I feel about it? It's a complicated feeling. I keep referring to, like-- One of the, the things that I, has come out of working on this project creatively is something that I keep referring to as like the river 00:44:00of time, working within the river of time. And like, that was like one of the biggest concepts, or like I don't know, like, energy access things that I got through working on this project with Kat was feeling very, very closely connected between the things that has happened in the last three generations and what I'm currently working on now. And so the feeling that, that I got was like being embedded, like to be like woven into something, and to become a part of something that's like so much bigger than yourself. It's like a little bit of like satisfaction. It's a little bit of dread because of how big the fight is. It's a little bit of like relief because it's kind of like, okay, no matter what I do, it will just be a small part of this big thing. And it's also like powerful because you're like, oh my God, there's so few people who are a part of 00:45:00this fight that maybe the fights that we're working on now will also be researched and like you know, will have some sort of small impact on the future. And it's a little bit of excitement because it's like, wow, if so much happened back then that felt like it spiraled into these huge things that I feel like I'm working on now. Like who knows what can spiral in the future from the, the fights that we're currently working on for anti-incarceration and abolition or for Japanese American just joy and culture building. So that's, it's all very exciting to me.

Mary Doi: Good. Is there anything else that you wanted to ask, Kat?

Cori Nakamura Lin: About the--

Mary Doi: Oh, I mean Kat, is there anything else that you wanted to ask?

Katherine Nagasawa: Yeah. I was just curious, you know, I know you were involved in the formation of Nikkei Uprising and just wanted to know more about what sparked the formation of the group and what are some of the group's goals?

Cori Nakamura Lin: Mhmm. Yeah, so I'm a part of this group also with Ty, who is filming, in Nikkei Uprising, which is a small group of Japanese Americans organizing for abolition here in Chicago. And like it did start in the past three-ish years during... I would say like the general like post-Trump pushback. The real formation of like how it came together was that during family separation at the border during Trump administration, a lot of folks, Japanese Americans, were gathering together across the country talking about how you know we wanted to link our story and stand up with these families who had been separated as families who had been separated due to incarceration. And so a group of folks in Chicago wanted to go to a big march in D.C. that was being planned by Tsuru for Solidarity nationally. So we got together, started talking 00:48:0000:47:00about that, started getting together our incarceration survivors in Chicago to go. We're doing education about Japanese incarceration and family separation. And then the pandemic hit, and then the uprising happens for George Floyd's murder, and we kind of started shifting. The same folks who had gotten together for that group all were very galvan-- galvanized and cared deeply about the issues that were happening and so decided to shift into a new orientation. At that time, instead of going to D.C. and talking about family separation at the border, we ended up standing in front of Cook County jail during the pandemic and talking about how it was like one of the biggest sites of like pandemic death in the nation. And that kind of shifted what we are, us into what we are now, which is a group of abolitionist organizers working on cultural work and supporting other movements in Chicago towards ending prisons, police, and, and borders. But we're focusing mostly on abolition and anti-incarceration in our campaigns against Cook County jail and ending money bail, and then also doing a lot of cultural work together to discuss who we are as Japanese Americans. And I think that, that kind of, like the cultural work thing is kind of like asking your question of like why did we come to be a separate group rather than either working with any of the groups that we had before, and I think that when we were sitting, folks who had become, who were really inspired and motivated by the events that we've grown up seeing or experienced during the Black Lives Matter movement, kind of connecting things like immigration, environmental issues, also... like yeah, the relationship between Japan and the U.S., there were all 00:49:00of these things that we were kind of sitting in and there was no good place to kind of hold action or places to take action. And so now as Nikkei Uprising, we can do things like advocate in support of the comfort women survivors of Korea at the Japanese Embassy. And so we will like advocate for the, the folks who had been survived and/or killed by the Japanese military and that feels like something that feels connected to the work that we're doing. For me, it feels deeply connected to my grandfather's experience of incarceration. It feels connected to my experiences as an Asian American in the United States. And so it's really exciting to be able to do things that feel wide but inside of our bodies are actually held really close together. And to work with and unpack with other people who are experiencing similar, but usually really different things has been, yeah, really life-changing for me.

Mary Doi: So I have two questions about this. Is Nikkei Uprising an intergenerational group?

Cori Nakamura Lin: So I don't think we would necessarily call ourselves that, but we do like try to pride ourselves on having folks of many generations. I mean, sometimes our generations, we don't look like we're all across like 30 years, but on average, I think we have like a 20-year age gap, and then like more for some of our members who are older or younger. But I think we would love to become more intergenerational. Mhmm.

