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Title
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JASC Legacy Center Oral History Collection
Subject
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Japanese Americans--History.
Description
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This collection contains oral history interviews from the Japanese American Service Committee (JASC) Legacy Center's holdings. Where available, transcriptions have been included and synced to the recordings to enable full-text searching.
Interviews were recorded at various times, some by JASC staff and some by external partners, often supported by grant funding. See the metadata associated with each interview for full details.
This digital collection will continue to grow as new interviews are recorded, and as additional pre-existing recordings are received by donation or discovered in the physical archives.
The digitization and transcription of many of the recordings in this collection, the recording of interviews between July 2018 and June 2021, and the creation of this publicly accessible digital platform, were funded by a Japanese American Confinements Sites (JACS) grant awarded by the National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior. The JASC Legacy Center gratefully acknowledges the financial support received between 2018 and 2021 that enabled this project to succeed.
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This material is based upon work assisted by a grant from the U.S. Department of the
Interior, National Park Service. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations
expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views
of the U.S. Department of the Interior.
This material received Federal financial assistance for the preservation and interpretation of
U.S. confinement sites where Japanese Americans were detained during World War II.
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Creator
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Japanese American Service Committee (Chicago, Ill.). Legacy Center
Publisher
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Japanese American Service Committee (Chicago, Ill.). Legacy Center
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Nagasawa, Katherine
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Kudo, Elsa
OHMS Object
https://digitalcollections.jasc-chicago.org/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=KudoElsa20221126.xml
Interview Keyword
Japanese Latin American
JLA
Japanese Peruvian
Peru
Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians
CWRIC hearings
Testimony
Campaign for Justice
Civil Liberties Public Education Committee
Adios to Tears
Peru-Kai
OHMS Object Text
5.4 11/26/2022 Kudo, Elsa (11/26/2022) 1:15:33 JASC_OHP JASC Legacy Center Oral History Collection REDR Redress Japanese American Service Committee Legacy Center Recorded, transcribed, and made accessible online with financial support from the Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Japanese American Confinement Sites grant program. Japanese Latin American JLA Japanese Peruvian Peru Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians CWRIC hearings Testimony Campaign for Justice Civil Liberties Public Education Committee Adios to Tears Peru-Kai Kudo, Elsa Nagasawa, Katherine video 1:|21(5)|27(5)|36(8)|47(8)|59(5)|70(7)|84(12)|93(18)|104(11)|111(14)|119(10)|137(5)|144(4)|160(6)|167(1)|179(7)|190(2)|201(13)|213(9)|220(12)|230(1)|249(1)|270(14)|293(18)|304(2)|325(5)|335(1)|357(1)|373(6)|388(16)|396(14)|415(4)|423(5)|434(5)|449(7)|464(7)|481(12)|497(10)|508(7)|538(8)|553(8)|561(1)|574(9)|586(2)|594(10)|601(10)|618(14)|630(3)|650(3)|683(3)|707(15)|714(6)|724(13)|736(14)|745(3)|771(4)|791(10)|809(13)|820(10)|831(13)|852(6)|867(4)|878(1)|891(3)|902(6)|921(4)|947(1)|962(11)|973(4)|1001(6)|1020(7)|1042(14)|1079(4)|1119(5)|1146(11) 0 https://vimeo.com/823047519 Vimeo video < ; iframe src=" ; https://player.vimeo.com/video/823047519?h=d250f72b30" ; width=" ; 640" ; height=" ; 360" ; frameborder=" ; 0" ; allow=" ; autoplay ; fullscreen ; picture-in-picture" ; allowfullscreen> ; < ; /iframe> ; Elsa Kudo, a Peruvian of Japanese descent, describes her experience testifying at the Chicago CWRIC hearings about her family's experience of expulsion from Peru and incarceration at Crystal City. She recalls the difficulty Japanese Latin Americans faced in securing permission to give testimony at hearings in other cities and the role of her brother in persuading organizers in Chicago to allocate time for JLAs. She also shares about her experiences with the Campaign for Justice, negotiating with White House representatives to secure reparations for her family, serving on the Civil Liberties Public Education Committee, and publishing her father Seiichi Higashide's book, " ; Adios to Tears." ; Of note are her reflections on Peru-kai, a recurring event for formerly incarcerated Japanese Peruvians and their descendants that began in Chicago and has become international in scope. Elsa Kudo: ... and I don' ; t know how much I could add to this. Katherine Nagasawa: That' ; s okay. I think I wanted to ask you about the Campaign for Justice. Elsa Kudo: No, I don' ; t know too much. Katherine Nagasawa: That' ; s okay. Elsa Kudo: Ask Grace. Katherine Nagasawa: We' ; ll do what we can and there' ; s no pressure. Okay. I' ; ll try this one more time. Today is November 26th, 2022, and this oral history is being recorded at 301 Adobe Estates Drive in Vista, California. The interviewer is Katherine Nagasawa, and the interviewee is Elsa Kudo. This interview is being recorded by the JASC Legacy Center in order to document the Japanese American Redress Movement in Chicago and the Midwest. So could you start by telling me, when did you first learn about the Redress Movement? Do you remember what you thought about the concept of redress? Elsa Kudo: Those are loaded questions, but I think it might have been in Chicago. And all I remember right now is Bill Hohri, who used to have a paper, small paper, that he used to publish. I read his articles, which were well written and to the point, and he was such a wonderful person and activist. So probably partially that. And then of course, my dad, who used to read Japanese and English papers regarding anything Japanese Americans, Japanese Peruvians, whatever. And so he was quite knowledgeable about such things, and he would give us information that he learned about the redress. Katherine Nagasawa: And what did you think about the idea of Japanese people asking for redress for their incarceration during the war? Elsa Kudo: I personally thought that was the right thing to do, and I thought that it' ; s a way to present the Japanese Americans and what happened to them to the general public, American public, who knew very little or nothing. So it was kind of a way for people to be informed and to have an education in American history that they were not aware of. Katherine Nagasawa: Especially for something like Japanese Latin American incarceration, which even fewer people knew about. Elsa Kudo: Yes, absolutely. And with that, of course, hardly, probably no one outside our little group knew about our case, the Japanese Latin Americans. So it was good that the JAs started doing something about their horrendous experience in the camps or being taken from their homes. They' ; ve lived all their lives and then put behind barbed wires with guards watching over them with their guns, not pointing outside the fence, but towards, inside the fence. And so that to me is scary that it should happen in our country. Katherine Nagasawa: Did you feel included in the movement as a Japanese Latin American when you were hearing about it in the newspapers or talking to Bill Hohri? Elsa Kudo: When the Japanese Americans started to fight for redress, we were not included. And so that part was a bit painful. But on the other hand, they were trying their best to be compensated for all the losses, not only emotional, but financial, reputation wise, everything that they had lost just because they had the faces of the enemy at that time. Katherine Nagasawa: So you understood why or- Elsa Kudo: Oh, yes, of course. Yes, I understood why they were fighting for their redress. And of course so many of them did not know about the Latin Japanese being incarcerated. So our fight for redress was a way to also kind of make information available to those Japanese Americans who hardly knew anything that was going on with the Japanese Latin Americans. Yeah. Katherine Nagasawa: I understand that you ended up testifying in Chicago in 1981. Can you tell me about the process of getting involved in those hearings? Elsa Kudo: It' ; s so long ago, but it was my brother, Carlos, who kind of started the ball rolling because he knew Ms. Nakahiro. Katherine Nagasawa: Tomihiro. Elsa Kudo: Tomihiro because they belonged to the, I believe it was a skiing club, and she was very active, and so he talked with her. And so when she came to Hawaii, we had a chance to meet, and she was very, very kind and also wanted to be of help. Katherine Nagasawa: And so when Chiye said the Japanese Latin Americans could testify, did you immediately know that you personally wanted to testify, or how did you decide who from the community was going to present? Elsa Kudo: Oh, well she was so nice that she would include us. I don' ; t know who it would be, but probably our family. I think we did inquire about the various places where these hearings were held, and we were told all the slots were closed. But thanks to Tomihiro-san, we were able to get a couple of slots in Chicago where we did fly to do our little talk. Katherine Nagasawa: How did you get your dad, Seiichi Higashide, involved in the hearings, and also how did you help him prepare his testimony? Elsa Kudo: Well, I think my dad, of all of us, was the most in tune about the redress, about the hearing. He knew more than we did, and he encouraged us to be part of it. He wrote his talks in Japanese, which then my husband would translate in English, and that' ; s how we did it at the hearing, where he spoke in his Japanese and my husband translated in English. Katherine Nagasawa: For you, what was your thought process when crafting and drafting your testimony? What kind of message did you want to communicate to the commission? Elsa Kudo: Well, basically to give the information that this thing happened under the, shall I say, auspices of the U.S.A. And so few people knew about our case that it was a way to educate the public about the Latin Japanese being incarcerated in this country where they did not know, where they did not want to come. So many people want to come here, but that time we didn' ; t want to come to the U.S. Every Latin Japanese were doing very well there. They had businesses, homes, and so forth, even household help. So no one really was interested in coming to the U.S. at that time. But all of a sudden, our fathers were first taken to places unknown. And then many months later, we find out that our fathers were in Panama Canal zone. And on one of his telegrams, he said, " ; No matter what happens now, get rid of the businesses," ; meaning sell it. Because when he was taken, he had told my mother, " ; No matter what, you keep the business because you' ; ll supply the children and yourself food and clothing and a roof over your head." ; And now all of a sudden he' ; s saying, " ; Sell everything and come no matter what may come. We may die together, but at least we' ; ll be together." ; And so that' ; s when my mother, who was still quite young, maybe in her mid-to-late twenties, and she was already going to have the fifth child. She was married at 18 or something. And so she did the best she could. And then we got on the ship to go to meet dad. Katherine Nagasawa: Getting tired. Elsa Kudo: Yeah. Katherine Nagasawa: I wanted to ask you about your testimony. I was watching it, and I noticed you got kind of choked up when you were talking about- Elsa Kudo: My mother. Katherine Nagasawa: ... the experience of your mother. Can you tell me about that moment and why was it particularly emotional for you to talk about that? Elsa Kudo: Right. My mother -- when my dad was taken -- she was pregnant with my little sister, Martha. And when she was born, she was the smallest baby. And my mom thought she might not survive because also when she would nurse, she nursed all of us at least six months. But she had a hard time with the last child, with Martha, the fifth child. And when she tried to nurse, she said it hurt so much and blood came instead of milk. That' ; s how traumatic it was, must have been for her. So it was a dramatically awful time for my mother who was young with five children now. And then my grandparents, who came from smaller town in Peru to live with us in this second store. So they had their own independence. And my young auntie, a teenager of 17 or so. So at least my grandparents were there. So they were of some emotional help to my mother, plus with us little grandchildren. Katherine Nagasawa: Why was it important for you to include that anecdote in your testimony about the trauma that your mom experienced? Why did you want to include that detail? Elsa Kudo: Yeah, because I have never heard of anyone else having such a traumatic experience nursing a baby. Maybe there are, I don' ; t know. But at that time, I had never heard of it. At this time, I never have heard of it where blood would come out of one' ; s breast that she was trying to feed her baby. That' ; s why. Katherine Nagasawa: And you talked about some other difficult experiences where you had to be sprayed with DDT as well. Can you talk about including that detail, and why was that important to include as well? Elsa Kudo: Well, all of us were told to disrobe completely, and it was a, as I recall, and remember, I was just about what, seven or eight, but then they sprayed us from above. I think something came rolling down, I can' ; t remember exactly. And these DDT was sprayed on us from head to toe. And now of course, that' ; s poison. Well, at that time, we didn' ; t know. So yeah, so that was not as scary as later we learned that it could really harm us, but it was not pleasant to be naked in front of everybody. But I thank my age, where I felt for my auntie who was a teenager and my sister-in-law who was a teenager, all those in their teens who may have had periods or whatever, and they had to be completely naked in front of everybody, and you know how shy we girls become especially during that time period of time. So yeah, I felt ... I could picture it and I wanted others to see it, to picture in their minds how it would' ; ve been if their daughter or their daughter herself felt this and how she would react. It was an awful time for young girls. Yeah. Katherine Nagasawa: I remember my great auntie saying something similar where she was 16 in camp and it was really hard for her to have to use the showers because there was no privacy. Elsa Kudo: No, there' ; s no curtain even. That' ; s right. Yeah. Katherine Nagasawa: For you, what was the experience like of delivering this story in front of a crowd of hundreds in front of this commission? Do you remember what was going through your mind, how it felt in your body to do that? Elsa Kudo: I think it' ; s something that I had to do for our group of people, and it was very traumatic, but I had to do it. And so I remember I choked up on something, but the judges, the one who was especially kind was a Supreme Court justice. I don' ; t know if he was at that time, maybe -- Goldberg. He was really very kind, as I could say. Yeah. And all the other people too were nice, but he was verbally kind. He says, " ; Would you like to stop or would you like to?" ; I said, " ; No, I want to go on." ; " ; So someone give her water." ; Yeah, he was that kind of person. Katherine Nagasawa: How did it feel afterwards, having said all of your testimony? How did it feel to get that off your chest? Elsa Kudo: It felt somewhat relieved, but hoping that it would help our group of people and the public in general to know that this was this other little case of incarceration -- brought from a foreign country to this country to be incarcerated in the barbed wired fence concentration camp of Texas, which most Americans do not know, do not want to know. And if they learn about it, they' ; d think we' ; re lying, some of them, because that' ; s what we were called, liars, in one of my husband' ; s speeches. So it felt a sense of relief a little bit, and just the hope that maybe something good will come out of this. Katherine Nagasawa: Do you remember the reactions of other Japanese Americans in the room who came up to you afterwards or the kind of comments that you got in the days following? Elsa Kudo: I think almost, well, those who did come up were very sympathetic, and they said, " ; We didn' ; t know that you people were also in camp and brought from another country." ; So they learned a lot too. Yeah. And all the reporters from all the papers in Chicago -- Tribune, Sun-Times, what was it, Herald, I think, and the radios and television people were there. But among the reporter, this is kind of a side story, but among one of the reporter was a female lady, a female. When she tried to interview me, I said, " ; You know, I worked for you one time." ; She and her husband and two children lived on the Gold Coast of Chicago near Lincoln Park in a beautiful, a whole flat for just four people, where we were crowded in Sedgwick and Division, we only had one and a half rooms for seven people. I worked there when I saw an ad in our University of Illinois at the [Navy] Pier, someone seeking help to take care of two children, and they would give room and board. So I said, " ; Oh, I' ; m going to school, and our house is so crowded with all my other siblings. I have no place to study except the dining table," ; which was used for everything else. So I said, " ; Maybe this is a good way. I have my own room next to the kitchen, behind the kitchen, and all I have to do is take care of two little ones, which I loved anyway." ; I love children. And so when I went to interview, right away they said, " ; When can you start?" ; And so Mr. and Mrs. Rutherford, that was her name. So I lived there for I don' ; t know how long, maybe six months, maybe less. I don' ; t remember. But the children were very sweet, still nursery school age and a baby. But Mr. Rutherford was a very kind person. So I really liked him and respected him. Katherine Nagasawa: And so the person you saw at the hearings that interviewed you was his wife? Elsa Kudo: Yes. Katherine Nagasawa: Wow. Elsa Kudo: Yes. And that was really strange. I said, " ; You know, I took care of your children for a time." ; And she was just shocked. She couldn' ; t say anything, just her mouth open. But she was one of the reporters. Katherine Nagasawa: Do you remember what she asked you about during the interview, or did she have any reaction to your story when she heard it? Elsa Kudo: I don' ; t recall because there were so many other reporters came. All of a sudden I had all these people saying whatever questions they had. So I don' ; t remember individually at all. But yeah, so that was a very unusual, unique experience I never expected. Katherine Nagasawa: Yeah, that piece of your past. Elsa Kudo: Yes, yes. Katherine Nagasawa: I' ; m curious who else was in the audience from the JLA community. Do you remember? Elsa Kudo: No. Katherine Nagasawa: Did your brother go there? Elsa Kudo: Oh yeah. Of course. All my family who could go were there -- my brother, his wife, his in-laws. Who else? And probably a few others that I can' ; t name right now. Katherine Nagasawa: The Shibayamas? Elsa Kudo: I don' ; t know if the Shibayamas were there because I think they had already moved. I don' ; t recall that. But I know my brother, because I stayed with my brother too, and my sister and her husband, Eigo' ; s older brother. Yeah. So they were there. Yeah. Katherine Nagasawa: Did you follow the Redress Movement between the 1981 hearings and then the Civil Liberties Act in 1988? That' ; s seven years of legislative fights. Did you remember following it or even following what NCJAR was doing, Bill Hohri' ; s lawsuit? Elsa Kudo: Oh, yeah. Right. Yes, I did. Yeah, because I used to contribute to his paper that he used to write. Yeah. Katherine Nagasawa: So you would donate and then receive a monthly newsletter? Elsa Kudo: Yes. Yes. Katherine Nagasawa: So you kept up with them? Elsa Kudo: Yes, I did. Katherine Nagasawa: Do you remember how you felt when the Civil Liberties Act was passed in 1988? Elsa Kudo: I don' ; t remember per se, but I know that to me, that was a kind of hallelujah day, that somebody' ; s listening and somebody' ; s trying to do something good out of this. So I did like Reagan then. Katherine Nagasawa: Were you at all surprised that Japanese Latin Americans were not included in the legislation, or did you expect that? Elsa Kudo: I was kind of saddened by it, but maybe it was an expectation because the JAs were trying so hard to get it for their group. And probably by adding another group, they might have felt strongly that it' ; s too much of a burden for the government to include another group of people, and who knows who may come after that, that kind of ... That was just my thought. Yeah. Katherine Nagasawa: So when did the idea for the Mochizuki lawsuit and the Campaign for Justice start? Do you remember who those people were that were working on it and what your involvement was in it? Elsa Kudo: I don' ; t think we were involved that much, but it was Grace and the Mochizuki sisters and those on the West Coast. Yeah. Katherine Nagasawa: Was it Bay Area or L.A. or both? Elsa Kudo: It may have been both. I don' ; t know. Yeah, for sure. Katherine Nagasawa: So that' ; s Grace Shimizu. Elsa