Mary Doi: Then is Nikkei Uprising a Chicago only thing or do you form coalitions across the country maybe with other Japanese American communities that have this kind of a movement going on?

Cori Nakamura Lin: So I think that we stay connected to many different organizations nationally. We, Nikkei Uprising is indeed just a Chicago group. We do meet virtually, but we tend to do action and focus everything with folks who 00:51:00are in the same geographical area. Through the Tsuru for Solidarity Network we have connections to other different groups. We've partnered with a group in New York, New York Day of Remembrance Committee, to do a Nikkei Abolition Study Group that we did that was national, and so like folks from all over come to those events but the two groups that led them were both based in Chicago and then New York. And then last week, yeah, we also have done some partnerships with Nikkei Resistors in California. So yeah, we try to stay connected, but we're also just sometimes a really small group, so we're just trying to hold it together.

Katherine Nagasawa: I have another like follow-up question. So you said that kind of the thing that initially sparked Nikkei Uprising was connecting migrant family separation and detention with the JA story. For you, was that the first time you really saw JA incarceration within a broader landscape of like 00:52:00different types of racial violence happening to communities or do you feel like you made those connections earlier, and if so, what did it for you, or what made those, what bridged the issues?

Cori Nakamura Lin: There's literally a workshop that JJ Ueunten and Anne Watanabe held at the JASC very early on from when I moved to Chicago that was called Japanese American Incarceration, Mass Incarceration. It's a workshop that they've done several times that kind of like links together all the different ways that like our incarceration is very similar to mass incarceration, but psychologically how the ways that we talk about Black and brown folks is similar to the ways that folks talked about Japanese Americans. And so that was like, that workshop series was definitely one of the first ways. And I don't remember when that happened, but that was, I think, a primer that many folks in our community had been to that I think supported them that when the call came 00:53:00saying, hey, we want to go to D.C., many folks were ready. Mhmm.

Katherine Nagasawa: Gotcha. That's so interesting that that was kind of what helped initially connect the dots and then it kind of crescendoed into Nikkei Uprising during the pandemic years. I'm like curious, does Nikkei Uprising kind of fit within... Or, I guess, is one of the goals of Nikkei Uprising connected to Black reparations movements, or have, have you kind of interacted with Black reparations movements today in any way, either as an individual or with Nikkei Uprising?

Cori Nakamura Lin: Yeah. So right now we don't currently have any like national reparations legislature or like goals towards that in Nikkei Uprising goals. I think we're, we're pretty loose right now. We have, let's just do the things that are really clear to us that are right in front of us, which right now is in Illinois the campaign to end money bond, which will release lots of folks from 00:54:00pretrial incarceration. So that felt like a close thing that would release folks from jail. I think like in the past we've supported the HR-40 calls that Tsuru for Solidarity has put out. Like I think all of us are very supportive, it just hasn't fallen into like our main body of work yet. I'm sure that as the campaign and the like, whatever board that they make with the HR-40 Commission like we'll hopefully stay involved. Like I see those things as being very, very linked. Another fight for reparations we have been involved in is the fight for reparations from Japan to Korean comfort women. That's like a very clear and deliberate ask. Another one where they're asking both for money as well as an acknowledgement from the Japanese government and is like a place for just like public cultural knowledge to be passed on, like statues and curriculum in 00:55:00schools and stuff. And that campaign is something that we have supported every year for the past few years that we've existed.

Katherine Nagasawa: And I guess like as a Japanese American why does it feel important for you to support or participate in racial healing or reparations movements for other communities?

Cori Nakamura Lin: Mhmm. I guess like something that I'll share is... So seemingly, or I guess on the surface, the fight for reparations for Korean, and you know, not just Korean, but comfort women of, of many backgrounds, but for the comfort women and then for Japanese Americans feel a little bit different. Like they're against different governments. They're against like different things that happened. But like for me, I'm like, oh, like if I was in you know like this place at this time, like I would have, my body would've been treated 00:56:00in this way, and that's not fair. Then in a similar way, like if I was in a different place at a different time, like I mean, I don't know if I would've been like taken as like a comfort woman, but I feel as a woman, as an Asian woman who's been sexualized, I feel very spiritually linked to what has happened to folks due to the Japanese military. And like, it feels yeah, it feels spiritual for me to be kind of like, wow, it made such a big difference for us for the government to acknowledge that what happened to us was an atrocity. Like it feels so powerful to be able to be like, yeah, like I have a little bit of a connection to this government, like to the Japanese government, like they care about what Japanese Americans say, and for me to be able to shout along with these people, mostly old women now, who I think deserve that relief, like that 00:57:00feels a little bit healing. Mhmm.