Kudo: Yes. Katherine Nagasawa: And then what were the names of the Mochizukis? Elsa Kudo: Carmen Mochizuki and Nagao, I think she called herself Alice by then, Alice. But I knew Carmen only because her brother was a Japanese school teacher in camp in Crystal City, Texas. So I didn' ; t really know them one-to-one. Katherine Nagasawa: When did you get to know Grace Shimizu? Elsa Kudo: Oh my gosh. I don' ; t remember how we met. I know that it was in San Francisco area. One of the talks, her father was then still living, so she had brought her dad in, and I took my dad. So they were, of course, they knew each other from camp, so they were chatting away, remembering old times. I can' ; t remember exactly where. But since then, we have traveled together to Japan to tell them what was happening with the redress activities. And she needed me to help her with Japanese. Yep. Katherine Nagasawa: So you helped translate the message? Elsa Kudo: Yes, and to tell the Japanese people, " ; This is Grace Shimizu. She' ; s working hard for all of us, and that includes you in Japan," ; you know. That type of thing. Katherine Nagasawa: And these are Japanese Peruvians or Japanese Latin Americans- Elsa Kudo: Yes. Katherine Nagasawa: ... who went back to Japan? Elsa Kudo: So they were very, very grateful and thankful and invited us, especially in the Kyushu area, invited us to stay in some ryokan and treated us to good food. They were very welcoming. Katherine Nagasawa: In what other ways were you involved in the campaign for redress, besides translating and visiting Japan? Elsa Kudo: Being interviewed on radio probably was one, going around making talks wherever. I don' ; t know what else. Letting people know what was happening in wherever I wrote letters -- to Japan or Peru or wherever Peruvian people were located. Katherine Nagasawa: So mostly sharing your story. Elsa Kudo: Yes, but my dad was very good about that. He was a writer. Katherine Nagasawa: So he also worked with Grace on Campaign for Redress? Elsa Kudo: Not directly because of language. Katherine Nagasawa: I see. Elsa Kudo: If he did anything like that and he wanted to do, then I would have to get in because of the language problem. But he did go to San Francisco, though, and L.A., and he spoke at the Japanese American Museum and the national, what was it, National Historical Society, I think? Yeah, wherever we were invited. Yeah. Katherine Nagasawa: Do you remember the settlement for Mochizuki, the apology letter, and the $5,000? Elsa Kudo: Yeah, a little bit. That I recall. Katherine Nagasawa: Do you remember how you felt when that settlement came up? Did you feel it was enough? How did you- Elsa Kudo: I was glad about the apology, but I didn' ; t think financially, monetarily, it was not fair. It was not fair to them and not fair to the rest of the Peruvian internees. So yeah. So that part financially was not good. And they lost everything. Imagine if you had businesses and now you had only a suitcase full of clothes, and only what, 50 some pounds of it. I mean, it' ; s hard to imagine such a thing, but this is what happened to those people. They lost everything. Bank account, money saved wherever hidden. I mean, it was taken. No telephone, no cameras, nothing. So it' ; s like you wouldn' ; t have anything here. Everything would be taken away, especially cameras. So yeah, we don' ; t have, we have very little pictures of those times. The only ones in camp were the school picture, whole group of children with the teachers. That' ; s about it. We have no pictures, and I wish we somehow, somebody could have snuck and take those pictures of the housing, of the food, of the schools, whatever, the camp fences, the guard house, that it was real. So, yeah. Katherine Nagasawa: Yeah. It' ; s not just the monetary loss, it seems like memory was lost. Elsa Kudo: Memory. Oh, yes. Katherine Nagasawa: And loss of culture. Elsa Kudo: Exactly. Katherine Nagasawa: And kind of as we were talking about with Eigo, it' ; s also the decade after camp where your status was unclear. Can you talk about the toll that took on you and your friends? Elsa Kudo: Yes. I was young, but looking back now as an adult, having punched in, so to speak, as " ; illegal aliens" ; was a very trying experience that we suffered, because jobs, money-wise, wages were at the lowest. Taxes were at the highest. Hardly anything left. We had no bank account, because no need to open one. We couldn' ; t put any money in it. So for our parents with five children, I said, " ; Oh my gosh, poor Mom and Dad." ; At least we were little, so we didn' ; t know. As long as your parents are together, reasonably happy, you don' ; t miss much. At least you have breakfast, lunch, and dinner. No matter how humble it was food, and you had your parents there. So as a young children, I' ; m thankful that we were little, and my mother being so resourceful, she would bleach the ... I don' ; t know if you know this, but long time ago, they did have, I remember, paper diaper, but it was rather rough. Not the nice ones these days. And it was expensive, so she never had those. But other little babies had, other mothers. But she made out of flannel sheets, she would bleach it, and she would cut it up and then make it into diapers. And after the baby no longer needed the diaper, then she would bleach that again, and she would make the bodices of my and my sister' ; s clothing. So she was so resourceful, and she made her own patterns, and out of very little material she would somehow make decent looking dresses for us. Katherine Nagasawa: That' ; s incredible that you were talking before, just the kind of strength that requires emotionally for your parents. Elsa Kudo: Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Katherine Nagasawa: Do you ever remember talking more candidly with your parents about what that experience was like for them when you were an adult? Elsa Kudo: No. No, I wish I had. Looking back, I said, " ; Oh, I missed asking them so many questions. After they' ; re gone it' ; s too late already. But I remember in Seabrook, we had three little, I don' ; t know, what do you call it, cabins put together with a side opening so there were no doors. And my parents' ; room was the third one. The second one was ours, the children, bunk bed and I think two single bed, not the kind that we have now with thick mattresses, but those springy, what are those called? Katherine Nagasawa: Box spring? Elsa Kudo: Not even box spring. Just the simplest of beds with just wire and then a thin mattress. Yeah, that kind. But we were kids, so it didn' ; t hurt us too much. But what did I start to say? So that was a middle room with one, two, three, four children. And she had purchased what they call " ; bacinica" ; in Spanish. What is it in English? Pot, a potty pot. Katherine Nagasawa: A chamber pot. Elsa Kudo: Huh? Katherine Nagasawa: A chamber pot. Elsa Kudo: Chamber pot. Yeah. Yeah. So we didn' ; t have to go outside to go to the bathroom, which was many yards away. And the paths were all muddy, especially if it rained or snow, whatever. So they bought a little chamber pot that we used in the room if we needed to. And then the first room, first cabin, was the table with wooden chairs and a tiny kitchen. They finally put water. Until then, we had to go all the way and carry it in buckets, and then a big pot belly stove for coal. And that was our first room. Second room, children' ; s bedroom and third was my parents with half of it for all our junk, necessary thing, including, which I, at that time, I didn' ; t know, was a big bag of sanitary napkins. And I thought they were used, my mother used it to make pads for the clothing. I didn' ; t know that- Katherine Nagasawa: The shoulder pads. Elsa Kudo: Yeah. Katherine Nagasawa: That' ; s funny. Elsa Kudo: Yeah. Katherine Nagasawa: Even though you weren' ; t able to talk to your parents about their experiences directly, do you remember how they felt about redress when the Civil Liberties Act passed? Elsa Kudo: Oh, my dad was one of the first to say, " ; Good, we have to be there." ; He was very conscientious about that. So he' ; s a, I would say the starter, the leader, the pooler for all of us Peruvians. He said, " ; No, we have to get in there with the Japanese Americans." ; Yeah. Katherine Nagasawa: But when the Civil Liberties Act passed, do you remember what his reaction was? Elsa Kudo: He was very happy, of course. I don' ; t know if we had any real talk about it. He probably, of course, he was extremely happy. But he said, " ; We just have to keep fighting for the Peruvians." ; Katherine Nagasawa: When did he decide to write his book, and how did you get involved? Elsa Kudo: Well, he was getting older now, and we said, " ; Daddy, you have to write about your history, because we don' ; t know other than what we have seen, but we don' ; t know about your background. Please sit down and write it." ; So he started to do that. Yeah. So little by little, he said, " ; You know, when I start to write all these things, like a dream comes forth and I remember little things that happened, and some fun things," ; like going with his dad to cut down trees that they were allowed to cut down. There were certain trees they could not, but the government had stamped on it, and so they would cut down for lumber and other things. And so he said those were the happiest memories that he and his dad had, because they would go together. I guess it must have been like on a horse-driven cart. Yeah. Yes. And he said he remembers how the snow would shine on the trees and the ground and how it would glisten. And he said, " ; I remember that was happy time for me and my dad." ; Katherine Nagasawa: Like kira-kira? Elsa Kudo: Yeah. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Katherine Nagasawa: I remember reading about that in his book. He said that it was so cold though. Elsa Kudo: Yes. Katherine Nagasawa: They were just always freezing. Elsa Kudo: Yes. It was very cold. They didn' ; t have the warm thermal clothes that we have. Katherine Nagasawa: I know that' ; s hard on a little kid- Elsa Kudo: Oh yeah. I know. Katherine Nagasawa: ... to be out all day. Elsa Kudo: Yeah. Katherine Nagasawa: Could you explain to me how you guys were able to eventually get the $20,000 and how you used that for your dad' ; s book? Elsa Kudo: Of course we kept up with the help of my dad, who read everything English. He couldn' ; t speak very well, but he learned a lot of English studying himself and in night school. So he would read both English and Japanese publications, and he would encourage us to do things and go talk to Senator Inouye or whoever, do that kind of thing. And what else? Attend all the meetings possible, because it might help someone in our group. Is that what you mean? Those kind of things? Katherine Nagasawa: Yeah. But wasn' ; t it a specific letter that you wrote to Reagan that got you a meeting with- Elsa Kudo: Yeah, I think, I don' ; t know if it' ; s in the book. I don' ; t remember. Katherine Nagasawa: Was it Bratt or? Elsa Kudo: Yeah. Robert Bratt was the representative from Washington who came to Hawaii a few times. And so I made sure that the Peruvians, that' ; s us, the Kudos, Higashides, and the Yamasatos family. I said, " ; As much as possible, be there." ; Because if we' ; re just names and numbers, it' ; s not easy for him to remember. But if we meet him, shake his hand and say, " ; We are from Peru, the ones the U.S. took by force," ; then he will remember more. So they all cooperated, the Yamasato family, with obaachan and the son, Maurice, was an architect there, quite famous. And then his sister, Rosa Yomogida, Maurice' ; s wife, who is Hawaiian American, and us, and my mother, grandma Kudo, Eigo, as many people as could come, just so that we have a face for Mr. Bratt to say, " ; Oh, yeah, those are the Peruvian people." ; Yeah. So we did do that. Katherine Nagasawa: And can you talk about how you had to prove to him that you had an entry into the U.S.? Elsa Kudo: Oh, yeah. And I said, " ; How can we qualify for the redress?" ; Katherine Nagasawa: This is for the Civil Liberties Act? Elsa Kudo: Yes, yes. He said, " ; Well, for one thing, if you could find some record of the entry and the date may easily qualify you." ; And that was 1944. And then I remember Mama Kudo' ; s green card said 1944. I remember seeing it in her wallet, which she carried because I' ; m the one that was free to drive them around to doctors and dentists and opticians and anything, shopping. So I said, " ; Grandma, do you still have that card?" ; She said, " ; oh motteru yo." ; And so that' ; s how we got it. Katherine Nagasawa: And can you tell me how you used that $20,000 to support your dad' ; s book? Elsa Kudo: Oh, yeah. So my husband Eigo and I of course by now had received $40,000, which we then spent on the printing publication, et cetera, of my dad' ; s book, " ; Adios to Tears," ; which we had it published in Hawaii. And because we did it ourselves, it was very expensive. But we said, " ; That' ; s okay. At least people will know about it and my father' ; s name will be known, and people will know about ' ; Adios to Tears,' ; et cetera." ; And so then I was sweating, so to speak, because I saw these boxes come into the hallway of our house in Aina Haina. And I said, " ; Oh my gosh, what if I don' ; t sell but a few? I have all these boxes full of books. What do I do with them?" ; But thank goodness my husband helped to make prints out for order sheets. And then we' ; ll " ; send your money if you like it, and we' ; ll send you back a book or two or three," ; whatever. And so people did respond to that. So luckily we were able to sell most. And then what happened was, let' ; s see. Oh, some people kept asking, " ; How can we get more books?" ; This is from the mainland people. So I said, " ; Oh my gosh. It was already hardly any left." ; That' ; s when I started to call universities, like first U of H, the closest. They said, " ; No, we' ; re already tied up with so many immigrant stories. We don' ; t need another one." ; I said, " ; But ours is different." ; She said, " ; Nevertheless." ; But they were very nice. They gave me places I might get in touch with. So that' ; s how I went to the mainland and University of Washington people finally said, " ; Yeah, we' ; d like to do it." ; And that' ; s taking a chance for them, so I really felt very thankful and appreciative that they would take such a big chance because they' ; re not rich, rich schools. They' ; re just a state school, right? But the publisher, what was her name? I can' ; t think of it right now, but she was very instrumental in getting this done. Katherine Nagasawa: I remember last time we talked, you mentioned that it was Bill Hohri who told you to add an index. Elsa Kudo: Yes. Katherine Nagasawa: How did he get involved with the book? Or did you just run a copy by him? Elsa Kudo: I think I sent him a draft, maybe. Then he said to Michi Weglyn also, and they both said, " ; Elsa, you must have an index. You must have, because scholars will read this book, and they don' ; t want to go page by page, because they' ; re there to research and study. So you need to do an index." ; And yeah, that was another thing. I said, " ; An index for my dad' ; s book? That' ; s another time and cost." ; He says, " ; But Elsa, we urge you to do it. You must do it." ; So I did. So I went all over the place asking for, " ; Would you," ; and one was University of Illinois indexer. She said, " ; Elsa, your book sounds wonderful. I would love to do it, but I have two more to do, indexing. But I can recommend someone from," ; I don' ; t know, I think it was Indiana. " ; Send her the book and see. She' ; s my like, a what assistant or like a disciple, what is that called? Like a student. Katherine Nagasawa: Somebody like a mentee or mentor? Apprentice? Elsa Kudo: Apprentice. Yeah. Opposite of mentor. She was a mentor. She said, " ; She might be able to do it. I think she is finishing up on a book. So she gave me the address and whatever." ; I talked to her and she said, " ; Oh, wow. That sounds really interesting. I' ; m finishing one up, so why don' ; t you send me, and then I' ; ll see what I could do?" ; And then she did. So I was very fortunate for these kind people who gave me good advice. Yeah. Katherine Nagasawa: That' ; s a lot of work to self-publish. Elsa Kudo: Yes. Katherine Nagasawa: And to translate and- Elsa Kudo: Yeah, it was, yeah. Yeah. Katherine Nagasawa: I' ; m curious about the way that the Campaign for Justice has evolved over time, because in the 2000s, it went to the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights. Did you follow that proceeding? You know where, I think it was the Shibayama brothers were the center? Elsa Kudo: Yeah. Kind of. Yes. Katherine Nagasawa: Did you attend the 2017 hearing in D.C.? Elsa Kudo: No. Katherine Nagasawa: It was a public hearing. Okay. That would' ; ve been Grace Shimizu? Elsa Kudo: Yeah. Katherine Nagasawa: Okay. Elsa Kudo: I don' ; t think I did. I mean, I have gone to Washington too, but I don' ; t know if it ... no, it was for some other reasons. Katherine Nagasawa: You were on the Civil Liberties Public Education Fund Committee. Elsa Kudo: Yes. Yeah. Katherine Nagasawa: Can you talk about that and what your role was on it? That was in the late eighties and early nineties. Elsa Kudo: Yeah, right. What can I say? We had a wonderful leader and lawyer, what' ; s his name? Gosh I could see- Katherine Nagasawa: Hirabayashi? Elsa Kudo: No. Katherine Nagasawa: Matsui? Elsa Kudo: No, no, no. Nandatta, namae? Eigo Kudo: Dare? Elsa Kudo: Ano, lawyer. Hawaii. We' ; re getting too old to remember. Speaker 3: Oh gosh. Elsa Kudo: He' ; s well known and he' ; s very quite an activist in San Francisco. You know him. Eigo Kudo: Yeah, he fought for us. Yeah. Peruvians. Katherine Nagasawa: Okay. Because Korematsu. Elsa Kudo: No, no. I think he represented them probably. He and- Katherine Nagasawa: Mineta? Elsa Kudo: Dale Minami. Katherine Nagasawa: Minami. Elsa Kudo: Minami, yeah, yeah. So he was the leader. I mean, we chose him because he' ; s so, he was a leader. He could do almost anything. I said, " ; You know what, Dale? You don' ; t need a secretary. You could do the whole thing yourself." ; He said, " ; Oh, no." ; Yeah. But he was a very capable, charismatic person to lead. We kind of chose him to be the leader. But we had Father Drinan who passed away, he was able to come from Washington to San Francisco. I think we only saw him maybe at the most twice. And then he dropped out, sort of. Then we had Leo Goto, a businessman who owned a restaurant, restaurateur, in Denver, Colorado. So there were all kinds of people. I' ; m just a housewife. People like Dale Minami and who else? Mr. Kuwayama, a second World War II hero. He passed away too. And Leo Goto. Let' ; s see. And Professor Naka- Eigo Kudo: Talking about the- Elsa Kudo: Professor. Yeah. He was from California. Professor, oh, what' ; s his name? Nakasone jyanai? Nakao... Nakano? Nakano. That doesn' ; t sound quite right. But anyway, so they were all part of the group. I was the least, I felt like I don' ; t belong here. I' ; m just a housewife. But they would, I think, halfway tease me, say, " ; You bring all the practical reasons why you' ; re here." ; I give them some little suggestions. " ; Oh, that' ; s a good thing. We didn' ; t think about that." ; They were just so sweet. And so, yeah. So we got things done. We were from everywhere with different backgrounds and stuff. But we all got along because I think our goals were the same. Yeah. Katherine Nagasawa: And what was the type of work you were doing on that board? Elsa Kudo: Oh, gosh. One was to hire people who knew about funding because none of us are in the funding business. So how do you go about it? So we did hire someone named Hatta. Do you know Hatta-san? Lady. So she was one of those hired, I think there were a couple of them. And then to read all the projects, there were over, I don' ; t know, hundreds. And you had to choose, because we only had $5 million. We should have had $50 million, but there was no money left but a measly -- it sounds like a lot, but it isn' ; t when you have all these wonderful projects who need help. And so I think it was $5 million. And so anyway, so these people who knew about how to handle projects and stuff, we would go over slightly to grants, like some on education, some of the entertainment like show biz, but with the internment story and some art project and so forth. And so then we gave someone a lot of money, but the most that we gave per block was like $100,000. $100,000, $100,000, $50,000, $20,000, $5,000, $25, like that, until all of it was spent to help these projects become a reality. Katherine Nagasawa: How many years did that fund? Elsa Kudo: I think it was about two years, or two and a half years, about. Katherine Nagasawa: Did you end up seeing some of the projects to fruition, like the ones that you had approved? Did you see the final...? Elsa Kudo: Yeah, I think we did in some of the publication. Oh, yeah. Some of the money was used to republish that book. Katherine Nagasawa: Years of Infamy? Elsa Kudo: Years- Katherine Nagasawa: Farewell to Manzanar? Elsa Kudo: No, not years. Years ... Katherine Nagasawa: Of Infamy by Michi? Elsa Kudo: No. The one done by the government. Katherine Nagasawa: Personal Justice Denied. Elsa Kudo: Yes. Yes. So we spent a lot of money on that one so people could have it easily. I think it was given out free. I' ; m not quite sure, yeah. We did see those kind of fruition. Yeah. So it was money well spent, but we could have used $50 instead of just $5. Katherine Nagasawa: Give me one second. I' ; m just going to get a new battery. Elsa Kudo: Oh, okay. I think it' ; s there. This one? Oh. Katherine Nagasawa: Oh, yeah. I just have a new