Mary Doi: Well, I have a couple more questions. You know, you're an illustrator and so what do you think the role of artists, whether it's an illustrator, a musician, a dancer, is as storytellers?

Cori Nakamura Lin: Mmmm... So, I think that there's a little bit of a like, I have a response, which is like what do I think that like illustration and like visuals and stuff have with, with storytelling, and then there's like a wider question, which is what do artists have to do with storytelling? And I think like, I'll share something that I forgot to mention earlier, which was that, so okay, when I was illustrating the resettlement, the Uprooted resettlement project with Kat, another thing that we did for visual tools was to layer in different Japanese cultural artifacts into the art. And so we used, I like 00:58:00looked up a lot of different traditional Japanese weaving patterns and so each of the different people that I illustrated have a different color set, they have a different like weaving pattern, that is, they have a different flower and like a different sort of like art piece that, that I do illustrate into it, and then I Photoshop them so that the, the patterns look like origami paper. And so like that was like something that felt like a multilayered thing. And people don't really see that as they're looking it in. But I think when you're looking at the illustrations, there feels like there's a lot of richness and there's a lot of like layer and I feel like that's something that culture does. Like, I think a lot about what does it mean to be, to have a culture, to be a culture as like a mixed person in the diaspora? And a lot of times the things that build culture are our expressions, the way that we express ourselves and the, the way that we're interacting with land to express ourselves. So like just to say, like I 00:59:00don't think that I would want to be anything, a culture, a story, or like participate in anything unless it, it feels like rich and full and like I would want to live my life there. I think that the more that we can weave in music and art and poetry, it makes it feel more like we actually live there more than something that we're just showing up to. I say that to be like, as a movement, like, like do I want to be a place where people just show up and then like yell about the things that are bad in their community and then leave and sign a petition and then leave? Like that's not what I want. So when I think about storytelling and visuals, I think it's such a fun and opportunity to bring in a lot of images of things that bring richness and life and like remind people of home that might not like be visible in a photo or like might not be able to be articulated with words. I think that sometimes... And also, it just makes things 01:00:00more fun. Like there's a lot of ways, like the things that we're conveying are like really sad and... or really hard or like are really exciting, but just like yeah, take a lot of energy. And so to also be able to have things be beautiful and fun and nice to look at I think adds a lot and makes it, hopefully it'll make the stories carry further.

Mary Doi: So I believe you mentioned that, that you like this way that you're, that you think about now being an illustrator. Have you had additional opportunities after Reckoning to work this way?

Cori Nakamura Lin: Yeah. Yeah. I was talking about before one of the things that I really like I feel like blossomed into, I don't know, that I felt really able to like unfurl myself into during this process was the amount of working closely with a community cultural story, one that is embedded across history, and 01:01:00working so closely with Kat as like an artist and producer. And that is something that I do want to do more and I have had a couple of projects since then that I think kind of emphasize the same kind of skills and process that I began with the Uprooted and Reckoning projects. Like I worked with, there's an education organization called Yuri based in California, and they did a curriculum piece for, I believe it was like the Asian American Heritages Month, but on PBS Chicago, and I was able to illustrate their header image for them. So using archival images from different Asian American communities over time, doing similar visual research of like trying to find folks like from those times, yeah, usually with articles and stories written by people from those communities, and then illustrating them together and then using that as promo 01:02:00material. So that was definitely something that was similar and that I hope to do more of.

Mary Doi: Great. Can I ask for a break right now?

Cori Nakamura Lin: Yes, I was going to say the same.

Mary Doi: Okay. Let's break for about five minutes. Is that okay, Kat?

Katherine Nagasawa: Yeah, totally. I just have one question at the end.

Mary Doi: Okay. I've got to go to the bathroom.

Cori Nakamura Lin: Oh, okay.

Ty Yamamoto: Sounds good.

Cori Nakamura Lin: Okay, cool. Okay. My call's coming closer to 1:00 now, so that is okay. Okay... I am like, I don't know. I don't know why art is important.