charge. Elsa Kudo: Oh. Oh. Katherine Nagasawa: That' ; s pretty incredible to be part of the educational grant. Elsa Kudo: Yes. Yes, it was. Especially because I' ; m a former school teacher. It meant a lot. Katherine Nagasawa: Yeah, to be in education arm a bit, I think it' ; s very huge. Elsa Kudo: Yeah. Katherine Nagasawa: Okay. A few final questions. Let' ; s just refocus. Okay. For the audio, I' ; m just going to clap to let you know that we have a new battery. Let' ; s see. I think as we' ; re talking about the education fund as one of the outcomes of redress, I' ; m curious for you, what do you think is the biggest legacy of the redress movement? One being the public education projects that came out of it. There was the actual monetary compensation, there was the apology. There were also the hearings where you both testified. Elsa Kudo: And the books. Katherine Nagasawa: And the books. Elsa Kudo: Yes. Katherine Nagasawa: What do you think has had the biggest impact, or is the biggest legacy of it? Elsa Kudo: I' ; m not sure. I think we' ; ll probably know the answer to your question maybe few years down the road yet. Things are slow to move, but one day we' ; ll know it. Yeah. Katherine Nagasawa: I' ; m also curious for you, what would true redress mean for you and your family? If you were to think of what would actually make up for what you lost, what you endured, what would true justice look like? Or is it even possible? Elsa Kudo: I don' ; t think it' ; s possible to ever " ; repay" ; -- in quotes -- whatever our parents lost. I mean, how do you repay someone who' ; s worked, like in Eigo' ; s case, his parents were in business, what, 30, 40 years? I mean, how do you do that? You can' ; t. You can' ; t ever repay it and say, " ; Here' ; s $100,000." ; Because there' ; s all these emotional, psychological, and much hardship that they went through, especially the older people. We were young and children so as long as our parents were together, we were okay. But it' ; s the older first generation or second generation older people. Yeah. I cannot answer for them. I think it was awful for them. Katherine Nagasawa: I know that Grace Shimizu is still fighting for redress for Japanese Latin Americans in the international courts. What is your greatest hope for what will come out of that? What would you like to see happen? Elsa Kudo: If it could be equal, at least equalized to the Japanese American redress, would be good, would be very good. But the other is that the whole world will know that you mustn' ; t do this to another group of people. Yeah. Katherine Nagasawa: So it' ; s not just the compensation for you. Elsa Kudo: Yes. Katherine Nagasawa: It' ; s also the- Elsa Kudo: The lesson- Katherine Nagasawa: The lesson. Elsa Kudo: ... that we should learn. Yeah. Katherine Nagasawa: I know that your daughter, especially Tami, has been kind of carrying the torch and you passed the torch to her. What is it like for you to pass it to the next generation to continue this fight? Elsa Kudo: Well, all I can say is unless our offspring or anyone in the group carries on their own will, we cannot force them. They all have to want to do it. And maybe it' ; s because we always talk with the children, that our kids are very much in tune, and they want to do as much as they can to help. I don' ; t know how other families deal with this, but in our family, we do talk about things, many things, fun things, too. And we do stuff together. We travel together, eat together, play together, like that. So I think that makes a lot of difference in how a child perceives to want to do things. I mean, that' ; s my own feelings. Katherine Nagasawa: So you aren' ; t necessarily telling your daughters that they need to be involved? Elsa Kudo: No. Never. Katherine Nagasawa: You hope that they will. Elsa Kudo: I have never said it. She has never said it. They just did it. So I think it' ; s because we always included them in things, in everything. Eating, traveling, playing cards, joking around, cooking around, you know, everything. So I think that' ; s, to me, that' ; s the thing. Yeah. We never said, " ; Oh, you got to do this. You got to help this." ; No, they just volunteer. Katherine Nagasawa: One thing we' ; re trying to do with this project is to connect the Japanese American redress movement to other movements today around racial justice or reparations. And I' ; m curious, for you, do you feel like there' ; s some sort of responsibility or moral authority that Japanese people have to advocate for other communities that want reparations given the fact that we received redress? For example, for Black Americans, do you feel that Japanese Americans should support those movements? Elsa Kudo: Well, people who wish to support should do it, but it should not be made mandatory. I think it all depends on that person. If they have a good relationship with a group of people and they want to do it, help them, that' ; s terrific. And not everyone can be that involved either, because they may be suffering themselves. And you can' ; t help someone when you' ; re suffering yourself is a thing. Katherine Nagasawa: That it should be also a choice? Elsa Kudo: Yes. I think almost everything is a choice. Choice to be bitter about things or to accept things or not, to be happy with what you have or not. I mean, it' ; s all choices, really. Yeah. Katherine Nagasawa: I guess final question is, what kind of takeaways would you want people to have about the Japanese Latin American story? If you' ; re thinking about your grandkids, what do you want them to remember about it? Elsa Kudo: Mostly that they should know the facts about their grandparents, what happened to them, and what could happen to them, the grandchildren themselves in the future because how our world is, how people are, the people' ; s heart don' ; t change that quickly, and so we have to be very careful. At the same time, be very charitable to others, and to learn from not only one' ; s experience, but other people' ; s experience, which is harder, because unless you sympathize, it' ; s hard to do that. Yeah. But at least with our grandchildren, I think they' ; re more sympathetic because so many of them have read the book, so they know what happened to their great grandparents and to their parents, or to their grandparents, us. So I think they' ; re a little bit more aware than other people because of that, because of our talks too in there. Yeah. Katherine Nagasawa: I know that your granddaughter, she participated in Peru-Kai last year. Didn' ; t she sing a song or something at the- Elsa Kudo: Oh, oh, Katherine Nagasawa: ... Kira? Elsa Kudo: Kiana? Katherine Nagasawa: Kiana. Elsa Kudo: Kiana. Did she sing a song? Did Kiana-chan sing a song? I don' ; t remember. She' ; s very musical. She' ; s the only one in our family who is musical. None of us are musical all. Eigo Kudo: Yeah. She sang at Peru-Kai. Elsa Kudo: Which one? The last one? Katherine Nagasawa: The virtual one. Elsa Kudo: Oh, Yuuyake Koyake. You know the Japanese song? Katherine Nagasawa: I don' ; t, no. Elsa Kudo: It' ; s a real cute song that we remembered as children. It' ; s about taking a walk when the sun is setting, and that you could hear the church bell. It' ; s a very picturesque, and then you see the karasu, the... Eigo Kudo: Crow. Elsa Kudo: ... crows flying overhead. Yeah. It' ; s just a cute that we learned when we were kids. Yeah, yeah. So we like that. Yeah. And she has a beautiful voice, we think. Katherine Nagasawa: Yeah. That' ; s so sweet. One more thing. I was thinking, I don' ; t think we explained what Peru-Kai is. Could you talk about the origins of it? Because your dad helped organize it in Chicago, the first one. Elsa Kudo: Yes. Katherine Nagasawa: So what' ; s the history of Peru-Kai, and how does it continue to today? Elsa Kudo: Well, Peru Kai started in Chicago with my dad, and Papa Kudo. At that time, he was single, Mr. Takeshita, and they would organize picnics. Why- Eigo Kudo: Every year we had a picnic for all the Peruvians. Elsa Kudo: And we all would meet at Lincoln Park, or what was that other park? North Side. Anyway, yeah, just little parks area. And we all share in our bentos. And my mother would make a lot of Peruvian food. His mother would make sushi and nigiris and all that and chicken teriyaki, good food. Lots of good food. Katherine Nagasawa: And lomo saltado, right? They had the Peruvian food. Elsa Kudo: Yeah, Peruvian food. Yeah. They didn' ; t do lomo saltado too much because that should be warm, but they did make like ceviche, things that could be taken with ice underneath the thing, container. What else did we take? Corn, gohan, anticucho -- beef hearts. Yeah, those kind of good food. So we all would gather and then share. Yeah, because each family has his or her favorite kind of food that they would bring but we all shared it. That was our Peruvian picnic we called it. It was the least expensive and everyone could drive to the park or get to the park, and everyone could bring something. It didn' ; t have to be elaborate at all. It could be just nigiris, sandwiches, whatever. Usually it was more nigiris than sandwiches and tea or chicha morada, the purple corn drink? Katherine Nagasawa: Chicha. Yeah. Elsa Kudo: Which we like. Katherine Nagasawa: I had that. I went to Bolivia one summer. Elsa Kudo: And they had it? Katherine Nagasawa: I had a chicha. Yeah. It was yellow corn they used. Elsa Kudo: Oh, yeah. That' ; s more alcoholic. Katherine Nagasawa: Oh, really? Elsa Kudo: Yeah. That' ; s good. But we used to make the chicha morada, which morada means purple. Katherine Nagasawa: Purple. Elsa Kudo: Yeah. So we used to do that. I don' ; t know, we just had fun seeing each other, because everybody worked so hard. So once a year we have this picnic of gathering of the Peruvians in the park, which was free. Katherine Nagasawa: And then it has gone international since then. You' ; ve had ones in Japan and Peru, right? Elsa Kudo: Did we? Peru. Peru has its own Japanese Peruvian Olympic size grounds really? Like for swimming, running, track. What else? Tennis. Those kind. And a huge picnic area. Eigo Kudo: Are you talking about school? Elsa Kudo: No, no. The Peru no... Katherine Nagasawa: Peru Kai. Elsa Kudo: Peru Kai picnic area. And you know where Miyo-chan and Yuri-chan took us and we had a nice time underneath the trees. Yeah, Nihon-dewa Peru Kai was held in Peruvian restaurant in Kawasaki, which is the next town to Tokyo. And so then we had Mr. Oyama. Did he live around there? Oyama-san? Eigo Kudo: What? Elsa Kudo: Did he live around Kawasaki? Eigo Kudo: Yeah. Elsa Kudo: Yeah. Eigo Kudo: Yeah. Elsa Kudo: Oh, okay. He was trilingual. He was a Nisei from Peru. But he married another Nisei from Peru. And then they were the ones who left to go to Japan after the war. And he was the one, because he was trilingual, he would translate what Grace or I or anyone else wrote in English. He would translate it to Japanese and then send it out. So he was a real force in Japan, but he died about two years ago. Eigo Kudo: Yeah. Elsa Kudo: Ne? So we' ; ve lost a great leader. Eigo Kudo: Honey, more than four years ago. Elsa Kudo: Is there more than four? Oh my gosh. He was a wonderful person, a wonderful giver. A wonderful person who did so much out of his own heart. Yeah. So we have no one now. Not that I know of. Katherine Nagasawa: You mean in Japan? Elsa Kudo: In Japan. Dare mo inai yo, ne? Mo. Eigo Kudo: What? Elsa Kudo: Nihon ni. Nobody' ; s there after Oyama-san. Eigo Kudo: Yeah. Nobody took leadership at all. Elsa Kudo: Well, everyone' ; s gone, or they' ; re all getting older. Eigo Kudo: Well, Oyama-san was one of those that went back from camp to Japan, and he graduated from the second university that' ; s famous in Japan. Elsa Kudo: Oh, he did? Eigo Kudo: Hitotsubashi. Elsa Kudo: Yeah. Most famous. Eigo Kudo: So now he knew Spanish, English, and Japanese. Elsa Kudo: Well. Eigo Kudo: And he worked for Sumitomo- Elsa Kudo: The big- Eigo Kudo: ... the trading company. And he went to Bueno Aires as a branch manager. Katherine Nagasawa: Oh, wow. Eigo Kudo: Yeah, because he knew Spanish. Then he came back and then he retired after he became 60. That' ; s when we met him when he retired. Katherine Nagasawa: Is he around your age or is he- Elsa Kudo: He' ; s a little older. Eigo Kudo: Yeah, he' ; s older than me. Elsa Kudo: So he died about four years ago, I guess. I thought it was two. He said four. Eigo Kudo: Wonderful guy. Elsa Kudo: So we miss him because whenever we went to Tokyo, he would come out and we have lunch. Eigo Kudo: His wife was on the Tami' ; s Peru-Kai broadcast. Katherine Nagasawa: I watched her. Eigo Kudo: She was the one that came out first and said Happy New Year in Japanese. Elsa Kudo: Yeah. Oh, she was in there? Eigo Kudo: Yeah. Oh, Mrs. Oyama. Elsa Kudo: Oyama-san. Yeah. Eigo Kudo: She is the only one that' ; s married a Peruvian to Peruvian like us. Elsa Kudo: Yeah. All the others married Japanese- Katherine Nagasawa: I see. Elsa Kudo: ... once they went to Japan. Katherine Nagasawa: Kind of nice that you both understand- Elsa Kudo: Yeah, it is. Katherine Nagasawa: ... those experiences and also have the Spanish. Elsa Kudo: Yes, yes, yes. Katherine Nagasawa: English. Elsa Kudo: Yes. Yeah. Katherine Nagasawa: I just want to be mindful of time. Elsa Kudo: Yes. Katherine Nagasawa: So I wanted to close but ask you if there' ; s any final words that you wanted to part with or final reflections on- Elsa Kudo: Final- Katherine Nagasawa: ... the Japanese Latin American redress efforts or the Japanese Latin American story. Elsa Kudo: Well, most of all, I think my husband and I feel the same, that we' ; d like to thank you for your effort in recording this for future generations, because we' ; ll be gone shortly. We' ; re in our 80s and 90s, so that' ; s " ; atari-mae" ; as they say --natural. But thank you for your interest and the fact that you are doing something for the future, not only now, but for the future, which is a big deal, really. So thank you. Katherine Nagasawa: Of course. It' ; s an honor to interview you both. Elsa Kudo: Thanks. Katherine Nagasawa: I' ; m just going to ask, if not can take a quick picture- Copyright held by the Japanese American Service Committee, Chicago, Illinois. video Footage may only be reproduced with permission from the Japanese American Service Committee Legacy Center. 0 https://digitalcollections.jasc-chicago.org/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=KudoElsa20221126.xml KudoElsa20221126.xml http://digitalcollections.jasc-chicago.org/omeka/collections/show/3 https://digitalcollections.jasc-chicago.org/omeka/items/browse?tags=Series%3A+Redress
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<a href="https://digitalcollections.jasc-chicago.org/omeka/items/show/2729" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Oral History Interview: Kudo, Eigo (11/26/2022)</a>
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Kudo, Elsa (11/26/2022)
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Elsa Kudo, a Peruvian of Japanese descent, describes her experience testifying at the Chicago CWRIC hearings about her family's experience of expulsion from Peru and incarceration at Crystal City. She recalls the difficulty Japanese Latin Americans faced in securing permission to give testimony at hearings in other cities and the role of her brother in persuading organizers in Chicago to allocate time for JLAs. She also shares about her experiences with the Campaign for Justice, negotiating with White House representatives to secure reparations for her family, serving on the Civil Liberties Public Education Committee, and publishing her father Seiichi Higashide's book, "Adios to Tears." Of note are her reflections on Peru-kai, a recurring event for formerly incarcerated Japanese Peruvians and their descendants that began in Chicago and has become international in scope.
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2022-11-26
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video
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Series: Redress
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Title
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JASC Legacy Center Oral History Collection
Subject
The topic of the resource
Japanese Americans--History.
Description
An account of the resource
This collection contains oral history interviews from the Japanese American Service Committee (JASC) Legacy Center's holdings. Where available, transcriptions have been included and synced to the recordings to enable full-text searching.
Interviews were recorded at various times, some by JASC staff and some by external partners, often supported by grant funding. See the metadata associated with each interview for full details.
This digital collection will continue to grow as new interviews are recorded, and as additional pre-existing recordings are received by donation or discovered in the physical archives.
The digitization and transcription of many of the recordings in this collection, the recording of interviews between July 2018 and June 2021, and the creation of this publicly accessible digital platform, were funded by a Japanese American Confinements Sites (JACS) grant awarded by the National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior. The JASC Legacy Center gratefully acknowledges the financial support received between 2018 and 2021 that enabled this project to succeed.
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expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views
of the U.S. Department of the Interior.
This material received Federal financial assistance for the preservation and interpretation of
U.S. confinement sites where Japanese Americans were detained during World War II.
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Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Japanese American Service Committee (Chicago, Ill.). Legacy Center
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Japanese American Service Committee (Chicago, Ill.). Legacy Center
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Kuramitsu, Keilyn
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Kuramitsu, Hawao
OHMS Object Text
5.4 11/16/2017 Kuramitsu, Hawao (11/16/2017) 0:41:40 JASC_OHP JASC Legacy Center Oral History Collection TTCFM Then They Came for Me Japanese American Service Committee Legacy Center Recorded with financial support from the Alphawood Foundation Chicago. Transcribed and made accessible online with financial support from the Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Japanese American Confinement Sites grant program. Kuramitsu, Hawao Kuramitsu, Keilyn video 0 https://vimeo.com/302205865 Vimeo video < ; iframe src=" ; https://player.vimeo.com/video/302205865?h=638c7156c2" ; width=" ; 640" ; height=" ; 360" ; frameborder=" ; 0" ; allow=" ; autoplay ; fullscreen ; picture-in-picture" ; allowfullscreen> ; < ; /iframe> ; [NOTE: This transcript has not undergone a final proofreading and may contain errors. It is being provided in draft form to enhance access to the video recording. As soon as possible, it will be replaced with a final, corrected transcript and will be synced to the video to provide clickable timecodes.] KeilynKuramitsu: 00:00 Where were you born and raised? Hawao Kuramitsu: 00:02 Where was I born? KK: 00:04 And raised? HK: 00:06 In Honokaa, Hawai' ; i. KK: 00:09 What, what' ; s your birthday? HK: 00:11 March 27, 1925. KK: 00:18 What can you tell me about growing up in Hawai' ; i? HK: 00:21 Hawai' ; i was lot, lots of fun. Freedom. Lots of fresh fruits, you know out of the trees and the weather was nice. And I, I lived a, about half a mile away from the ocean up in the hill or so. The ocean we could see it right there. KK: 00:55 What are some of your fondest memories of living on the Big Island? HK: 01:02 On the Big Island? KK: 01:04 Yeah. What are some of your fond memories? Do you have any specific memories of things you did with friends, with HK: 01:10 Oh, well, you know, we didn' ; t have much to do. We, the ocean was so far away. Um, the only swimming we could do was in a pond. Oh, what we, what we did was we went to the uh, big, um, uh, where, where they kept water and you know, that' ; s how we, in a water cooled off from the heat. KK: 01:48 So how long did you live in Hawai' ; i? HK: 01:51 All my life until I came to the mainland. KK: 01:55 When did you come to the mainland? HK: 01:58 19, I think it was 1958. KK: 02:04 What brought you to the mainland? HK: 02:06 I went to school. KK: 02:09 Where did you go to school and what did you study? HK: 02:11 Chicago. I went into uh youth work? KK: 02:18 So what did you do exactly? HK: 02:20 Hm? KK: 02:20 What did you do? HK: 02:22 What did I do? KK: 02:23 Yes. What' ; s youth work? HK: 02:26 Well, after I graduated I, I always, ah, I need into camping. They offered me camping so I, my life was camping. KK: 02:39 So what did you do? Did you work at a camp? Did you operate a camp? HK: 02:44 I operated a camp. Re recruit, recruited the kids, but ah, hard work was a person checking you and but after that the teacher would be coming back all the time though we weren' ; t, wasn' ; t that hard work. It was ah, it was okay. I enjoyed it. KK: 03:17 Who were the kids that came to your camp and what was your camp called? HK: 03:20 Oh, Camp Shannon. And uh the kids were inner city kids, from uh, from the community green and from the near South side. KK: 03:36 And what did they do at camp? HK: 03:38 What did they do? Everything they enjoyed it, they must have if they were coming back. KK: 03:46 Were there activities for the kids? HK: 03:48 Well, yes. Everything. We had counselors, I work with them to swimming. KK: 03:59 So in 1958 you moved to Chicago from the Big island of Hawai' ; i. HK: 04:05 Right. KK: 04:13 And you moved to Chicago for school? HK: 04:16 I went to school, yes. KK: 04:18 Where did you go to school and what did you study? HK: 04:20 Youth work. KK: 04:23 Okay. What, what college or university? HK: 04:29 George Williams College. They' ; re anymore, they were on the South side. KK: 04:46 What was your first impression of Chicago? HK: 04:50 I liked it. You know there' ; s so much to do. We had a change of a climate, summer, winter. And I, I enjoyed the snow too anyway. KK: 05:05 You did? HK: 05:08 Oh yeah. KK: 05:10 Was it a difficult transition to go from living on an island to a city in the middle of the country? HK: 05:21 No. No. No difference. Except that the weather, it was either cold or hot. KK: 05:31 What about food? HK: 05:33 Food, didn' ; t matter. Because I like any kind of food. KK: 05:41 So I want to backtrack for a second and ask you about Pearl Harbor. HK: 05:51 Pearl Harbor KK: 05:51 What do you remember that day and if so, what can you tell me about that day? HK: 05:57 See the date I' ; m not sure. Whether, you know, it' ; s been so long. I think it' ; s, 1940, 1941 or so. It was on a Sunday. I usually get up early and then I heard it over the radio. You know, they were bombing Pearl Harbor and so we ran, I ran out but they sent us all home and we, had to stay in our vicinity, in the home. Blackout. KK: 06:41 Who sent you home? HK: 06:42 Oh, they had a, you know people that were in charge. KK: 06:48 Who is in charge? HK: 06:49 Oh, the, the, well, the gov, the State. They had people, the Army. KK: 07:00 Were Japanese Americans or Hawaiian Americans telling you you had to? HK: 07:05 No, no, no. We had, they stayed away from anything. They left it alone because that was the best thing they did. There wasn' ; t a, like the main land where they move them. They couldn' ; t move us anyway. There wouldn' ; t have been enough space. There wouldn' ; t have been enough people to do it. KK: 07:29 But were are you afraid? HK: 07:31 No, no, no. It was okay. KK: 07:37 Um, tell me about your parents. HK: 07:41 My parents, my parents, my dad was a, from Japan. My mom was from Hawai' ; i, so I' ; ve, I, I know you ah, Yonsei, fourth generation because she was born in Hawai' ; i too. KK: 08:03 What were your parents HK: 08:05 He, he, he was a mechanic. Had his own garage and he did real well. KK: 08:15 Why did he move from Japan to Hawai' ; i? HK: 08:18 Well, looking for something better to do and he did okay. He' ; d traveled back and forth. KK: 08:28 Did he ever have any problems traveling to and from Japan? HK: 08:31 No, no, no, no. KK: 08:31 Did he travel before and after the war or did it end? When did that end? HK: 08:40 Before the war. It ended when the war started though. He couldn' ; t go back until after the war was over. KK: 08:55 And what did your mom do? HK: 08:57 My mom was a housewife. She didn' ; t like to move, she didn' ; t like to roam around. So she just stayed there. KK: 09:09 How did your parents meet? HK: 09:12 Well, if I guess ah, they must have, you know, somebody in between and. KK: 09:18 And what were they like? HK: 09:24 Oh, they were like, okay. They never bothered me because they never saw me anyway. KK: 09:33 Why did they never see you? HK: 09:34 Because I wasn' ; t home at, you know, that, that often. I never had meals with them. KK: 09:42 Were you always busy? HK: 09:42 Busy doing something else with a, you know, my friends and. We were, we were big. You know, I like my a, I, I like my, about playing baseball and basketball and well so, that' ; s what we did all the time. KK: 10:07 Did life change after Pearl Harbor, for you? HK: 10:16 Uh, hard to say because I wasn' ; t doing anything and nothing bothered us. We weren' ; t, you know, they didn' ; t put us in a cage or put us in a Camp or anything. We had all the freedom so. KK: 10:34 Was anything different? HK: 10:35 Different for me? No. You know, yeah. I grew up, my community, a lot of Filipinos, so I grew up, you know, among them. There was only one Chinese. We were good friends, went to school together. No Koreans. No, no, no whites. No, whites were more upper level in a big, big, big get all the money and so. KK: 11:18 Was it, what was it like to move from a place where you' ; re not a minority, being a Japanese American in Hawai' ; i, there are a lot of different Asians living in Hawai' ; i. What' ; s it like going from that type of environment to now moving in Chicago, in which nobody looks like you, everyone looks a lot different? HK: 11:50 Actually. Uh, uh, you know, the the whites are, the brothers were in Chicago, so we had back up and it made no difference for us. We, you know, we were, we would be going to fishing and camping. KK: 12:27 So why did it not make any difference to you? Were you still being treated the same? Like you were in Hawai' ; i? HK: 12:36 Well, nobody bothered us and our, there were lots of Japanese here in Chi, Chicago area so. KK: 12:46 So HK: 12:50 My, my biggest, uh, thing was when I, I graduated college, uh, camping. I went into camping in the, there was a church group that we connected and they, you know, we became very good friends and they were basically all Japanese so. KK: 13:10 Do you know the church group? HK: 13:18 Uh, they' ; re, they' ; re all gone but the church is still there. KK: 13:25 Do you know what the church is called? HK: 13:28 Uh, no. I forgot but it' ; s on the near West side and the North side, Rockwell Street area. KK: 13:48 How did you connect with that church group? HK: 13:54 Oh, I would say, uh, when I took over the camp, I had lots of people, you know, friends that would come and help me in camp. Set up the camp, clean the camp and you know, a few of them were very good friend, neighbors where I lived. And you know, they had the church there, they came up and they liked it because they had good time. KK: 14:33 Were you religious? HK: 14:35 Hm? KK: 14:35 Were you religious growing up? HK: 14:37 Who? Me? No, I wasn' ; t. We were, we were never that religious. No. KK: 14:48 So why did you join the church group? HK: 14:52 I didn' ; t join them, they joined me. In a, in a way ours happen to have them because they, they were helping me and they were happy to be busy doing something on the weekends and operation goal. KK: 15:10 And it must be it, what, what was it like to find a community in Chicago? What was it like when you discovered a bunch of Japanese Americans? HK: 15:24 Uh, well to begin with. At the uh, her brothers were here, so you know, it wasn' ; t that hard. You' ; re gonna they had their family and, yeah. KK: 15:55 Can we talk about the period in between? So Pearl Harbor happens in 1941, you moved to Chicago in 1958. HK: 16:07 Right. KK: 16:08 So can we talk about the years? 1941 to 1958, what were you doing and where were you? HK: 16:18 Oh, where was I? I was home. Oh KK: 16:22 So following Pearl Harbor HK: 16:25 Oh it, I minded that nothing but uh, we were, we, we we did everything we wanted to do. We uh, we got married during that time and uh, we had a kid, and when then we decided, you know, I would like to go to school. So we came up to the mainland. I used to spend a lot um working with young kids. KK: 16:54 Um, specifically after Pearl Harbor, what did you do? HK: 17:07 Pearl Harbor? KK: 17:08 December 7th, 1941. HK: 17:11 Nothing much. Just we, because we couldn' ; t go out, blackout. We had to stay quite awhile. Every day was blackout, no school. KK: 17:26 So what was blackout exactly? HK: 17:29 No lights, in the night. KK: 17:33 You, you weren' ; t allowed to go to school? HK: 17:36 Huh? KK: 17:36 You weren' ; t allowed to go to school? HK: 17:38 Oh no, no, no, no. Yeah, our school was closed too. KK: 17:43 For how long? HK: 17:44 I would say half a year, I think. KK: 17:46 Why was the school closed? HK: 17:52 Because of the war. KK: 17:56 So you had to be in your home at a certain time? HK: 18:03 Right. KK: 18:03 You had to have the lights out? No lights? HK: 18:05 No lights, no. KK: 18:08 And school was closed? HK: 18:10 Blackout. KK: 18:12 What did you do? HK: 18:17 Read. You know, listen to TV, you know, I mean uh, at that time TV wasn' ; t that good, but the radio. And we were at a ballpark playing, getting together and so we, we, we it was okay. We amused ourselves. KK: 18:50 You okay? HK: 18:55 I' ; m okay. KK: 18:58 Do you want any water or tissues? HK: 18:59 No. KK: 19:03 How old you were? Let' ; s see. 1940 you' ; re 21 when Pearl Harbor happened. No, no, sorry, no, you were 17 when Pearl Harbor happened? HK: 19:18 Something like that, yeah. KK: 19:20 So you were still in high school? HK: 19:22 I was still in high school, yeah. I think uh, I think a Sophomore maybe. KK: 19:34 So. HK: 19:34 And then we, we missed half, a half a year of school. And then when I went back I was a junior. KK: 19:43 Was it difficult? HK: 19:45 Oh, no, no, no. We were happy to be back in school because I got to see all our friends. KK: 19:56 Did you ever hear any stories, um, during this time about Japanese Americans being seen as disloyal or helping Japan or anything like that? HK: 20:13 Oh no, no no, no. They had no problem in Hawai' ; i. They had, as far as we know none, none around. Except um, Kibei' ; s or. See the first people that they took in were the priest and what. Then the ones that were, you know, very, um, they took quite heavily in the church and those people, they, they picked up and they, they were in camp. KK: 20:53 Why did they take those people? HK: 20:57 Well, they, they, they never gave them a chance to be, you know, they' ; re very probably [coughing]. Probably loyalty. They had no choice but. KK: 21:20 Was there any fear that your father would be taken away? HK: 21:26 No. He, he had, uh, [coughing] he had a good record. And, uh, he was, he, many of the big, big timers. Why, why they liked him because he, he, he took care of there uh, you know, what their, their needs. So they didn' ; t want to lose him and he was okay. He, all he did was do his thing and. KK: 22:04 Was there a story where you thought that he might be taken away and the family had to pack bags? HK: 22:12 Well, when they, when they, when they took the, uh, church, uh, priests, you know, my dad was very, very close to the church and what. But they, like I say, the people liked him and they vouched for him and. KK: 22:36 So what did you do after graduating high school? HK: 22:40 Who me? I uh, I worked at, uh, I, well, well I just uh stayed back and um, worked with my dad, in the garage. KK: 23:00 When did you join the military intelligence service? HK: 23:05 When they drafted me. KK: 23:07 When did they draft you? HK: 23:10 Gee, it' ; s been a long time. 19, just before the war broke out, I was in the Army. KK: 23:28 Before the war? HK: 23:31 Just before. KK: 23:31 So before Pearl Harbor? HK: 23:38 Mhm. No no no, after Pearl Harbor. KK: 23:46 Mmm. HK: 23:46 Because, uh, my, my recollection is there were, sending us to uh, you know, language school. There were so many, you know in the Army. And they were sending us for interpreters and uh, the war ended when we were on a boat heading for the mainland to school. KK: 24:15 Hmm HK: 24:16 But they continued send out, when I ended up in Texas for basic training. KK: 24:26 What was that experience like? HK: 24:28 Okay. You know, you were with your friends and we did together everything. We were, we were a little better than the minority, the Black, you know, they were segregated like that but on a bus they had to sit in the back, but we all sat in the back too, because many of our, our group was Hawaiians and they were dark skinned too. Yeah. You have to use a different toilet that was in Texas. KK: 25:12 Was that surprising for you? HK: 25:14 Well for us? Well, it didn' ; t bother us. We, we, we, we uh, basically we all, well we were Black. So we were in the back of the bus, the driver didn' ; t like it, but what could he do? In town, we used the, you know, segregated bathroom and. KK: 25:44 Why did you feel like you were Black instead of white? HK: 25:48 Because we weren' ; t white. I guess our feeling was that we will, you know, we minority we have to back, you know, help each other. KK: 26:11 Was there segregation in Hawai' ; i? HK: 26:18 Yeah, I don' ; t think so. Because otherwise, you know, they couldn' ; t do that to the Japanese because majority and so they just left people alone, which was the best thing they did. KK: 26:38 So you, so you didn' ; t experience segregation until you came to the mainland? HK: 26:45 Segregation, yes, no. Especially in Texas. KK: 26:47 What was that like? HK: 26:52 When we up, when we went to north. North defense. I spent time at a Minneapolis language school, we were there. So Chicago, you know, Chicago was six hours, so whenever we had, they all could, we all go to, we all came to Chicago. KK: 27:38 So when you were in language school, what did you do? How did they, how did they train you? Or teach you? And who did you train alongside, other Japanese Americans, different minorities, Caucasians? HK: 27:51 There, there were, you know, Kibei. In other words, you know, Japanese American, Japanese, American, but they were very good, they were Japanese and Japan and American, a relationship there. And, uh, they were a lot of a very good ah teachers, you know, no, none, none were white though. KK: 28:23 What were your living accommodations like? Did you live with all Japanese American soldiers or did you live with other people? Was it segregated or no? HK: 28:34 Oh no, no, no, no. KK: 28:37 We, we, we, we were a mix. Like I say, Filipinos, Portuguese. HK: 28:46 But no white people? KK: 28:53 Well, Portuguese were white. HK: 28:53 Okay. Umm. So why, so how, for how long did were you training for the military intelligence service? And when did they send you back to Hawai' ; i? HK: 29:24 Oh, oh, my military career was going to, you know, the school. And I know I say a year and a half my military and then in the end, they sent us home. KK: 29:44 And then what did you HK: 29:45 They were, say uh, they, they, they couldn' ; t turn us, not that, they didn' ; t want to send us to Japan because our time was almost over and it was just like a free trip going and they have, they have to send you home. So they said I' ; m just going home. KK: 30:07 What did you do after, once you returned to Hawaii? HK: 30:11 Yeah, I think I didn' ; t do much. I just stayed. KK: 30:17 Do you remember what year they sent you back to Hawaii? HK: 30:20 No, it' ; s been so long ago. KK: 30:24 When did you meet your wife? Do you remember what year that was or what you were doing? HK: 30:31 Quite awhile. A long time ago. KK: 30:42 Why did you never visit Japan? HK: 30:49 Well, I went to language school, but uh, I guess my time was closed, why they didn' ; t send me. And I wasn' ; t that interested in a way. Some of my friends says, well, you were lucky because, you know, they didn' ; t like, they didn' ; t like the Japanese. That interpreters, that you know like most of them, most of the interprets were from Hawaii so was dark skin like, where the other Japanese were white like. So they treated them um not, well, when they had day off, they' ; d go down, you know, to the restaurants and what. They cater to the Americans, but the Japanese, you know, you had to, the Japanese ignored you. Well, they didn' ; t like us to begin with, so you know, it' ; s like, why are you here? You know, they wonder why. KK: 32:11 So why weren' ; t you interested in going to Japan? Because you heard that Japanese people were not kind HK: 32:20 No, no KK: 32:20 to Japanese Americans? HK: 32:21 No, actually, my, my time was almost up and I wasn' ; t gonna spend three more years, so. KK: 32:32 But why did you personally, you know, even years later, you know, decades later, why did you HK: 32:37 Well, I wasn' ; t that interested in going, I haven' ; t been there period. KK: 32:44 But why no interest? HK: 32:46 No interest. KK: 32:46 But why? HK: 32:50 Oh well, I just didn' ; t care to go. I guess. KK: 33:05 When you moved to Chicago in 1958 did you, did you intend to stay in Chicago? HK: 33:16 Well, when I, when I graduated and, uh, from college and you know, in interview I had offer from Hawaii to go back, to work. But what you call, but mom, she says I' ; m not going back. He was an immigrant and going back to Hawaii again. And in a time I got tied in with camping so. KK: 33:46 Why didn' ; t your wife want to go back to Hawaii? HK: 33:53 Well, her family was all here. KK: 33:59 Was that a difficult decision for you? HK: 34:02 No. No, no, no. I, you guys have made it easier for me because then I could just take camping. KK: 34:14 Do you have any fond memories or what, what are some of your fondest memories of living and working in Chicago? HK: 34:26 Well, I would say, you know, I had never any kind of a problem with people. We are, we' ; ve made good friends with, you know, different people, the church group. Well, you might, because I was in camping so they would, I got to know many of them and uh, I would say, we just establish, established ourselves. Um, suddenly I realized that you made more money by being up here. KK: 35:17 Can you tell me more information about the Japanese American community in Chicago? Where most people lived? What most people like to do? HK: 35:27 No. You see, I don' ; t, I because I was camping. I wouldn' ; t, I didn' ; t spend too much time in Chicago. I was away. The only time I saw many people were when they came to camp. And grammar, grammar, taught school. So she didn' ; t want to move too. KK: 35:57 Where did you live when you first moved to Chicago? HK: 36:07 Northside. KK: 36:10 Do you remember the address? HK: 36:13 No. Oh, we were at Agatite 9 whatever. Then we moved to uh well, a [Argyle?]. KK: 36:24 Barnard Street, Barnard. HK: 36:35 Yeah. KK: 36:35 Where you were living, were there other Japanese American families living in those areas? HK: 36:44 Oh yeah. Oh yeah. They were all over. KK: 36:48 So when you lived in Chicago, you' ; ve lived in Chicago since 1958 that' ; s you know, over 50 years, living in Chicago. It' ; s more over 60 years actually. You' ; ve never, you never in Chicago, ever experienced any, any racism or was made uncomfortable? HK: 37:18 Oh no, no, no. Well actually, you had your own friend, and you know family and you know. KK: 37:28 Did it seem that people generally accepted Japanese Americans? HK: 37:32 Oh yeah, they accepted. KK: 37:41 Why did you decide to study youth work? HK: 37:44 Hm? KK: 37:44 Why did you decide to study youth work? HK: 37:47 Why did I decide? KK: 37:49 To study youth work? HK: 37:54 Study? KK: 37:54 You studied youth work at George Williams College. Why did you decide to study? HK: 38:00 What? Studied what? KK: 38:02 You studied youth work. Why did you choose to study that? HK: 38:07 Oh, because I wanted to work with young kid. KK: 38:13 Why did you want to work with young kids? HK: 38:16 Because I, before I moved here, I spend a lot of time one, a boy scout and and then all of a sudden I had a chance to go to school and get paid to do something like that too. KK: 38:38 What did you like about working with young kids? HK: 38:43 Oh, it was fun, doing this, doing that and they, you know, the enjoyed, big smiles and. KK: 39:02 What did you do with your free time when you weren' ; t working? What were some of your hobbies in Chicago? HK: 39:22 Oh, nothing much, I liked to cook, garden. KK: 39:37 What did you like to cook? HK: 39:37 Huh? KK: 39:39 What do you like to cook? HK: 39:40 Anything KK: 39:46 Did you cook? Did you learn how to cook when you were young or when? How did you learn how to cook? HK: 39:52 No. No. When I, when I worked with a young kid, boy scout. KK: 40:08 Is there anything I didn' ; t ask you that you wished I asked or anything you want to say about your life that I didn' ; t touch upon? HK: 40:17 No, I think uh, I enjoyed what I did, what I had. I, uh, nothing, nothing, nothing can take the place of doing what you wanted to do and my big thing was working with young kids and uh. KK: 40:38 What are some of your hopes for. HK: 40:59 Hm? KK: 40:59 What are some of your hopes for future generations, or do you have any advice for your grandchildren? HK: 41:08 Okay, hope they do what they want to do and have a good life. KK: 41:18 What' ; s a good life? HK: 41:22 When, when you are, well, when you did things and you enjoyed it. And you, you did it because you enjoyed it and had a good time. Copyright held by the Japanese American Service Committee, Chicago, Illinois. video Interviews may only be reproduced with permission from the Japanese American Service Committee Legacy Center. 0 http://digitalcollections.jasc-chicago.org/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=KuramitsuHawao20171116.xml KuramitsuHawao20171116.xml http://digitalcollections.jasc-chicago.org/omeka/collections/show/1 http://digitalcollections.jasc-chicago.org/omeka/find?tags=Series%3A+Then+They+Came+for+Me& ; layout=1
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Title
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Kuramitsu, Hawao (11/16/2017)
Date
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2017-11-16
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Series: Then They Came for Me
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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JASC Legacy Center Oral History Collection
Subject
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Japanese Americans--History.
Description
An account of the resource
This collection contains oral history interviews from the Japanese American Service Committee (JASC) Legacy Center's holdings. Where available, transcriptions have been included and synced to the recordings to enable full-text searching.
Interviews were recorded at various times, some by JASC staff and some by external partners, often supported by grant funding. See the metadata associated with each interview for full details.