Ty Yamamoto: It's a very good question. Sometimes I don't know why it's 01:03:00important, but I also don't think I could do anything else.

Cori Nakamura Lin: That's what, that's kind of how I feel. I was like... There's sometimes where you're just kind of like, oh, this is what I do every day, so this is just what life is.

Ty Yamamoto: Right.

Cori Nakamura Lin: And then I was like, oh no, but actually this is a special thing that not everyone gets to do all the time. Uh-huh.

Ty Yamamoto: I feel similarly. Have you ever had a, quote-unquote, normal job or like a standard office job or anything?

Cori Nakamura Lin: I have, yeah. I did like, yeah nonprofit shit during Minneapolis. But I, I would say, like so I did AmeriCorps for two years--

Ty Yamamoto: Oh, yeah that's right.

Cori Nakamura Lin: And then I did, and so that was like an office job but that was like me like pretending I did office stuff, and then for then I think about like four or five years I did halftime nonprofit and then I did halftime animation studio, and then I did halftime nonprofit, halftime freelance.

Ty Yamamoto: Okay.

Cori Nakamura Lin: And then, and then now I've been freelance with like 01:04:00contracts, big contracts inside. Mm-hmm.

Ty Yamamoto: That's good.

Cori Nakamura Lin: But I do fear, it's like one of my greatest fears that I have to go back to an office job.

Ty Yamamoto: Yeah. Sorry, Kat, did you say something?

Katherine Nagasawa: Oh no. I was just saying like I feel like this past year has been so new for me to go contract that I feel like I need to talk to other people who are in that situation. Just because I, I don't feel like I know many people who are doing this you know? So it just feels hard to relate, you know?

Cori Nakamura Lin: Yeah. No, it's like, you're like, I am my own boss and I hate me. (laughs)

Ty Yamamoto: Exactly. We should have an open like Nikkei freelancers circle sometime and just all talk about things.

Cori Nakamura Lin: Yeah, it could be us and Alec.

Ty Yamamoto: Honestly. Oh my God. Yeah, that's so funny. Yeah, it's funny for me 'cause I've had maybe... I'll keep it short, I've had like one job that was somewhat office-y and normal, but like pretty much since I graduated college, and even during college and before college, I was always working like contract 01:05:00or like really bizarre jobs that don't require sitting at a desk most of the day and don't have normal hours.

Mary Doi: Wow, so--

Katherine Nagasawa: You've had such an interesting range of jobs, Ty. Talking last fall, you're like, "Oh yeah, I worked at this." Like, didn't you work at the, what's that bar that's across in Lakeview, Shuba's?

Ty Yamamoto: Yep, I used to work at Shuba's.

Cori Nakamura Lin: Oh my God.

Mary Doi: As a videographer?

Ty Yamamoto: No, I used to do, I used to, well, I did a lot of things for Shuba's, but I was a security guard at Shuba's at one point.

Cori Nakamura Lin: That's so funny.

Ty Yamamoto: And I was also on their promo team, among many other things that I've done in the music industry.

Mary Doi: Okay. So we have one last gigantic topic, and, and we're going to talk now about what does repair look like, how does repair happen? How does repair look for the Japanese American community, what's left to do? And then I'm going 01:06:00to ask if you have any final thoughts. But while we're... This, we can just do in conversation, do you have any photos or documents or ephemera?

Cori Nakamura Lin: About Redress?

Mary Doi: Yeah, that you would be willing to have us photograph or copy?

Cori Nakamura Lin: Ooo. Okay. I guess I don't have any, I could take a picture of the screen?

Mary Doi: Yeah, yeah take a picture of the screen and the chest.

Cori Nakamura Lin: Yeah, uh-huh.

Mary Doi: I love the fact that you have names for these.

Cori Nakamura Lin: Yeah. I was like, I could do those. Yeah, I am sure my, I'm sure my grandfather has stuff.

Mary Doi: We probably have the apology letter, so we don't need your grandfather's apology letter, but you know, especially if people had testified, did they have a draft?

Cori Nakamura Lin: Got it. Okay. Yeah. No, he, I don't think, I don't think he's testified.

Mary Doi: Okay.

Katherine Nagasawa: Or Cori, if you have any like hand-drawn sketches from early.

Cori Nakamura Lin: Oh, I have a ton. I have all the sketches.