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Japanese American Service Committee (Chicago, Ill.). Legacy Center
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Japanese American Service Committee (Chicago, Ill.). Legacy Center
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Takada, Anna
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Kurisu, Eunice
OHMS Object Text
5.4 9/23/2017 Kurisu, Eunice (9/23/2017) 0:51:52 JASC_OHP JASC Legacy Center Oral History Collection TTCFM Then They Came for Me Japanese American Service Committee Legacy Center Recorded with financial support from the Alphawood Foundation Chicago. Transcribed and made accessible online with financial support from the Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Japanese American Confinement Sites grant program. Kurisu, Eunice Takada, Anna video 0 https://vimeo.com/300641403 Vimeo video < ; iframe src=" ; https://player.vimeo.com/video/300641403?h=165a281d22" ; width=" ; 640" ; height=" ; 360" ; frameborder=" ; 0" ; allow=" ; autoplay ; fullscreen ; picture-in-picture" ; allowfullscreen> ; < ; /iframe> ; [NOTE: This transcript has not undergone a final proofreading and may contain errors. It is being provided in draft form to enhance access to the video recording. As soon as possible, it will be replaced with a final, corrected transcript and will be synced to the video to provide clickable timecodes.] Anna Takada: 00:00 Hi, can you just state your first and last name? Eunice Kurisu: 00:04 Eunice Kurisu. AT: 00:06 Okay, and then, um, so where, where and when were you born? EK: 00:13 I was born in Norwalk, California, August, the 10th, 1925. AT: 00:20 And can you tell me a little bit about your hometown? EK: 00:24 I really don' ; t know much about it. And we moved several times in a very short period of time. And my father passed away when we, I was not quite four. So, um AT: 00:42 Where, where would you move to? Where were some of the places you were moving? EK: 00:50 Um, I really don' ; t remember, exactly. But we ended up, that I could remember, was Santa Monica. And, um, my mother worked as a custodian in the church there. AT: 01:10 And did you have any siblings? EK: 01:13 I have two older brothers and a sister, brother, younger. So I' ; m the middle child. AT: 01:20 Okay, so five total? EK: 01:21 Five children. AT: 01:23 And so was it, it was just your mom and your siblings when you were moving around? EK: 01:26 No, well, at first, um, there were four of us siblings actually when my father passed away and my mother remarried a couple of years later and my younger brother was born, so he' ; s a stepbrother. But AT: 01:42 And, um, when did she marry your stepfather? EK: 01:50 Um, 1931, I believe. AT: 01:57 And, and what did he do? What did your stepfather do? EK: 02:03 Huh? AT: 02:03 For work? EK: 02:05 Oh, he was a gardener. Not a very efficient one because apparently he didn' ; t work too well, but, so my mother was really the breadwinner actually. AT: 02:22 So was Santa Monica the the place you remember the best of your childhood? EK: 02:29 No, not really. Um, we, after we married, after they got married and my brother was born, we lived near Hollywood for a short period of time. And then we moved to, um, a Japanese family was moving to Japan and they had a chicken farm. And so we moved there. And that was in Vernon, California. AT: 02:59 And how long was your family there? EK: 03:00 We were there probably from 1933 til 1940. AT: 03:10 So quite some time. Seven years. EK: 03:13 Yeah. And, uh, the summer of 1940, the property was sold, so we had to move and, uh, we were able to purchase some acreage in Downey and we lived there for, until the war broke out. AT: 03:33 What kind of property was it or what were you farming? EK: 03:37 Well, it was, still. She still stayed with the chickens, but it was a five acre lot and it had a lot of fruit trees on it. And she worked very hard all those years. AT: 03:55 And as a, as a child, um, what was that like moving around so often? Did you like it or? EK: 04:04 Didn' ; t know any better. AT: 04:06 Sure. And um, and what about, um, school for you as a kid? EK: 04:18 It went fairly well, I guess. I, um, when I lived near Hollywood and I went to grammar school there and um, for some reason or other that they skipped me a half a year, in second grade, then they, the following year they skipped me another half a year. So I was a year ahead of most and so my age. Which now that I look back could be not an advantage really, since you' ; re not mature enough to, you know, associate with kids a year, younger year, older than you are. AT: 05:04 And in some of these areas that you were going to school, um, did you know other Japanese American families? EK: 05:12 I can' ; t remember any, uh, except after we moved to Vernon, there were several Japanese families. Yes. AT: 05:22 So was that, was that a different kind of experience? EK: 05:25 Well, yeah, in a way it was, it was a little different, but we never lived, uh, really in the Japanese community as such. And my mother was a hardworking woman and there was very little time for social activities. So we pretty much had to entertain ourselves. AT: 05:52 The kids? EK: 05:54 Well, we were in a rural area, so. AT: 05:59 And, um, did your parents come to the U.S. from Japan? EK: 06:05 Yes, yes. My mother and father came in, uh, um, early part of 1920, ' ; 21. And, um, my oldest brother, my mother was pregnant with my oldest brother about seven months and she would definitely wanted him to be born here. So she came on the ship. AT: 06:36 Why was that? EK: 06:38 Well, because she wanted him to be born in the United States and as it would happen, um, after my father passed away, um, there were four of us. My youngest sister was about a month and a half old at the time. And, um, her parents in Japan wanted to have her come back to Japan to help take care of us. But she said that they' ; re all American citizens and they' ; re going to stay here. AT: 07:20 And, and your parents where in Japan were they from? EK: 07:24 Kagawa ken AT: 07:26 Both of them? EK: 07:27 Yes. Well, no, I' ; m not sure about my father. I just remember my mother saying as she was. AT: 07:37 And then, uh, where were you in Vernon, um, when, uh, the war broke out? EK: 07:46 No, we were in Downey. AT: 07:48 In Downey? EK: 07:48 Yes. Because that was in 1941, December. Uh, so we have been just been in Downey for a year when the war broke out. And, um, that year, September we were able to buy our first brand new car. It was a four door, Plymouth and December, the war broke out and we went to camp in April 14th of ' ; 42. AT: 08:28 When, when your family got that car, was that, was that exciting news? EK: 08:34 Yes, it was. Well, of course, you know, we were all, we had nothing but used cars up until then. So it was really, it was nice. AT: 08:50 And, um, so in December, do you remember the actual day that Pearl Harbor was attacked? EK: 09:00 It was a Sunday afternoon. AT: 09:03 And do you remember what you were doing at the time or when you found out about it? EK: 09:08 I can' ; t. We probably had gone to church that morning and sometime in the early afternoon. I' ; m not sure. We must' ; ve heard it on the radio. AT: 09:25 How old would you have been? How old were you at that time? EK: 09:27 I would have been 16. AT: 09:36 And, um, what kind of church did your family go to? EK: 09:41 It was called the Union Church of Los Angeles. So it' ; s um congregational and Presbyterian. AT: 09:55 Uh, did you always go to church since you could remember, since you were a kid? EK: 09:59 Going? AT: 09:59 Going to church, did you always go to church? EK: 10:05 Oh yes. As a child, yes, we all went. AT: 10:13 When you were in high school, did you do any other extracurriculars or anything outside of school? EK: 10:19 Um, no, not really. I helped with my mother with eggs, every afternoon it was the seven day week job. AT: 10:34 So that would be outside of school hours? EK: 10:36 Yeah. Yeah. AT: 10:38 And, and what were some of the tasks that you had? EK: 10:40 Well, it was mostly in sorting out the eggs and um, cleaning them if they were dirty and then weighing them to make sure, you know, large, medium, small. AT: 10:55 And was that something that all of your siblings did? EK: 10:58 Well, I did. My brother' ; s helped with the feeding of the chickens everyday. And taking care of them otherwise. AT: 11:12 So when you were 16 and you, you got the news about Pearl Harbor, did you think anything of it or what, what was your reaction? EK: 11:19 Well, typical teenager, you know, could change at the time, but as time went on, it got more serious. We didn' ; t know what was coming. AT: 11:38 Did you talk about it with your family, your parents, or your older brother? EK: 11:43 Probably with my brothers, a little bit, but we didn' ; t anticipate what would happened. AT: 11:52 And then, um, when did he, do you know, remember when the Evacuation Orders came out or when you heard about them? EK: 12:00 It was, it was probably the early part of April or end of March or early part of April. Yeah. And actually the one notice that we got that we had to be at a certain place at a certain time was a week before. So April 7th, I guess, cause we, we boarded a bus with what we could carry, not knowing for me, we were going on the 14th, and then we ended up in Santa Anita. AT: 12:42 Can you tell me a little bit more, if you' ; re able to remember. Um, can you describe what, what happens and, and what was going on with your family when you got those orders? When you instructed by your, your? EK: 13:04 My mother never said too much about it, and we just followed instructions when she gave us some. But, um, I remember, um, when we got the date that we had to be at a certain place was a week before and I had to call my oldest brother who had just graduated from USC and he was working in something there. And so I had to call him on the phone to tell him that he had to come home right away and get ready to leave. That was the most that I can remember. AT: 13:53 And so that, that phone call that was on you to make, not your mom? EK: 14:01 Yeah, I made, I made the phone call because she had other things to get together with only a week to do it in, you know. So. AT: 14:18 So did your, your mother, did she have to sell the car and the land? EK: 14:24 I really don' ; t know what happened, but we left it on the property. And it was leased to um [Grain and Milling Company?] That they bought the feed to feed chickens from. And I don' ; t know what the details of that were. AT: 14:43 And then so, your oldest brother, did he meet you back, um, at home or did you meet somewhere else? EK: 14:51 Oh, no, he came, he was living at home at the time. He just happened to be at work when I heard news and I had tell him to um, come home. AT: 15:03 And then, so, um, how did you all get to Santa Anita? EK: 15:12 Our neighbor across the street who had a, dairy drove us up to the corner of Paramount and Firestone in Downey. We didn' ; t know what we' ; re gonna see, but we' ; ve got a, they loaded us on buses. They didn' ; t tell us anything. AT: 15:37 Were there. Were there other families? EK: 15:39 Yes, yes, yes. It was a full bus. AT: 15:48 And um, how long was that, that trip? Cause you' ; re, you on the bus, you didn' ; t know where you were going? EK: 15:54 Um, probably a little bit more than half an hour. They did, we got off the bus and there were words and Anita and the Burks were not completed yet. So we were housed in the stables for about a month or so until they completed. AT: 16:23 When you arrived, um, did you have to register or anything or what happened? EK: 16:28 Yes. Well, like I say, the parents did everything, so I just tagged along. You go here, you go there. But um, it was the younger kids, they didn' ; t really care about what was happening there, just to be in a different place and. People, um, after, after we were settled, um, we were able to get a job, something within the camp too. Um, and uh, I worked in the recreation department and they organized a baseball league for after dinner. And my job was to keep track of the standings of the teams and betting averages, which they printed in the camp newspaper every week. And my, my oldest brother was on the editorial staff, Santa Anita paper, Pacemaker it was called. AT: 18:01 Why was it called that? Do you know? EK: 18:07 It, part of the horse racing thing, I guess. I don' ; t know who named it, but that' ; s what they called it at time. AT: 18:18 Do you remember your own first impressions of Santa Anita when you arrived? EK: 18:24 Well, it was different. It was um, because everybody you saw was Japanese, which was unusual for me to be in that environment. Um, but you, you know, they' ; re people just like you are, you know, so. We got along as pretty much, I know my younger brother and sister enjoyed the idea of going to a mess hall with their friends rather than with the family. And they would play from early morning until it got dark. And parents had very little control over what they did during the day. Cause there were so many kids running around. Of course, they did a organize and start school for the younger children, which was good. AT: 19:38 Did you know anyone, um, in camp that you knew from before or in Santa Anita rather? EK: 19:51 Maybe a couple, but not very many. AT: 19:58 And were you making any friends? EK: 20:00 Yes. Yes, yes. Well, naturally the people you work with and your neighbors, and. AT: 20:06 And um, did you have to go to school in addition to having the job or did you know? EK: 20:20 I was, I was a senior in high school at the time. AT: 20:23 Because you skipped a couple of grades? Cause you were 16? EK: 20:28 Yes. So um, they had a graduation ceremony for us in Santa Anita and my high school had sent my diploma from the high school, so I received it there. And, it, of course, in 2004, they let me go to another graduation, with the graduating class and received another one. AT: 20:58 That was with, um, which graduating class from? EK: 21:03 Downey High School. AT: 21:05 Oh wow. EK: 21:07 My children went to Warren, Warren High School, which is a second high school, but it wasn' ; t built until after the, long after the war, so. AT: 21:18 And then, um, so how long was your family in Santa Anita? EK: 21:26 From April til I' ; m thinking late September, early October maybe. AT: 21:37 And do you remember how many students were in the graduating class at Santa Anita? EK: 21:45 No, no idea. AT: 21:46 Was it, was it a lot of people or was it a smaller class? EK: 21:51 I really have no recollection of that because they were from a wide area of schools. I don' ; t remember, I don' ; t actually remember the ceremony itself, but I know we did have one. AT: 22:09 And then as far as, uh, living and sleeping and all of that, was your family in the same um? EK: 22:16 Barrack. AT: 22:19 Mhm. EK: 22:19 Yeah. One, one barrack room. AT: 22:24 And. EK: 22:24 No furniture except the Army cots. AT: 22:28 Did you all have your own cots? EK: 22:31 Yeah, one cot per person. AT: 22:34 That would have been seven people? EK: 22:36 Yes. Right. AT: 22:39 And then, um, so in the fall, where did you end up going? EK: 22:48 Because my brother worked for the newspaper. They gave him an option to choose any one of the 10 different locations. And he picked, uh, Jerome, Arkansas because the weather being more close to the California type of weather. And so that' ; s where we went. AT: 23:15 And how long was that trip and how did you get there? EK: 23:17 Oh, train was, it was, it was a very warm period of time, I remember. And uh, cause they tried to give us salt pills for the heat and it made me sick. But um, oh, it takes several days because they would sidetrack us in order for two trains or any more valuable cargo to go through if we happened to be in the way. So it was, it was several days. I can' ; t remember exactly how many. AT: 24:01 And what, forgive my ignorance, what, what is the salt pill supposed to do? EK: 24:07 I don' ; t really, don' ; t know, but uh, they expect, I guess they were afraid of heat stroke or something because the trains didn' ; t have air conditioning or anything and um, they were full of people, which made it even hotter. So other than that, I have no idea. AT: 24:38 And while you were on that trip, where are you aware of where you were going? EK: 24:44 Yes, we knew were going to go. AT: 24:48 Um, and so when you got to Jerome, what, what was that like? How was that different from Santa Anita? EK: 25:02 Well, I guess we were probably one of the first group to arrive there. And our barracks was the furthest Northeast corner of the camp, the end room. So you couldn' ; t go any further Northeast than that. And of course where we worked wouldn' ; t have been at the opposite end of the camp. AT: 25:29 Well, I imagined that it would be easier to find your home than some other homes. EK: 25:35 Yeah. Right, right. Yeah. AT: 25:39 And so did you just, did you continue working while you were in camp? What, what did you do once you got there? EK: 25:46 Um, in Jerome I worked, um, on the mimeograph machine and I would print out whatever notices that had to be sent out. And also those paper, once a week we would print. AT: 26:06 Did you have to apply for those jobs or how did that work? Did you sign up? EK: 26:12 I don' ; t remember how I got that job. I just, I guess my connection with my brother being in the newspaper, had a little bit of weight to it. AT: 26:24 Was the other brother above you, was he also working? EK: 26:30 I, you know, I know that I think, I can' ; t remember exactly what he did. It, it' ; s, I' ; d never asked a question. I, I know he was there. I know he did some kind of work, but I couldn' ; t honestly tell you. But my best guess would be that he worked probably something with motor pool because he was mechanically minded, but I can' ; t be sure. AT: 27:04 And your young, younger siblings were they still in school? EK: 27:07 The younger two were, yes. AT: 27:14 And then what about, um, your family life? Would you, would you eat together or would you only really see each other? EK: 27:22 No. AT: 27:23 When did you see each other? EK: 27:25 At night. When you had to go home to sleep. But, um, but you made friends and you naturally would eat with your friends if you, whoever you happen to be with at meal time. AT: 27:53 Do you have any other memories of, of Jerome that stick out for you? EK: 28:00 Not too many. I uh, I know I did go to several socials that' ; s what they used to call the dances on Saturday night where they had recorded music. The different, uh, clubs or organizations who had put on a social. And it was a meeting place for people. AT: 28:30 What were some of those clubs and organizations? EK: 28:36 I remember one was, uh, a group of, um, young men from Hawthorne and they were called the Hawthorne Juniors or something like that. Well, in fact the newspaper staff probably put it on a social at one point or another. And various, so musicians would do that, from time to time. AT: 29:07 Were they mostly for young people? EK: 29:10 Well, yeah. Yeah, they would be. AT: 29:15 And how long did you all stay in Jerome? EK: 29:18 I was there from the time of, got there until I left in on June 1st of 1943 and then I came to Chicago. And I worked with a family. AT: 29:40 Did you come alone? EK: 29:40 Well, with a group of other people. AT: 29:46 Friends or how was that? EK: 29:48 Well, not really friends, but they were going, they were going to the same place I was. AT: 30:00 And can you tell me more about how that that came about or how you found out about? EK: 30:06 To leave Chicago? Oh to come to Chicago. Well, I had a friend who I met in Santa Anita and when we got to Jerome, she was there and she introduced me to another girl. And she later on, um, got a job in Chicago. And so I got in touch with her and she in turn helped me get the job with Barbara' ; s family. AT: 30:47 So you, you had, um, you were connected through? EK: 30:51 Connected, yeah. AT: 30:53 And as this happens, the girl that I contacted took me on her on our first day off to her brother' ; s place and we had dinner and I later married him. Everyone: 31:20 [Laughter] AT: 31:20 So was your family, your family was still in Jerome? EK: 31:24 Yes. AT: 31:25 And um, do you remember having conversations with your mother or did she help at all with the decision making in that? EK: 31:37 Did what? AT: 31:37 Did she help at all with the decision making and you coming to Chicago or was that kind of. EK: 31:42 Surprisingly she didn' ; t object. I wonder if they know even today, that' ; s she would have trusted me to come. But, um, no, she pretty much left us on her own. AT: 32:16 What was Chicago like when you first got here and where did you arrive? EK: 32:23 Um, probably Chicago Union station I think. And I think her father probably met me there. We were there by then, you know, gas rationing was in and so mostly traveled on public transportation. And, uh, I don' ; t remember riding in a car very often. AT: 33:11 And so before you arrived, you, did you have the name and the information of the family you' ; d be staying with? EK: 33:17 Oh yes! Yeah, yeah. And during the time that I was here in Chicago, my family, the camps were people were leaving. And so they consolidated Jerome and Rohwer together and my parents moved to Rohwer. And so after I got married and got pregnant, living in Chicago by myself with not an option because my husband got drafted. And so my mother came to get me and I went back to Rohwer and that' ; s where I had my daughter. AT: 34:08 And what year was that that you went back? EK: 34:11 Um, would have been late 1943, ' ; 44. AT: 34:26 Um, so you, and what was the name of the family that you were staying with? EK: 34:33 Pardon? AT: 34:33 The, the name of the family that you' ; re staying with? EK: 34:37 Senn S. E. N. N. AT: 34:39 The Senn family? EK: 34:39 Yeah. AT: 34:41 And, um, so you would have been with them for uh, a little over a year? EK: 34:51 Yeah. Approximately. Yeah. AT: 34:55 And where did they live? EK: 34:57 They lived on the South Side, I think it was like 55th Street. Another Speaker: 35:04 Hyde Park AT: 35:09 And um, what were your, your first impressions of the city? Cause I imagine that was your first time coming to Chicago. EK: 35:18 Well, actually it' ; s the first time I lived in the city because I always lived in rural areas. So it was a little different. You enjoyed what there was. AT: 35:37 Did anything surprise you about it? EK: 35:41 Probably a lot of things. Being a teenager and thinking that you knew everything there was to know about everything, you know, so probably everything was kind of different. AT: 35:59 At that time were there other Japanese Americans in Hyde Park or not? EK: 36:06 Yes, yes, there were several. Yes. That I knew, yes. And occasionally we would be able to get together. AT: 36:17 And was it mostly folks from camp as well? EK: 36:24 Probably more so. Yeah. AT: 36:27 Okay. And then, um, so you went back to Rohwer in 1944. AS: 36:40 Do you want to tell the, part of the time with us, in Michigan, that you spent the summer? We spent the summer EK: 36:50 Oh, yes. You know, uh, the family took a vacation home and stayed in Michigan shores for several weeks and I have a picture of that with her. Yeah. AT: 37:10 So not just Chicago, but also Michigan or. EK: 37:12 Michigan, yeah. AT: 37:19 And then, um, when you returned to Rohwer in 44' ; , your whole family was there, not just your parents? EK: 37:30 No, my brother and my old two older brothers had moved to Cincinnati. AT: 37:35 And what were they doing there? EK: 37:37 Um, my oldest brother worked for McCalls Magazine and I' ; m not sure what my other brother, I forget. He was working, but I didn' ; t know him exactly. AT: 37:48 Always off the grid that one. What, what, what were your brothers, what were their names? EK: 37:58 My oldest brother' ; s, Paul, Sam, my sister' ; s name was Jesse and Arthur, was the youngest. AT: 38:09 Um, and where the younger ones, were they with your parents in Rohwer? The younger ones, were they with your parents in Rohwer? EK: 38:17 In Rohwer, yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. They still would' ; ve been in school. AT: 38:25 And how long did you stay there and you, that' ; s where you had your first child? EK: 38:31 Yes. Uhuh. AT: 38:35 So how long were you there? EK: 38:39 Well, the first, first train load back to California was in late July, I believe, to arrive in L.A. about August the 1st of ' ; 45. And the family had made reservations to stay at a hostel in Los Angeles. And I did too, but unknowingly they my name was not put on the list and until I got to L.A. and found out that somebody had not put my name on the list. AT: 39:19 So what happens? EK: 39:22 I was kind of frustrated didn' ; t know what to do. But um, the young Caucasian gentleman came up and heard the conversation and he took responsibility for not having to put my name on the list. I don' ; t know whether it was true or not, but he offered his parents' ; home because they were out of town at the time and he said, you can stay at my parents' ; home. And so the family and my daughter and I stayed in his home for, in their parents' ; home, for a couple of weeks, I think, until the hostel opened up and we were able to move to the hostel. AT: 40:10 That being, the hostel being in L.A. ? EK: 40:13 Actually it was located in Sawtelle. AT: 40:18 Sorry? EK: 40:18 Sawtelle S. A. W. T. E. L. L. E. It' ; s near Santa Monica. AT: 40:29 So that wouldn' ; t have been far from where? That wouldn' ; t have been far from where your mother was before the war? At one time? EK: 40:38 Yeah, at one point. Yeah. At one point. Yeah, it was kind of my, the church. AT: 40:45 And do you know what year that would have been? That you returned? EK: 40:48 That would have been ' ; 45. AT: 40:52 And um, where were you married at that point? EK: 40:57 Yes, I was married the year before. AT: 41:00 And was your, your husband was still serving? EK: 41:03 Yeah, he was in the service. He was in Germany, but the Occupation Force. AT: 41:11 And uh what did your family do once you' ; re in Sawtelle? EK: 41:18 Well, we had put, my mother wisely had made arrangements to keep the property we had in Downey. And so, uh, eventually we were able to go back to it, the house that we lived in burned down, but there was an older building that we may do and we stayed in that. And although it didn' ; t have any cooking facilities, my brother found a wood stove and we would do our cooking outdoors, until we could get set up. AT: 42:02 And so you then you settled in, back in Downey? EK: 42:07 Yeah, right, right, right. AT: 42:10 And, uh, was your mother able to pick back up the chicken business? EK: 42:15 Yes, yes, yes. She was bound and determined to do that. Very strong. AT: 42:24 And, and what about yourself? Were you helping out or EK: 42:30 I helped out where I had to, pretty much. AT: 42:36 And, and while you' ; re raising your firstborn, EK: 42:39 Right, right, right. AT: 42:44 And then did your family stay there for? EK: 42:46 We lived on that property until 1973. And that, um, oh, by then she had retired from the chickens and um, my brother Sam, who was her partner in the business, had moved to Whittier and he had his own family. Seven children, exactly. But while they were living in Downey, he lived in one house. We lived in the middle. And my oldest brother lived in a third house and each time the wife got pregnant and had a baby, I got the rest of the family to take care of until she got back on her feet. AT: 43:55 And um, back a few years during, you know, while the war was still on. Were you communicating with your husband? And what was his name? EK: 44:08 Jim, yeah. Yeah, we wrote letters and actually he got an early release discharged from the Army because of being a young father. AT: 44:27 So when was he? EK: 44:29 So he was in approximately 18 months. AT: 44:31 So he would have been coming back up in ' ; 45? Is that right? EK: 44:41 No, ' ; 40, ' ; 40, ' ; 46. Summer of ' ; 46 I believe that was. AT: 44:52 And was he originally from Chicago? EK: 44:55 No, he, his family came from Madera, California, which is in central California. And his family owned 80 acres of vineyard and they raised tomtom grapes, which they turned into raisins. AT: 45:22 And um, his family did, were they in camp as well? EK: 45:28 Yes, they were, they went from Fresno Assembly center, which was, I think that Fresno fairgrounds. And they went to Jerome. AT: 45:44 And then he went to Chicago because that' ; s where? EK: 45:47 He went to, yeah, he found a job in a candy factory in Chicago. And so he was working there. But the rest of this family with two, uh, Gila. AT: 46:04 And so when he was released, where did he? EK: 46:07 Came back to Downey. AT: 46:08 And so you said you were on the property until the 70s. EK: 46:18 Mhm. AT: 46:18 Where did you move after that? EK: 46:21 We moved to another house, not about a mile away, still in Downey. My, my baby, my youngest one was in high school and he was a senior, when we moved. AT: 46:39 Was that Russ? EK: 46:41 Yes. AS: 46:48 Mhm. AT: 46:48 And did you, um, did you ever talk about your, your experiences, um, during the war with, with your family when you were raising a family? EK: 47:02 Not really. Subject never came up. It was a world of little kids all growing up together. So. AT: 47:15 And when you, when you returned to Downey, um, were there still not many, um, Japanese Americans in the area or in the town? EK: 47:29 Probably not. AT: 47:39 Um, oh, one thing that I had meant to ask, um, when you were growing up, did you speak Japanese with your parents? EK: 47:49 Yes, necessarily. But, um, my mother was determined to become an American citizen and she couldn' ; t do that legally until the late 1950s and when, when that became possible, she did that. And she did get her citizenship without going to a class to learn about, she more or less did it on her own. So she was very proud of that. And after that, every election she was there. AT: 48:34 She sounds like a a very strong EK: 48:36 Yes, very, very determined. So she, we, although we spoke a lot of Japanese, she also necessarily dealing with people who came to buy eggs. She had the English became a necessity, so she was probably lot more proficient in that than a lot of the Japanese see safe. AT: 49:08 And how is your Japanese now? EK: 49:11 Mine? AT: 49:12 Do you still speak? EK: 49:13 Nonexistent I have nobody to talk to. Well I do one or two, but very seldom and it' ; s not something that I' ; m, I really probably should know more, but I' ; m an American. AT: 49:42 I, is there anything, um, in your daily life or otherwise that you practice or, or hold on to your Japanese heritage? EK: 49:58 I don' ; t think so, unfortunately, I mean, it' ; s a foreign country to me as it is to anybody else. I visited once and it was at the time, it was a very interesting experience, but, um, I didn' ; t have a dying interest to learn all about it or anything like that. AT: 50:33 When did you visit? EK: 50:36 Well, there again, it was probably in the 1980s. AT: 50:46 And, um, if, if you could leave your, your children and maybe your grandchildren or your family with any kind of message or legacy, what would you want them to, to know or carry with them? EK: 51:06 Just be a good American. Be a good person. Anything else? AT: 51:23 Well, is there anything else that you might like to add or that we might have missed in the conversation? EK: 51:28 Not really. AT: 51:28 Does anyone else, have any? AS: 51:41 Don' ; t get me going. I' ; ve learned so much. AT: 51:43 Well, thank you so much for taking the time for speaking with me.. EK: 51:47 Oh, you' ; re welcome. Thank you. Copyright held by the Japanese American Service Committee, Chicago, Illinois. video Interviews may only be reproduced with permission from the Japanese American Service Committee Legacy Center. 0 http://digitalcollections.jasc-chicago.org/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=KurisuEunice20170923.xml KurisuEunice20170923.xml http://digitalcollections.jasc-chicago.org/omeka/collections/show/1 http://digitalcollections.jasc-chicago.org/omeka/find?tags=Series%3A+Then+They+Came+for+Me& ; layout=1
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Japanese Americans--History.