Katherine Nagasawa: I literally saved all my notes from our, from like all the meetings we've had. And especially for Uprooted, I have some of those early 01:07:00sketches you did for like the Color Ways--

Cori Nakamura Lin: Yeah.

Katherine Nagasawa: ...visual motifs and stuff. But those may be interesting artifacts.

Cori Nakamura Lin: Yeah. Okay. I, I definitely have all the sketches from Redress and Reckoning.

Mary Doi: Yeah, I think people think of them as, oh, that's just leftovers, that's ephemera.

Cori Nakamura Lin: Yeah.

Mary Doi: Who's, who's going to want this?

Cori Nakamura Lin: Oh, I'm team artifact. Everything is an artifact.

Mary Doi: All right. All right, so... So we talked a little bit about the role of creatives so I think we're ready to go on again. Are, are we on? Okay. The last big subject that I'd like to talk about is repair. You know, redress and reparations imply that there's repair. So how does repair happen and what does it look like for the Japanese American community, if you believe it's happened or is happening?

Cori Nakamura Lin: Yeah. Mm-hmm, no, I think this is a, this is a really interesting question that I have been thinking about but don't really know the 01:08:00answer to right now. So okay, how does repair happen? I think like, as I'm thinking about it, especially as I'm like getting emotional thinking about the, the comfort women stuff, it's like, oh, I really feel like the acknowledgement, like it has to be on multiple sides. Like especially when it's from an institution or a government like I think that there needs to be like really clear ownership and responsibility-holding that doesn't feel like it's been done on the side of, like I mean, the Japanese government in terms of comfort women, "comfort women" as an euphemism, but in the United States I think has only happened for the Japanese American community. I feel like there's so much other repair that could be, like repair that needed to be done for folks like Black Americans, indigenous folks, like yeah, so many folks who has like, live in 01:09:00areas where there's a giant, I don't know, like toxic waste site. Like you know, there's like all these things that have been done to people and like the United States does a very bad job of acknowledging when it has made mistakes 'cause that's like not really our vibe. So I think that like I see, I see possibilities. I see other countries who have taken greater ownership for like large atrocities that they have done. I have not seen them hold global power and do that at the same time. So I guess like that these are like my like political thoughts of like do I think it's ever going to happen? Not without great force. I don't think that they will ever desire to do the things. Like I don't think that the government or our nation as a whole will want to make the kind of 01:10:00reparations that are needed for us to fully heal. And I think I'm thinking about it as, like yeah, that's me as like an American. Like that's me as like my... the things that I would need to be like fully happy and successful would require not just Japanese Americans to have been acknowledged, it would require that like I don't live in a place where we pretend that like oh, our land isn't stolen. Like I don't want to live here and do that. So, I guess like I do have like a very wide vision of what I would need repair to look like, what has to do with like the United States maybe not becoming a nation anymore or like you know rerouting into the sense of what do we really want to be in community with each other, how do we redefine our relationship to the land? Like those are all really deep questions that I don't see us getting to anytime soon and I think that repair for the Japanese American community, is also a little bit... I think 01:11:00there's a little bit more repair that we could, could be doing. This is from my personal experience as a you know, yonsei in Chicago who has a very specific experience, but I see that my community has healed financially in a lot of ways. I think we're doing economically very well as a whole, as well as I think emotionally a lot of the folks that I think I grew up with, the families that I grew up with in the church community, don't see themselves as being particularly traumatized from, from any sort of experience. And so I would say that for the most part, it feels like there has been a lot of repair that has happened for the Japanese community. And I think that something that we're having discussions 01:12:00about in Nikkei Uprising is like what does it look for Japanese Americans to seek repair beyond incarceration and our incarceration trauma, which means that we have to kind of open up these questions of like what does it mean to be a racialized person in between these ideas of Imperial Japan and the United States of America as a white place? And I think there's a lot of things that have to do with Japanese supremacy that I'm also, that I think we... I'm personally trying to heal from and I feel like our community has a lot of growth and healing to do from there as well. Mm-hmm.

Mary Doi: So these are some of the things you have what, that's left to do for Japanese American repair?