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This collection contains oral history interviews from the Japanese American Service Committee (JASC) Legacy Center's holdings. Where available, transcriptions have been included and synced to the recordings to enable full-text searching.
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Doi, Mary
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Lin, Cori Nakamura
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Yonsei
Activism
Nikkei Uprising
Tsuru for Solidarity
Social justice
Repair
Healing
Intergenerational trauma
Forced assimilation
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5.4 12/15/2022 Lin, Cori Nakamura (12/15/2022) 1:19:54 JASC_OHP JASC Legacy Center Oral History Collection REDR Redress Japanese American Service Committee Legacy Center Recorded, transcribed, and made accessible online with financial support from the Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Japanese American Confinement Sites grant program. Yonsei Activism Nikkei Uprising Tsuru for Solidarity Social justice Repair Healing Intergenerational trauma Forced assimilation Lin, Cori Nakamura Doi, Mary video 1:|11(9)|22(13)|35(11)|35(12)|61(6)|73(10)|97(12)|128(12)|146(11)|162(11)|174(4)|187(15)|201(7)|214(6)|230(12)|242(4)|257(10)|271(5)|281(11)|296(7)|312(5)|340(5)|360(2)|372(4)|387(5)|398(2)|410(3)|422(12)|434(12)|448(16)|460(15)|472(5)|487(12)|498(8)|508(5)|520(1)|531(7)|531(8)|554(1)|567(7)|587(9)|606(12)|629(5)|639(14)|650(15)|668(6)|680(5)|680(6)|702(7)|714(7)|732(8)|745(9)|759(11)|773(10)|784(7)|798(13)|809(11)|823(3)|836(9)|848(5)|862(2)|873(1)|894(8)|921(10)|947(4)|973(1)|1006(13)|1033(13)|1044(1)|1054(11)|1066(1)|1075(11)|1090(10)|1102(3)|1114(1)|1128(13)|1140(1)|1151(6)|1171(13) 0 https://vimeo.com/824867762 Vimeo video < ; iframe src=" ; https://player.vimeo.com/video/824867762" ; width=" ; 640" ; height=" ; 360" ; frameborder=" ; 0" ; allow=" ; autoplay ; fullscreen ; picture-in-picture" ; allowfullscreen> ; < ; /iframe> ; Cori Nakamura Lin, a yonsei born and raised in Chicago, discusses her evolving knowledge and understanding of Japanese American incarceration and redress history. She describes how her work on JASC's Uprooted and Reckoning projects deepened her awareness, particularly with regard to the diversity of opinions and approaches to redress within the community. She describes her artistic process and the significance of the creative choices she made for the two projects. A founding member of Nikkei Uprising, she also discusses the group's activism and connections between Japanese American experiences and present-day migrant family detention/separation and mass incarceration. On the topic of community healing and repair, she expresses a belief in additional opportunities for repair and the importance of reshaping the meaning of Japanese American identity. 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 silenced 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, you 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 like 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 really 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 acknowledge 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 time 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, it' ; 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 if 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 Chicago 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 like 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 exactly 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 Chicago, 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 being 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 about 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 these 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 start 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 kind 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 and 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 ended 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, was 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 like 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 of 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 folks 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 respect, 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 resettlement, 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 kind 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 characters, 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 we' ; 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 share 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 very 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 learning 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 like 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 where 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. Kat, 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 things 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. And 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 reckoning 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 you 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 of 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 this 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 about 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 of 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 are 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 different 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 saying, 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 pretrial 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 schools 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 in 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 feels 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 looked 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 don' ; 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 more 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 working 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 material. 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 important, 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 contracts, 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 or 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 to 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 sketches 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 answer 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 areas 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 reparations 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 there' ; 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 about 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 where 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 to 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 that' ; 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 and 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... Like 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. And 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, I' ; 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. Copyright held by the Japanese American Service Committee, Chicago, Illinois. video Footage may only be reproduced with permission from the Japanese American Service Committee Legacy Center. 0 https://digitalcollections.jasc-chicago.org/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=LinCori20221215.xml LinCori20221215.xml http://digitalcollections.jasc-chicago.org/omeka/collections/show/1 https://digitalcollections.jasc-chicago.org/omeka/items/browse?tags=Series%3A+Redress
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Oral History Interview: <a href="https://digitalcollections.jasc-chicago.org/omeka/items/show/18" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lin, Cori (5/19/2021)</a> <br />Oral History Interview: <a href="http://digitalcollections.jasc-chicago.org/omeka/items/show/5" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Nakamura, Tom (3/16/2021)</a>
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Lin, Cori Nakamura (12/15/2022)
Description
An account of the resource
Cori Nakamura Lin, a yonsei born and raised in Chicago, discusses her evolving knowledge and understanding of Japanese American incarceration and redress history. She describes how her work on JASC's Uprooted and Reckoning projects deepened her awareness, particularly with regard to the diversity of opinions and approaches to redress within the community. She describes her artistic process and the significance of the creative choices she made for the two projects. A founding member of Nikkei Uprising, she also discusses the group's activism and connections between Japanese American experiences and present-day migrant family detention/separation and mass incarceration. On the topic of community healing and repair, she expresses a belief in additional opportunities for repair and the importance of reshaping the meaning of Japanese American identity.
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2022-12-15
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video
FSF JACS
Series: Redress
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The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
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JASC Legacy Center Oral History Collection
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Japanese Americans--History.
Description
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This collection contains oral history interviews from the Japanese American Service Committee (JASC) Legacy Center's holdings. Where available, transcriptions have been included and synced to the recordings to enable full-text searching.
Interviews were recorded at various times, some by JASC staff and some by external partners, often supported by grant funding. See the metadata associated with each interview for full details.
This digital collection will continue to grow as new interviews are recorded, and as additional pre-existing recordings are received by donation or discovered in the physical archives.
The digitization and transcription of many of the recordings in this collection, the recording of interviews between July 2018 and June 2021, and the creation of this publicly accessible digital platform, were funded by a Japanese American Confinements Sites (JACS) grant awarded by the National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior. The JASC Legacy Center gratefully acknowledges the financial support received between 2018 and 2021 that enabled this project to succeed.
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This material is based upon work assisted by a grant from the U.S. Department of the
Interior, National Park Service. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations
expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views
of the U.S. Department of the Interior.
This material received Federal financial assistance for the preservation and interpretation of
U.S. confinement sites where Japanese Americans were detained during World War II.
Under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973,
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Japanese American Service Committee (Chicago, Ill.). Legacy Center
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Japanese American Service Committee (Chicago, Ill.). Legacy Center
Oral History
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Interviewer
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Lincoln, Emma Saito
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Lin, Cori Nakamura
Interview Keyword
Yonsei
Cultural Reclamation
Church of Christ Presbyterian
Nikkei Uprising
Activism
Generational Trauma
Healing
OHMS Object Text
5.4 5/19/2021 Lin, Cori Nakamura (5/19/2021) 1:05:55 JASC_OHP JASC Legacy Center Oral History Collection OHP Oral History Project Japanese American Service Committee Legacy Center Recorded, transcribed, and made accessible online with financial support from the Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Japanese American Confinement Sites grant program. Yonsei Cultural Reclamation Church of Christ Presbyterian Nikkei Uprising Activism Generational Trauma Healing Lin, Cori Nakamura Lincoln, Emma Saito video 1:|21(12)|37(6)|50(10)|69(5)|85(4)|98(8)|110(6)|123(13)|136(14)|149(11)|162(1)|177(7)|190(11)|202(12)|214(11)|228(2)|239(9)|252(8)|265(6)|277(6)|288(8)|299(13)|313(5)|331(3)|350(10)|360(18)|371(5)|381(6)|396(8)|407(6)|418(13)|431(2)|441(8)|456(8)|469(3)|481(15)|492(12)|503(7)|515(14)|528(8)|539(1)|548(15)|560(11)|574(2)|586(8)|596(8)|609(5)|622(13)|633(3)|646(6)|657(16)|669(12)|685(1)|699(3)|713(3)|727(6)|738(6)|752(9)|766(1)|776(14)|792(3)|807(12)|821(2)|833(5)|844(13) 0 https://vimeo.com/558281234/9cbadb46e7 Vimeo video < ; iframe src=" ; https://player.vimeo.com/video/558281234?h=9cbadb46e7" ; width=" ; 640" ; height=" ; 360" ; frameborder=" ; 0" ; allow=" ; autoplay ; fullscreen ; picture-in-picture" ; allowfullscreen> ; < ; /iframe> ; Cori Nakamura Lin is a fourth generation (yonsei) Japanese American born in the Chicago suburbs. In this interview, Cori shares her concept of the river of time, how we can see our present as continuously shaped by multigenerational experiences and events of the past, all interconnected. Cori describes her formative experiences in a Japanese American Christian church, and how growing up with multiracial people in that space helped shape her identity and provided a place of belonging. Cori discusses her experiences supporting social justice movements through art in the Twin Cities and Chicago, such as her work with the group Nikkei Uprising. She stresses the importance of undoing the generational trauma dating back to not only incarceration, but also Imperial Japan, and healing this trauma through community and shared cultural reclamation. Emma Saito Lincoln (EL): Today is May 19th, 2021 and this oral history is being recorded at the Japanese American Service Committee building at 4427 N Clark St in Chicago, IL. The interviewer is Emma Saito Lincoln, and the interviewee is Cori Lin. This interview is being recorded by the JASC Legacy Center in order to document the experiences of Japanese Americans in the Chicago area. Welcome, to begin with I have just some background questions for you, so please state your full name. Cori Lin (CL): Hi, my name is Cori Nakamura Lin. EL: And what is your year of birth? CL: I was born in the year of the water monkey, 1992. EL: And where were you born? CL: I was born in a suburban, Chicago hospital. EL: And is the Chicago area also where you grew up? CL: Yes, I grew up in the northwest suburbs in Rolling Meadows area, um yeah. EL: And were your parents and grandparents also born and raised in the Chicago area? CL: So my mother was born in the Chicago area, who is on my Japanese side. My father moved from Taipei when he was around 13, and then eventually moved to the Chicago area. And then my grandparents on both sides were born all over, and then migrated to the Chicago area. EL: So on the Japanese side, approximately when did your family first come to the United States? CL: Yes, so I am a little fuzzy on exact dates, but I know that, so my Japanese family is also mixed. My Okinawan family, which is my maternal grandmother, came from Okinawa around the turn of the century, so in the early 1900s, late 1800s to Hawaii at that time. And my great-grandfather, and my grandma, and her family all lived there until the, after the war. I think in the ni--late 60s my grandmother then moved to Indiana to go to college. My maternal grandfather' ; s side are Japanese and from Hiroshima area and they came to California with my grandfather' ; s dad. And I' ; m not exactly sure what the dates were, but it was probably a little bit in the early 1910s. And my grandfather grew up in Yuba City, and then was incarcerated in Amache, and then eventually after traveling around after the war time, eventually moved to Chicago. EL: Okay, thank you. So when people ask you what generation you are, how do you answer? CL: So I say that I am yonsei, because my, yeah, both the isseis of my family were in California and Hawaii, but then both of my grandparents are nisei. Even though like their siblings, some of them are half-gen, but both my grandparents were born in Hawaii, and then California. So, my mom is a sansei and I' ; m a yonsei. EL: Okay, so what can you tell me about the immigration history on the other side of your family? CL: Yes, so my other side is Taiwanese American. My Taiwanese family had been in Taiwan since I think the early, early 18th century? So they had been there for like a really long time don' ; t quote me on that, the number, but I know that the Lins had been in Taiwan for a long time. The--my ah-gong' ; s family, my paternal grandfather, was a part of like a pretty big established like, family. And then my grandmother married into it and there was a lot of Taiwanese war stuff there also with World War II, and Japan and China, but in the, I think in the 70s, after the Chinese Exclusion Act ended, then my maternal grandmother decided to move the family to America. EL: Okay, thank you. So now we' ; re going to shift a little bit and talk about you? CL: Yeah. EL: --and your direct experiences, and you touched a little bit on where exactly you grew up, but if you could just state again respective to Chicago, the city, where did you grow up? CL: Yeah so I grew up in the northwest suburbs, which is kind of like a first ri--maybe actually second ring suburb of the area. I grew up in Rolling Meadows, which is a small suburb nearby Palatine, Arlington Heights. I usually tell people who live in Chicago that I' ; m out by the IKEA, I tell Japanese Americans that I' ; m out by the Mitsuwa. Yeah, I grew up there after my, my mom and dad had lived in Chicago for a little while when they first got married, but then eventually bought a house and moved to the suburbs where they raised me and my sisters. EL: And how would you characterize that community? CL: The northwest suburbs of Chicago I--are, they' ; re very diverse, but the ones that I grew up were very upper middle class to middle class and majorily white. I went to Fremd, William Fremd High School, which is like a pretty like, high sought after school and school district, so a lot of the Asian folks that are in the area are first- and second- generation Chinese and Korean Americans. I grew up knowing a lot of Asian folks and having lots of East Asian and South Asian folks around, but not many Japanese Americans in the suburb that I was in, and not many folks who had like a longer immigration legacy, like being yonsei. EL: So if you weren' ; t living near or going to school with a lot of other Japanese American people, did you have opportunities to engage with the Japanese American community outside of your hometown or outside of your school setting? CL: Yeah, so well first of all, I was homeschooled up until like 8th grade so I, I wasn' ; t really socializing with anyone like regardless of if they were Japanese or not in a school setting. But my grandparents, when they moved to Chicago and met there, started attending a Japanese American church called Church of Christ Presbyterian, and that' ; s kind of where my mom grew up as her home church in another, in a Japanese American Christian Church environment. And eventually when my father was going to medical school, he joined that church as well, as a Taiwanese American friend, and that' ; s where they met, and they got married. So I grew up also going to that church, is that we would drive into the city to the north park neighborhood every Sunday from the northwest suburbs. And would, yeah, go to church there, where there were a lot of mixed Japanese American families. Like the church was historically JA, but by the time I was around, most of the people there were either half Japanese American, and we would join up with a few other of the Japanese American, historically Japanese American churches, lakeside, and at one point Church of Christ Presbyterian to do church camp every summer, so that was kind of like my social experience. EL: So during your formative years, were you particularly aware of your identity as Japanese American, or as Asian American? CL: Mhmm, so I, I laugh a little bit just because this is a theme that I think about a lot, which is that I ha--was not at all aware of my identity growing up almost even through college. That I have had kind of like two distinct phases that my little sister likes to make fun of me, and calls my Asian puberty, or second Asian puberty, now becoming a third Asian puberty. But because I grew up in an environment where there was a lot of, I would say Asian immigrants but not a lot of Asian Americans I grew up having a very conflated sense of like what it meant to be Asian from a white American lens. Because I was mixed as well, I always had a lot of like contention between being Taiwanese versus being Japanese, and kind of as a kid it turned into this like pan-Asian identity that wasn' ; t really rooted in anything besides just kind of a pride within my immediate family and a sense of being different. So I think I didn' ; t really learn a lot about the history of my family on either sides until college, and then after college. And also thinking about what it means to be an Asian person, and how I' ; ve been racialized took me a really long time to understand. EL: Did you ever have uncomfortable moments in, in your Taiwanese family world with regard to your--the Japanese piece of your identity or vice versa in your Japanese world, Japanese American world, with regard to your, your Taiwanese identity. CL: So it' ; s a interesting question because I think for people who know about the history of Taiwan, are oftentimes very surprised that my, my family exists, and that both sides of the family get along well together. But knowing, and that also kind of confused me too, the more I learned about Taiwan and the Japanese colonization of it. But then, I learned a little bit about my ah-ma' ; s family so my paternal grandmother, and the role that her father took in kind of like af--before and after World War II, where they were a pretty prestigious family. And he was able to learn Japanese, and like my grandmother was born during Japanese occupation so she speaks Japanese? Like when, now even that like lots of my Japanese relatives have forgotten Japanese, my Taiwanese ah-ma is still fluent, and she speaks to my niece in Japanese and stuff. So when my parents got married, that was like the f--one of the first times, and actually I don' ; t know if this is a real story or just a story that I' ; ve been told but this is one of the first times that the families met each other, the Taiwanese side and the Japanese side, and my grandfather' ; s family were kind of like all there, and my grandma' ; s siblings and they were kind of like didn' ; t know how to approach their in-laws now. But then one of my dad' ; s family members was kind of like " ; ...hey" ; and started speaking in Japanese to them, and then like the whole family was like, " ; Oh my God, we all speak Japanese!" ; And then they all started chatting together and, and felt very comfortable. So I think the specific place in time and the position of kind of like pres--prestige that they were able to hold their identities as Taiwanese people on my Taiwanese side, kind of helped them get along with the Japanese family. They also don' ; t really know anything about--or like the Japanese conflict, they didn' ; t know anything about internment, but just ethnically, they got along well. And now, now that I do know all of these histories, I feel like it' ; s more of me kind of like weighing how I feel like my family has reacted to them o--over time. EL: So on that topic of, of learning about these histories that you weren' ; t aware of when you were younger, when did that start to happen and how did you go about learning? CL: So I' ; ve always been interested in culture, and that was something that I remember that I had one class in high school that was called like, " ; Facets of Identity" ; or like, and I just remember we we read " ; A Mirror for Humanity" ; which was like a history book that just kind of like covered different ethnic identities. And I just remember that was like the only time, it-this was like an elective course that I took with Mr. Zacharia, a teacher I really liked, who was a person of color, he was South Asian. And he was the first one who kind of started to talk to me about history from, yeah just like a not white perspective. I had like U.S. history, I had like world history that were all prepped for AP tests and that taught me nothing. So that really peaked my interest, and I was always interested in art and he let me do a lot of art projects to kind of process that history. And that like, now that I think about the artwork that I do like it all kind of starts from that point, where I just had one teacher who is teaching me history from a not white perspective. And so then when I went to school I studied anthropology and studio art, and that was also at a liberal arts school I went to Lawrence University in Wisconsin. And their program was anthropology, where I loved learning about different cultures, and how cultures were formed, and how to kind of like study and research them from a social science perspective. But they didn' ; t give me an understanding of--like it was still from a white lens, this idea that you would go out into another culture and kind of learn about them, and I was always really interested in studying the culture that I was in, and kind of analyzing how that was connecting with other things. So I was able to study my like, ethnicity as a, as a concept through my anthropology program and I remember my senior project was about measuring ethnic, like trying to create a quantification that would measure ethnic identity. Kind of coming from this experience I had in high school where I felt that ethnicity was really fluid and it didn' ; t have to do with, yeah, like it wasn' ; t race, but it was something that was like self-elected. And so that was something that I was given the space to study but even when I look back at that paper, I had focused on Japanese Americans but just like the way that I was trying to quantify it seems so funny to me now ' ; cause it was all, it was also missing this lens of assimilation, and how Japanese folks had been kind of forced to give up their cultural identity. So I, I hadn' ; t included kind of that factor in my study. So I think that the last step of my kind of coming to my Japanese-ness is when I moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota right after school, I was working in a lot of different nonprofits, meeting a lot of people, and the Asian community there really opened their arms to me and accepted me even though I wasn' ; t a part--like I was Japanese and Taiwanese which there aren' ; t a ton of in the Twin Cities. There is a ton of Southeast Asians, lots of Hmong folk, lots of Vietnamese and Cambodian people, and they all kind of accepted me. And through kind of learning from them how they had been fighting for black lives, it really showed me what a kind of like pan-Asian solidarity could really feel like knowing that we all had really different cultures, but that together we do have an identity that we can build on and bring people together and unite with. During the time that I was in the Twin Cities both Jamar Clark and Philando Castile were killed. And so they were murdered by the Minneapolis police, and well Brooklyn Park police too, and so I--or Falcon Heights I guess. But it was really easy to kind of feel a community mourn and grieve and to come together across differences, and I felt really a part of a pan-Asian community there, but then it wasn' ; t until then I finally moved back to Chicago in 2019 that I was able to kind of start, with those tools, start building a community back in Chicago. That we' ; re kind of emulating those same things of building a community across difference, knowing that we have lots of histories and experiences but kind of pushing it towards a shared goal. EL: So if we could maybe, with that in mind, rewind a little bit your high school years and, and maybe what was missing during those years, that looking back you wish you had had in terms of community. How do you, how do you look back on those years now? How do you feel about that? CL: I think about this a lot and I think about it both of what did I need but also what can I build for future generations? Because I think a lot of the things that I need, or that I would have needed like there are things I could have had back then like more curriculum, more discussions about what race and being racialized is. I think less quantifying conversations about blood--like blood quantum in Asian community is also a thing. So I think all of those things would have helped me kind of grow into myself as a child, but basically--when I think about future generations it' ; s like they have so many more opportunities of what they can' ; t have. Because the conversations that we were having about race when I was growing up in the 2000s and the 90s, was nowhere close to what I can even find in like one TikTok right now. So I think there' ; s a lot more possibilities of what we could create, like I think it wouldn' ; t have been really possible for me to have a--a squad of young femmes and gender expansive people who come together and talk about like their different heritages and their cultures and how they use that power. But there' ; s a couple of spaces that I' ; m in now that are for young people, like I think about Radical Monarchs, which is like a " ; Girl Scout Troop" ; but with a social justice lens. And I think about some of the women of color or young girls of color spaces that I' ; ve been a part of and those I feel like have a lot of, so much more potential than what I could have had as a, as a young person. EL: So I also want to touch on what you said about the work you did in college an--and what was missing from that paper about the assimilation element of things. And looking at your own family, at a piece of your own family so your, let' ; s see, your maternal grandfather who was incarcerated, do you see in your own family things that were done or decisions that were made that you would qualify as assimilation? CL: Yes. So that is a question that I have been unpacking I think over the past few years, that when I grew up and I think even when I was in my post-college years in the Twin Cities, I did feel like there was something missing. And sometimes it felt like a disconnection, sometimes it felt like inadequacy. Like why don' ; t I know Japanese? Or--it wasn' ; t even that question it was just like, I don' ; t know Japanese. And as a kid it was always very defensive, that it would be white folks who were trying to connect to me about anime, or it would be other Asian folks who were first or second gen and wanted to connect with me about Asian stuff, or it would be people who are, who like or japanophiles, and who are interested in that. Being like, oh like either they were excited to speak to me in Japanese, or asking me about that, and then I wouldn' ; t know and then that kind of created this dissonance inside of me, between there' ; s this one thing which being Asian is and I am not that. And so it was, it was less of a sense of something missing and more of a sense of being divided and as a, as a young person and as I learned about that history I' ; ve been able to figure out where those come, that divide comes from. Things like talking to my mom very slowly about how her experiences of being Japanese and Asian growing up in the 60s, 70s, and 80s and how she was oftentimes, yeah also felt that way. But in the 60s and 70s when there weren' ; t a lot of other Asian Americans from different backgrounds to kind of trade experiences with or build off of, she often, she told me that going to Hawaii was the only time that she felt normal. And that was something that kind of made sense to me because I never had a place that I felt like normal besides maybe like amongst other mixed JAs. But just knowing that she had that sadness and that kind of isolation made sense to me later in my life. And then of course going back to the history of how my grandfather in that generation came to Chicago and what, how they had to exit camp, and reading the surveys and reading the materials that they were given. Telling them like, " ; Will you not speak Japanese? Will you try to blend into hakujin spaces? Will you not band together, and not have social groups based off of culture together?" ; That made a lot of sense to me and my family how we have both celebrated American-ness and to some degree, white-ness, we conflate those two often times. And then how Japanese-ness is kind of something that belongs in the past. That' ; s kind of how I feel like assimilation was really kind of like, woven into, into my family. But the other thing that I' ; ve been thinking, and this is like a really new thought that' ; s happened in the past year or so since I' ; ve been thinking, trying to learn more about the history even behind incarceration, of Japanese colonialism and imperialism. And this kind of like, knowing how Japanese culture and nationalism kind of created this idea that Japanese folks were better, and then seeing how that traveled through incarceration and that kind of blended into this idea that even though we suffer we' ; re still the best. That' ; s something that is also deep in me both from Taiwanese and my Japanese side and I don' ; t really know how to process through that yet. EL: In your life where you' ; ve been made to feel not Japanese enough or not Taiwanese enough? CL: So there' ; s many spaces, and I talked to a lot of mixed Japanese folks now who didn' ; t have that same kind of like church experience and I did, and something that I realized is like, wow that was a true blessing that I had a community of mixed folks who were both Japanese and something else, Filipino, Taiwanese, Chinese, white, and we were all friends and we grew up together. And that really, really changed I think my experience as much as I have always felt like I wasn' ; t totally Taiwanese, again, don' ; t speak Mandarin, many more Taiwanese folks are first or second generation. But I' ; ve always felt very comfortable being a mixed Japanese person because of that exposure, and so I think there' ; s a lot of superpowers in being mixed, and one of them is sitting at the margins of and the intersections of multiple identities. And I' ; m really excited to think about how Japanese-ness and our values and ethnicity can travel without blood, or with--yeah like it, it doesn' ; t need an amount for it to be real. And so that' ; s something that I feel like being mixed is, is teaching me. EL: Could you talk a little bit more about those experiences within the church, and you' ; ve mentioned church camp. CL: Yeah. EL: And what was that like, what kinds of activities did you do? CL: So there' ; s th--the part of, I talk about church and I do this publicly a lot but it is very personal to me, that I, there' ; s a p--a lot about the church experience that I really cherish. Which was, being mixed, having like, I mean three generations of my family have gone to the same church and even now when I' ; m trying to get involved in Japanese activism, a lot of the times I' ; m finding either historical documents or things that like root back to, to that church. So it--it is a network and it' ; s a hub for me, and I still cherish it as that. At the same time, I' ; ve left the Christian religion and so that is also something that was obviously a huge part of it that I have a little bit more burden with, or I carry a little bit more baggage with. But I have such like fond memories of just being a child and being able to go to sleepaway camp, my cousins would come in from California and they' ; re also mixed Japanese folks and we would all go to camp together. It was a sleepaway camp, play games, do Bible stuff. But you' ; re in a cabin with like four to five other people who are your age and so like, I' ; m still friends with a lot of the people that I went to camp with. EL: So bringing us into more of the present, CL: Mhmm EL: So you went, you went away but stayed in the Midwestern region-- CL: Mhmm EL: for college and then you were in the Twin Cities, and you came back to Chicago. And I, I was hoping maybe you could talk a little bit about what brought you back to Chicago, and how you feel about having returned to where you started. CL: Yes. So I came to Chicago, or returned back for a couple of reasons that are both generational. And I think that that' ; s a theme that I really have been almost like swimming in--I feel like being in Chicago is swimming in the river of time, and I keep using that analogy. So my father was sick all growing up, but his cancer became like deadly in the last, in like 2018-2019. So I was going back and forth a lot and my sister and her husband Aaron got pregnant. So around 2019, both they had my nibling Charlotte and my father passed away. So for those two reasons I was like, just called to be closer with family both to take--yeah be closer to my mom and to be a part of my niece' ; s life. And since then like I had never been a part of a Japanese community and I wasn' ; t anymore a part of the church, so I had kind of been like oh like I' ; m not going to be--like I don' ; t have anything Japanese anymore. Like I remember this like feeling of loss of being like oh like that was a nice thing that I once had and now like what, what do I have now? But then of course like met a few people who were also into like arts and activism stuff. Met some people from JACL and JASC, Lisa Doi and JJ Ueunten and like we were just all visioning the same things. And so we like JJ and Anne Watanabe kind of like pulled together a group of a lot of people who were interested in activism and like yeah really rooting into being Japanese American folks together, and created Nikkei Uprising as it is today. So that' ; s kind of my community now. There' ; s a lot of things that kind of connect to the river of time. Since I' ; ve been in Chicago I' ; ve like worked with the JASC oral history project, I' ; m working with Kat Nagasawa on another project about Japanese American resettlement and then another one that' ; s about redress that Emma is also doing. So besides being involved in kind of these historical pieces, and working on advocacy as a group of Japanese Americans, and then also in my own family really trying to capture stories from my grandfather and my ah-ma on my Taiwanese side bef--as they are getting at the ends of their lives. It feels a lot like sitting in the river of time. I feel like I can see really clear connections between the past and where I am now because of the oral history pieces and the resettlement and redress history and knowing how much it happened here in Chicago. Like in the same spaces and like with the same people that my grandfather knew. And then thinking about like my new gosei nibling Charlotte, and even sitting here doing this history I am imagining just, yeah the future generations who will be able to see it maybe pull the same kind of information that I did from the oral histories that I had listened to from the--yeah people talking about their lives in the ear--like 20s and 30s even. So yeah, river of time! EL: So let' ; s talk about that a little bit more. Your, your involvement in some of these recent projects, and what specifically was your role in the oral history project? CL: So I was acting as an illustrator. I' ; m a visual artist, right now I have the huge privilege of being a full time artist and illustrator, mostly working with community organizations, nonprofits, and doing my own personal work. One with my sister who just got a book who' ; s going to be publishing a series of essays using yokai, so--sorry! That' ; s just to give background to what I' ; m doing. But yeah, one of my big projects is working with Kat Nagasawa, illustrating kind of the history of resettlement and redress. So kind of the--a lot of the history that we have especially from the Japanese American like movement to Chicago is in bits and pieces, and those are really really great for us to dig into but it' ; s hard for people to access the story. So we' ; ve kind of been, I almost feel like historical translators, like picking up the pieces--well, Kat mostly picking up the pieces, figuring out what can really weave together a narrative that' ; s not the whole narrative but gives people an idea of what the full tapestry was. And then it' ; s my--kind of my role to make that exciting and to come alive and make people want to engage with it. EL: How has that work made you feel? CL: I mean it makes me cry like every day. Like so so often I feel extremely like privileged to be in this role as like a storyteller. Yeah I--with the book that my sister is doing too it' ; s, it' ; s going to be pub--my sister, my older sister Jami is a writer and I' ; m an illustrator and we' ; ve been telling stories like to each other and in zines like our whole lives. But recently, I' ; ve been thinking a lot about kind of just all the work that my grandparent' ; s generation and the sansei generation and even like shin-nikkei, everyone have done to lead Japanese Americans to this point where we are extremely, as a whole, stable. I--I' ; ve been reading a lot about my grandparents' ; experiences, a migrant farmer, about people who moved to the South side of the Chicago and were living in Cabrini-Green before they were able to work in factories, and then moved to the north side. And thinking about how they were doing a lot of, a lot of these histories align with different immigrant groups to the US too. Like my grandfather was working alongside Mexican American migrant farmers. And when there was a Japanese community on the South side they were living with black Americans too. But a lot of things, like structural things, allowed them to go to school get the GI bill, they weren' ; t redlined, and allowed them to kind of get education, and led me to be in a place where I grew up in the suburbs, my parents were both college educated and they were able to pay for my college experience so I don' ; t have loans. So all of that feels like a huge, a huge privilege and that' ; s built on generations of, of work. So I think that the reason that I get so emotional about this is because I feel like I' ; ve been like I have a certain skill set, like I went to a really good school district and was able to like develop art skills. And to now u--be able to use that energy and time to kind of shift what I would consider the Japanese American story to be a little bit more expansive of what we consider to be our community, like that feels extremely powerful in this moment. And for me it feels extremely meaningful to feel like the role that I want to have in society and in my community is that of being a storyteller, so I feel like yeah redress the stor--yeah the yokai book, redress, resettlement all of that it--it feels like I get to do that. Like if I was in an olden times, I would really want to be like a traveling bard, and I feel like this is--it' ; s a similar feeling--but just on Instagram. [smiles] EL: Let' ; s talk a little bit more about, about the power of art and, and your involvement with activism, an--and beyond the Japanese American community, you have had the opportunity to use your art in powerful ways, right? So could you describe what some of those experiences are? CL: Yeah, the first few times that I felt like I was able to make art in community and felt like it was making a difference is when I was in the Twin Cities and mostly in South Minneapolis, working in a neighborhood, and that led me to be able to support a lot of housing efforts. So, through like just volunteering and showing up to meetings, and then eventually working with my boss to get an arts grant, I was able to make a lot of art for that movement. Both like doing interviews to interview renters about their experiences with like slumlords and discriminatory housing practices, and then paint their portraits and share those stories in that way. And then also make a mural that is like on the Greenway in South Minneapolis that featured renter stories and then showed some like facts about the housing crisis in Minneapolis. And that was something where making the art wasn' ; t for me, it was for the people that I was interviewing, like I gave them the portraits when they were done, so there was a lot of consultation. In making the mural, I had to talk to hundreds of people with my fellow co-organizer Tori Hong, and that was like my first time of realizing that like art can be a tool, that art is not a product, art is a tool that can shape cities, it can shape hearts and minds, and it can shape a conversation. Like oftentimes people were just kind of stopping by while I was painting, being like " ; What' ; s this about?" ; and I was like " ; Let me tell you about the housing crisis in Minneapolis!" ; But we were able to look at the, the mural while it happened. So that was one of the first things that felt really--that it was, art doesn' ; t belong in a separate space, art is from the community and just belongs within it and that' ; s kind of been what' ; s guided me ever since. EL: Here in Chicago what kinds of activism have you been able to get engaged with? CL: So I' ; ve been in Chicago for, I think I' ; ve almost--one and a half years now...Yes? Yes. I don' ; t know math. And the quarantine has made time seem fully like an illusion. But I first tried to get involved in both pan-Asian organizing and then Japanese American organizing specifically. But Japanese organizing only existed once, once I came here. So I was first starting getting involved with A Just Chi which is a part of Asian Americans Advancing Justice which is a huge Asian American advocacy organization here in Chicago that has networks and hubs all over the country. And that was really great way of getting involved in like local politics and understanding just like how corrupt Chicago is. But then because JJ and Anne pulled this group together, eventually we were working as--first we thought we were Tsuru for Solidarity Chicago, a local branch of the national Tsuru for Solidarity network which also popped up in the last few years as a network of Japanese Americans to support trying to call for the end of the camps at the border that are, you know, separating families. But then eventually it turned into Nikkei Uprising Chicago. So that' ; s just like a small group of us. There' ; s like 15 to 20 people as of right now, and I feel like that is very powerful for me and that' ; s what I would consider like my home, my political home. Because we' ; re not just working on you know, advocacy, we' ; re also working on like building a community and unpacking stuff within ourselves. Something we were able to do was like we' ; ve been showing up to Cook County jail at least a couple of people, one or two members every week, for the past year to support Cassandra Greer-Lee, whose husband Nickolas Lee was one of the inmates who first passed away in Cook County jail after the coronavirus pandemic in 2019 and--or 2020. And so we' ; ve been doing like local stuff like that trying to join that anti-incarceration, down with the prison industrial complex fight. But then also working personally, so we were able to host three sessions that were on Zoom and were able to share them with people across the country, but unpacking Japanese colonialism in Okinawa and US military colonialism, the Japanese colonialism of Hawaii, and then Japanese imperialism as a whole and kind of that, that framework. So those things like that' ; s kind of been helping me figure out more about this assimilation history my family has--my family experienced. And then also kind of like what were these mindsets that we' ; ve adapted even as we were being incarcerated ourselves. Like how this mentality of like, we just need to like put our heads down and fight. Like that is a survival technique, but that' ; s also coming from--that' ; s a trauma response as well. And that' ; s trauma from, I don' ; t know I mean everything, incarceration in the US, but then also from the Japanese government, and how they made their citizens feel about, about themselves as individuals. EL: Do you see reflections of that within your own family? Sort of the intergenerational passing on of trauma? CL: Yes, I--I don' ; t--I feel like the trauma is almost like latent, and like it' ; s hard, it' ; s almost easier for me to talk about these things in, in historical ways than in my own family ' ; cause it' ; s so intangible. I don' ; t see us passing on trauma as strongly as I see us not passing on healing. I think things like--me and my sisters right now we' ; re trying to learn Japanese. And as an adult that comes with a lot of shame, like I have a lot of shame about being bad, bad at the language. But I--I feel like that' ; s the process of me trying to unlearn this, this trauma. And so even if I don' ; t have full language to pass on to the next generation, I will have this kind of like settled-ness within myself that like I' ; m not a bad person for not knowing this. And that' ; s kind of what I consider like passing on a piece of healing. And I, I don' ; t see that--I see that happening now within me in my mother but within my grandfather, I love him and cherish his stories, but some of his lessons I--are harder for me to process in this day and age. I feel like a lot of the way that my grandfather decided to--or had to survive incarceration was by celebrating America and the American government. And deciding that he--and he' ; s told me this even recently, just about how he respects you know all the leaders of the country and doesn' ; t feel like we should oppose presidential decisions or even presidents or, because they are you know for my grandfather ordained by God, like decided being a part of his plan, but then also just like as you know they are the moral authority and they are the authority and that' ; s something that we should follow. And that is not something that, that I believe o-or share. And so I think the idea that what the U-United States did was not just wrong and not just a mistake that they had to apologize for, but also is a--the incarceration of the JAs was just a pattern of how the United States works as a settler colonial project. That they, I mean the United States is built on stolen land and when they incarcerated the Japanese Americans my grandfather was put on the stolen land of indigenous people who had been already forcibly removed. So I think that' ; s kind of the pattern of healing that we ne--we, I would like my family to address that more of being like this was not just a mistake, this was kind of how America works. And that it can' ; t be healed by an apology, it can' ; t be healed by Americ--or by Japanese people becoming Americans. I think that' ; s something that I see being passed on, is that if we' ; re accepted, then we' ; ll be good, and then we' ; ll be healed, and I, I don' ; t think so. EL: How do you, how do you find that very delicate balance between loving your grandfather and respecting him, and, and respecting what he' ; s been through in his life, but also holding these very different and, and valid views on, on how our country works and how the world works? Is that difficult sometimes when you' ; re having conversations with him? CL: It' ; s difficult in, in conversations. Cognitive dissonance is a miracle worker in letting me hold multiple of these, these ideas together. I think also too, there' ; s something about when I' ; m with my grandparents and my family all together, like I do become a child. Like when I sit here I can feel like I' ; m like yes, like I' ; m 28 like I have solid ideas. But you know when you' ; re back there I just fall into old patterns and it' ; s easy just to listen and be like, " ; Yup, you' ; re never going to change your mind about some things." ; Which I think is fine and healthy, ' ; cause I can' ; t change people, but I can change what I do and how I feel like I should shape you know, the river of time that I' ; m sitting in. And doing things like this, like I didn' ; t really want to be recorded because it didn' ; t feel like I was historical. But then after participating in my grandfather' ; s too I was like " ; Yeah, like I do want to share." ; I think what I see is needed for the future or what I would like our incarceration story to be because I think it is really powerful. But I feel like I' ; m one--I' ; m two stepping stones further in the river of time than my grandfather is so I have a totally different perspective. But I think that that, again, the river of time helps me understand that like everything that he did and even his positions that I disagree with are influencing me to be who I am today. EL: When you were talking about Nikkei Uprising, you mentioned that it' ; s not just the activism work that matters but also what you as a community are forming for yourselves. And I' ; d love to hear more about that, and also I' ; m wondering does that help you grapple with the intense frustration that it--that you must feel sometimes if you' ; re engaged in activism in the United States in 2021. CL: Yes, so I feel like the personal work is more important than the activism work. And I feel like they have to go hand in hand because there is urgent stuff happening right now that we need to do for sure. But I guess I--because of seeing how much change has happened between the last few generations and now, I feel really really confident that it' ; s not just the big stuff that we do, it' ; s the generational change that can make lasting lasting impact. Because I--and yeah I' ; m still in awe of the fact that growing up in the early 2000s the idea that there could be a movement of Japanese Americans who are willing to say something like the government is doing things that are not great, or that the police shouldn' ; t be killing people on the street. Like that seems incomprehensible to me that, that we could have a movement of Japanese Americans who are coming together for abolition right now. Like the New York Day of Remembrance, Nikkei Uprising, and Tsuru for Solidarity coordinated a national nikkei abolition study group and there' ; s over 100 people who came to their first session. So that feels like amazing. But this study group in of itself is it' ; s like we' ; re moving people towards action, but it is towards unpacking all this stuff. Like all this stuff I' ; ve been talking about like the language, shame, guilt, feeling like I need acceptance but not knowing from where it is, that' ; s the kind of stuff that I really want to heal in our community. And I feel like art can help