Cori Nakamura Lin: Yes, yeah. So I think that for, to, to go back to the question of what do I think we would need to repair is I, I feel like there's a lot of brokenness in our community or a lot of small divisions in our community 01:13:00where we're, it feels easy to slice people off as we try to hold on to the core of what it means to be Japanese American, and that could be divisions between Shin-Nikkei or Yonsei, or Japanese nationals or not, or folks who are transplants or not transplants, or folks who behave in traditional Japanese ways or folks who don't behave in traditional Japanese ways. And I see that as like in my head as that's dominant JA community. It feels very shaky. It feels very tense. It feels like there's a lot of generational divides as things move and there's a lot of value divides as things are shifting. So I feel like those things could be like the problems of any community. I also see them as being linked to, to these kind of like big traumas that we have where we kind of have, or a lot of us feel like we're from a place of attack, we have to hold and preserve this one thing that we have. And that's not where I want our community 01:14:00to operate from. Like I want us to be able to feel more open and willing to accept other people, to shift our values, to be something different. To occupy Japaneseness in a different way, to function in a different way, to not feel like there's one way to be Japanese. And I see those things a lot of the times being linked to both like our traumas from incarceration and being small in the Midwest, but then greaterly from this kind of like rock and a hard place that Imperial Japan puts us in of feeling like we have to be this great superior one thing while also putting us in a place in the United States where it's like we're, we're never going to be those things. So I think that that's the repair of like kind of understanding of like what do I even want to be? Do I want to be American? Do I want to be Japanese? Or am I something, do I want to build a Japaneseness or Japanese Americanness that is neither of those other things? And 01:15:00that's what I think repair for me has looked like. And I, in conversation, maybe it sounds a little different, but I've been having conversations with folks as well that that is where the repair is heading towards. It's reshaping what it means to be Japanese American as a whole.

Mary Doi: Do you think that the fact that our group is one of the few that have attained reparations, redress and reparations from the government, does it obligate us to empathically support other groups that are seeking it?

Cori Nakamura Lin: I don't think it obligates us to. I think it gives us a great opportunity to and I feel personally like I want to. Like that's, it's, I don't know, I'm trying to deal with like what is responsibility versus like what is just like using the resources that you have, like stewarding them in the best way, and I was like, wow, we have a lot of clout. Like it would be great for me 01:16:00and my family to use that clout to, to do to another group that I think should get the same things that we've received. I don't think it has to be a moral obligation. I feel like in a world where people have their needs met, it would feel more enticing. Like that would be, it would be a desire that we would have rather than an obligation.

Mary Doi: Do you have any final thoughts?

Cori Nakamura Lin: I don't know. I guess like the question at the end of like what is left to do for repair, like I, I'm coming, I am thinking about it one more time. And I guess like, the thing that I'm still thinking about is like, what are we repairing from I guess? It's like, I feel like I've grown up in... 01:17:00Like I feel really grateful to be doing this interview and to have my oral history be a part of this thing. Like I feel like my family's arc has like led me to a place that feels like both very pinnacle in history, like I can do artwork about this, and it's like so much work has happened up until this point so it feels like a lot to reflect upon. And I also feel like, oh yes, I don't, I guess I don't even know where I was going with that thought. Just that like yeah, I do, I feel appreciative to be here and I guess I do feel like responsible for thinking about like as this arc of incarceration reflection ends, like I don't think this is the ending right? But like this is a big arc of JA stuff is like we've been thinking, we were incarcerated, we fought for reparations, and now we've been thinking about incarceration for a long time. 01:18:00And I guess what I feel like is what's left to do is I think for where I'm sitting it feels like we're pushing in this moment to start a new arc. I think that's kind of what I'm thinking about. It's like, I'm not, I don't want to forget redress and reparations, I want to fold it into this next arc of what I feel like JA movement could be, but with wider questions. It's like incarceration folding it into these wider things of what does it mean to combat Imperial Japaneseness? And that's where I think I would like our next healing arc to begin.

Mary Doi: Great. Kat, do you have any follow-ups?

Katherine Nagasawa: No. Actually, you just answered my question. I was just going to ask like what is next or kind of, yeah what comes next as you're reflecting on repair. So that was beautiful. Yeah, thank you, Cori.

Cori Nakamura Lin: Thanks.

Mary Doi: Yeah.

Cori Nakamura Lin: I mean, all of you. I feel like you three specifically have, 01:19:00I've had so many conversations with you all that like really informed all of this, so thank you.

Mary Doi: Yeah, thank you again. It's, as I've said to you before, I love oral histories or, or qualitative interviews because you get to have these conversations that under normal circumstances you would never have. You know, so thank you so much from me and from the project.

Cori Nakamura Lin: Yay. Thank you.

Mary Doi: All right. I think that's it.

Cori Nakamura Lin: Yay.