do that, having community connections can do that, but really just conversations and like one-on-one connections. Like every time I talk to a mixed person who feels like they' ; re not Japanese enough and I tell them " ; No! We are Japanese like we can be Japanese and you can claim things. You can be--you don' ; t have to do any of these things to be who you are." ; I feel like that is powerful work that will--can resonate into the future. I just feel like the-there' ; s so many small things that I see, that I' ; m finding in historical documents where I' ; m like " ; Wow I never knew that this thing happened but I can feel it, because of the way that it shifted the community." ; EL: On that concept of reclaiming, and you' ; ve talked already about language and trying to learn Japanese now as an adult. Are there other, other aspects of Japanese culture that you' ; ve made efforts to reclaim? CL: There' ; s a few so one is like, I think ancestor honoring is one of those, like my father passed and without Christianity I was kind of struggling with how do I grieve? And how do I keep his memory alive? And so I now have a little altar. I kind of tried to model it off of my Buddhist altar where she' ; s like not totally practicing Buddhist but she just you know has an altar. And so that' ; s one thing. I' ; m trying to learn about aspects of Shintoism. Shintoism without the burden of Japanese nationalism behind it, to think about kind of the connection to earth and getting to know the land, and how people in Japan and Okinawa did know the land. Just history is a huge part too. I think just learning more about like what Japanese did to Okinawa really helps me kind of understand the culture, both of Japan and of Okinawa more. And holidays! Like things like I was really involved in the--my Christian church but we didn' ; t participate in a ton of other Japanese American community stuff. Like we would go to obon sometimes at Mitsuwa, but now like I helped work on the anniversary T-shirts for the Midwest Buddhist Temple' ; s Ginza holiday and they' ; ve been doing that for 70--65 years so I--my family had never gone before, but after the pandemic we' ; re hoping to start going to those. And yeah just things like being in community with other Japanese people was not an intention that I had in my life. I think I, sometimes I was like I want to be an artist, and then at certain points I was like I want to be Asian, and at some points I was like I want to know people who are not white, but this is the first few years where I was like I' ; m really looking for intentional Japanese American community, and that in itself is a reclamation. EL: What would you like to see all of us doing in the Chicago Japanese American community to achieve that goal? CL: I really like this question. And I have a lot of dreams for us, I do. I would like Japanese Americans to, to take it slow. I feel like if we can commit not just to, I think there' ; s a lot of pushes right now for--to how to act in solidarity, how to act in solidarity with black lives, how to act in solidarity internationally with these things. And I think those are really, really important and I' ; m listening and practicing them, but I think I would also like us to think about the, yeah kind of like the inner feelings. The shame, the guilt, the needing of acceptance that I feel like have really been passed down through incarcera--like that' ; s what I feel like the legacy of incarceration is now. And feeling like we don' ; t align with other Asian communities that might have either newer immigration histories, or don' ; t have incarceration histories. And I feel like if we can work through those things generationally, like that' ; s what I want for us in Chicago. The other thing that I have that' ; s a recent plot plan is I would love, and I don' ; t have to lead this, anyone in the future you can also take this on, is I would love for us to have a new camp. And I' ; ve been thinking about this as someone who loved church camp but is no longer in the church. I would really love for us to have a Japanese American camp that has a mixed identity lens, that has a social justice community-centered lens, that could bring people together from the coasts and from the Midwest. And it could be in you know, the southwest-like area so it could be like literally in the same areas that ancestors were held. But like shin-nikkei and everyone could come too, and for Japanese American people to have a chance to have that normalized mixed experience to have a little bit of history, and ceremony, and practice doing together but just really be in community together. I think that the thing that I see my cousins who are mixed on the coast have is a sense of normalcy. But I see the thing that me and my sisters have which, who are very Midwest and also mixed, is that we have a sense of urgency and community and necessity. Like th-th-the idea of keeping Japanese-ness alive is very much more important to us because it feels more fleeting. And I think that those two things coming together would be really powerful for us to have a sense of normalcy and a sense of the need to conne--connect our communities together. And then in the future when the gosei and the rokusei say that they went to camp, it would mean something different than what the nisei and the issei meant. So, that' ; s my grand proposal, if I have time when I' ; m 50, I' ; m going to try to start this camp. [laughs] EL: And do you view that camp as being more like your summer camp and for, for children and teens or as an intergenerational ' ; for everyone' ; kind of experience? CL: I think the thing that was special about the camp, Chi-KO and Teen Camp, that I went to was that it was for the kids, but it was intergenerational. The high school students went to Teen Camp, the college and young adults were the counselors, the adults had you know other way--like were also counselors or Bible leaders or whatever leadership stuff and then the families were like bringing children. So it really became something, like it was focused on the youth but all generations were a part of it. And I feel like that is something that I love about small communities, church communities, faith communities that I would like non-faith communities to build and have as well. Oh, and also that the camp, like I would love for this one to be that like you can learn anything. Like I think that that' ; s something, like I have, you know JA friends who are scientists and engineers who want to teach stuff like my friends are like artists, and like writers and creatives and like t--and also people who have practical skills around you know, how to organize in your schools, how to build community and start a club, all that kind of stuff I think I would like young people to have. EL: That' ; s a beautiful concept. I' ; m curious, because you mentioned you know, one possibility could be, could be in the southwest or could be on a site that had been used for incarceration have you yourself or has anyone in your family been on a pilgrimage? CL: So my little sister did the Kansha project through the Japanese American Citizens League, so she went on a, like did I think it was like a weekend of like community building and then they traveled and did a pilgrimage to Manzanar where they laid cranes, and then went to Little Tokyo in Japantown, or no in LA. So that was kind of like the, with another group of Japanese Americans, and I really love that ' ; cause it helped my little sister get really like grounded in the history and build community as well. I was too old to go on that program, but my family I think in 2018 did go on our own little trip, where we went to Granada, Colorado to visit the Amache incarceration site which is not as preserved as Manzanar but still has you know, the bunk and the guard tower and everything. So we brought my nibling there and my brother-in-law and we--like as a family just like drove around the site, and we like tried to walk to the site where my grandfather' ; s like barrack would have been, and it' ; s like all grown over now in the desert. But it' ; s it-it was powerful in just being like, they were really just out here in nowhere. And like they tell me about growing s-- like trying to grow stuff and like having food and like I don' ; t know everything being dusty. It w-- just seeing it, and it really makes me feel like yeah, they were really surviving in the desert even though they weren' ; t being you know, brutalized with violence, yeah everything was taken away. EL: What kinds of expectations did you have as you were embarking on that trip, and did it live up to those expectations? CL: I don' ; t know what my expectations were, I think it was powerful to do it with family, like with my mother and my-my sisters and our, you know the next generation, my Charlotte, my nibling. I feel like it' ; s, if anything, going there helps build a memory for me. Like I don' ; t think I got a good idea of-- besides like the natural environment, what grandfather lived through, like I feel like that' ; s more of like history and reading the--listening to the oral histories. But it' ; s something that I, a memory that I have from when I was like 27, so that now in the future, when my memories are less good or maybe when I have forgotten, like I can definitely still remember standing there. And I can remember seeing the guard tower, and I have the photo of me and my family there. So I think if anything, the pilgrimage is like a way to kind of bring these stories one step into the future. EL: I' ; m wondering, you' ; ve talked a lot about healing and of course that' ; s an ongoing process, but what for you personally have been some of the most effective sources of healing? CL: Mmm, I think, I have two sisters, my older sister is three years older than me and my younger sister is three years younger than me, and we' ; re-- now as adults very close. And I think that our sister chat is one of the most healing things that, that I have because it' ; s just like a processing space. And I know that other people don' ; t always have people who are-- have-- who share such similar histories as we do, but it' ; s someplace that I can go to be like here' ; s what I' ; m learning from history overall, here' ; s what I' ; m learning from my family' ; s history, here' ; s what I' ; m feeling and living in my everyday life, and like here' ; s what I feel like is emotionally blocking me. Like my therapy stuff. And all of those four together I can talk about. And I feel like that' ; s really where I' ; ve been finding a good site of healing. And so it' ; s not just the sister chat it' ; s also with Nikkei Uprising folks, it' ; s also with just friends, it' ; s also with other folks from different Asian diasporas. But where I can talk about the personal and the political together, and how that' ; s like mixing in my body, that feels like where I' ; m finding the most amount of healing. EL: And, what gives you hope? CL: I heard a quote recently and I' ; m going to have to remember-- I feel-- I don' ; t remember who the poet is but it' ; s a Chicago poet, I' ; ll look it up and then we could add it to the notes later. But the quote said, " ; Children are the world' ; s ability to begin again and again." ; And that has been sitting with me very powerfully as I see my nibling Charlotte being raised. She' ; s like a generation where, like, she' ; s even more mixed that I am, like her, her father is like Jewish-German heritage, and then also Okinawan-Japanese-and-Taiwanese. But my mother is babysitting her a lot, and they' ; re-- she' ; s speaking to her almost like entirely in Japanese at this point, so Charlotte' ; s being raised with like a lot of Japanese language, and she can read and she' ; s excited. And she can talk to my ah-ma now a little bit and they speak to each other in their little baby Japanese. And I' ; m just thinking about how powerful it is that she' ; s growing up after we' ; ve kind of processed all this incarceration trauma. Like my sister is telling her these things as a 2-year-old now whereas like I-- was like-- I don' ; t know, we didn' ; t even talk about camp until I was like in high school! So I feel like, that is giving me a lot of hope that like, yes it' ; s really hard because the world is very traumatic and fu-- like on top of so many bad things to heal through that. But like, Charlotte hasn' ; t experienced any of those bad things, and if we can like give it to her and like explain to her without building more personal trauma for her, that' ; s so powerful! Like, a young person who doesn' ; t have the years of assimilation trauma? Tha-- like I don' ; t even know who I would be if I didn' ; t have that now. EL: As we wrap this up, I' ; d like for you to-- you' ; ve touched on it already but I' ; d like for you to, to address again your motivations for participating in this oral history project, CL: Yeah [nodding] EL: an-- and maybe if you could connect it to the experience of sitting in on your grandfather' ; s interview CL: Oh yeah [nodding] EL: as well, and your experience assisting with transcriptions of other interviews ' ; cause it' ; s a-- I think it' ; s all tied together. CL: Yeah, okay I might need more prompting on that question, but I think the fi-- the, my motivations for this, for participating are that I would now like to contribute to the river of time. When, I think even last year I had thought about the oral histories as remembering something from the past, and I kind of forgot that the present is the past of the future. And so I feel like even though I' ; m not historically significant, I feel like I' ; m participating really actively in the present. And so that is kind of what I want to, to pass on. It too, like I do feel like it' ; s really historical what Nikkei Uprising, Nikkei Resistors, JAs for Justice, Tsuru for Solidarity, New York Day of Remembrance, all of these national nikkei orgs who are now connected, the fact that we are connected, the fact that we' ; re doing stuff, like that feels a little bit historical for me so I wanted to get that on the record. EL: And then, the experience of sitting in on your grandfather' ; s interview an-- and how that connects to doing-- deciding to do your own? CL: Yes, I really appreciated sitting on my grandfather' ; s interview and I think it helped me see the-- yeah maybe the significance of my family' ; s story. Like it doesn' ; t, it doesn' ; t feel particularly like power-- like I don' ; t feel like there' ; s any particular lessons to pull from it. But I think that I, I guess I saw how his life has been woven into the Chicago JA history, pretty like, yeah like integratedly. And it helped me pull together other pieces of the network. That is--the other thing that besides the river of time, the other analogy that I am focused on is like the mycelium network, like the idea that like mushrooms all have these like tiny roots that go underneath the, the ground and it' ; s just one cell at a time that is creating this connected network that fuels the whole forest. And that' ; s really how I feel like the JA community works right now, or it works over time, is that it' ; s just one person talking to one person and then they pass along the information, or they pass along a call to action, or they pass along food to give to someone' ; s cousin. Like that' ; s how the JA community taught me how to take care of community, and I think through the oral histories you can kind of see that happening even if you can' ; t experience it. EL: Thank you, is there anything else that you would like to have on the record for future generations to hear? CL: I think the, the last thing that I think I would just want to say is that our concept of what it means to be Japanese has shifted so drastically from the time that we came as formerly Japanese people or people who lived in the country of Japan to where I am right now. And the concept of being Asian is already changing throughout my lifetime, and so I see a lot of potential in that, and I hope that people are actively shaping what that means in the future. To be actively shaping what it means to be Japanese American. I think before, when I was growing up, there was really a concept of being similar to what is in Japan, carrying the cultures and traditions that had been in Japan, and having the blood, like your parental genealogy. Those were all what it meant to be Japanese. And now I' ; m seeing those all as being--especially the, the blood quantum idea, I would like us to move away from. Like, I' ; ve stopped saying that I am half-Japanese and half-Taiwanese and I' ; ve started saying that I' ; m just mixed. And, yeah, I feel like there is a lot more potential in that, and I don' ; t think race is real, so cool. [laughs] EL: I think maybe we can end on that note. Thank you so much for participating. CL: Thank you! Copyright held by the Japanese American Service Committee, Chicago, Illinois. video Interviews may only be reproduced with permission from the Japanese American Service Committee Legacy Center. 0 http://digitalcollections.jasc-chicago.org/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=LinCori20210519.xml LinCori20210519.xml http://digitalcollections.jasc-chicago.org/omeka/collections/show/1 http://digitalcollections.jasc-chicago.org/omeka/find?tags=Series%3A+Oral+History+Project& ; layout=1
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Oral History Interview: <a href="https://digitalcollections.jasc-chicago.org/omeka/items/show/2735" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lin, Cori Nakamura (12/15/2022)</a><br /><br />Oral History Interview: <a href="http://digitalcollections.jasc-chicago.org/omeka/items/show/5" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Nakamura, Tom (3/16/2021)</a>
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https://digitalcollections.jasc-chicago.org/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=LinCori20210519.xml
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Lin, Cori Nakamura (5/19/2021)
Description
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Cori Nakamura Lin is a fourth generation (yonsei) Japanese American born in the Chicago suburbs. In this interview, Cori shares her concept of the river of time, how we can see our present as continuously shaped by multigenerational experiences and events of the past, all interconnected. Cori describes her formative experiences in a Japanese American Christian church, and how growing up with multiracial people in that space helped shape her identity and provided a place of belonging. Cori discusses her experiences supporting social justice movements through art in the Twin Cities and Chicago, such as her work with the group Nikkei Uprising. She stresses the importance of undoing the generational trauma dating back to not only incarceration, but also Imperial Japan, and healing this trauma through community and shared cultural reclamation.
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2021-05-19
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video
Series: Oral History Project
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JASC Legacy Center Oral History Collection
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Japanese Americans--History.
Description
An account of the resource
This collection contains oral history interviews from the Japanese American Service Committee (JASC) Legacy Center's holdings. Where available, transcriptions have been included and synced to the recordings to enable full-text searching.
Interviews were recorded at various times, some by JASC staff and some by external partners, often supported by grant funding. See the metadata associated with each interview for full details.
This digital collection will continue to grow as new interviews are recorded, and as additional pre-existing recordings are received by donation or discovered in the physical archives.
The digitization and transcription of many of the recordings in this collection, the recording of interviews between July 2018 and June 2021, and the creation of this publicly accessible digital platform, were funded by a Japanese American Confinements Sites (JACS) grant awarded by the National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior. The JASC Legacy Center gratefully acknowledges the financial support received between 2018 and 2021 that enabled this project to succeed.
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This material is based upon work assisted by a grant from the U.S. Department of the
Interior, National Park Service. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations
expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views
of the U.S. Department of the Interior.
This material received Federal financial assistance for the preservation and interpretation of
U.S. confinement sites where Japanese Americans were detained during World War II.
Under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973,
and the Age Discrimination Act of 1975, as amended, the U.S. Department of the Interior
prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, disability or age in its
federally funded assisted projects. If you believe you have been discriminated against in any
program, activity, or facility as described above, or if you desire further information, please
write to:
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National Park Service
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Creator
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Japanese American Service Committee (Chicago, Ill.). Legacy Center
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Japanese American Service Committee (Chicago, Ill.). Legacy Center
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
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Takada, Anna
Su, Karen
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Llewellyn, Yukiko
OHMS Object Text
5.4 11/5/2017 Llewellyn, Yukiko (11/5/2017) 1:09:24 JASC_OHP JASC Legacy Center Oral History Collection TTCFM Then They Came for Me Japanese American Service Committee Legacy Center Recorded with financial support from the Alphawood Foundation Chicago. Transcribed and made accessible online with financial support from the Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Japanese American Confinement Sites grant program. Llewellyn, Yukiko Takada, Anna Su, Karen video 0 https://vimeo.com/303626481 Vimeo video < ; iframe src=" ; https://player.vimeo.com/video/303626481?h=82211598bd" ; width=" ; 640" ; height=" ; 360" ; frameborder=" ; 0" ; allow=" ; autoplay ; fullscreen ; picture-in-picture" ; allowfullscreen> ; < ; /iframe> ; [NOTE: This transcript has not undergone a final proofreading and may contain errors. It is being provided in draft form to enhance access to the video recording. As soon as possible, it will be replaced with a final, corrected transcript and will be synced to the video to provide clickable timecodes.] Anna Takada: 00:00:00 To start, can you just state your full name? Yuki Llewellyn: 00:00:03 Uh, Yukiko Helen Llewellyn. AT: 00:00:07 And where and when were you born? YL: 00:00:10 April 22nd, 1939 in Los Angeles, California. AT: 00:00:16 Um, and so I' ; ll be asking you some questions that I already know the answer to. So it' ; s not that I' ; m not listening, but just to have for the record. Uh, can you tell me a little bit about, Um, your parents and, and where they were from? YL: 00:00:34 Um, my dad was from Hawai' ; i and my mom was born in, uh, Wyoming, but as a child was sent back to Japan to be raised by her grandparents. Well, she' ; s known as a Kibei. And, uh, my mother had an arranged marriage, so she was married by Japanese law, you know, with her, um, father approving. And then she sailed to the United States to meet my father. Um, she was 18 when she moved to the United States. They were together when I was born and she was 20. I can always tell how old my mother is, you know, by, she was 20, so this is how old she is now. Um, I can' ; t remember. I used to know how, I think my father was three or four years older than she was. Not, not very much older, you know. So there was a, they were a young couple, um they AT: 00:01:54 What kind of, um, backgrounds where they' ; re coming from? What did their parents do? YL: 00:02:01 Well, momma was the high school graduate in Japan. She was not employed anywhere. She was probably the only young woman who wanted to go to the United States. And this was an opportunity. There was a family friend who said that I have a son who' ; s looking for a bride. Uh, unbeknownst to them really, uh, I learned this after the fact. My father was a Baptist. My mom was a Buddhist. She didn' ; t speak any English and he didn' ; t speak very fluent Japanese cause his parents were in Japan. But he was in Hawai' ; i and I don' ; t, I don' ; t know of any employment he had. Ah he was a fruit stand vendor. On his, um, on my birth certificate you have to, you know, put down what the father' ; s job was and it said fruit vendor. And of course, I said, what' ; s, what' ; s a fruit vendor? Well, he had a cart, I guess, and, and sold fruit that, that he a got. But not, not a job as we know it, you know, not a category. Um, I understand from my mom that, uh, she worked as, uh, a maid, you know, did, did kind of, uh, I mean she didn' ; t have secretarial skills. Uh, she did some, uh, sewing at um garment worker type thing, which she did later when, when I was growing up in Cleveland, she worked at a garment workers factory. AT: 00:03:48 And what were the circumstances for them ending up in the L.A.? And do you know anything about their life there? YL: 00:03:55 No, except, uh, where we lived was where I was born. I was born in the apartment that they lived in. Um, there are pictures of me with my mom as a baby on the rooftop of the apartment building. And you can see the L.A. Towers, you know, from downtown, from the pictures. They uh, split up sometime before the war because when the war came, she was with me by our selves and he was not in the picture at all. She told me as I was growing up that my father had died in the war. So there was no reason for me to look for him. Had I known that he was also in Manzanar, which I found out much later, I probably would have looked for him. But at three you' ; re not, you know, you' ; re not good to do that. So the, everything in the records that I could find in Manzanar was that, you know, there was Mikiko Hayakawa, Okinaga, they did attach that last name to hers on one record and then it was Mikiko Hayakawa. And then Yukiko, Helen Okinaga, which is on my birth certificate and then Yukiko Helen Hayakawa. So of course, I said, oh, does that mean I get twice as much money because I' ; m listed twice? No. So I' ; m listed both ways and they let her choose the government, let her choose what you and she said Hayakawa because I have more papers with Hayakawa on it from when I' ; m moved from Japan to the United States. Karen Su: 00:05:54 When did you find out that your father was not dead? That he was still alive? YL: 00:06:02 I was married and working at the University of Illinois and I' ; m trying to remember, there was a company and I don' ; t know, the company' ; s name was find people fast and they came to the radio station in Champagne. Well, the guy said, I can find anybody for you, you know, I have all this data. And my friend Nancy called me, I was at work, and said call the station and just give your father' ; s name because we thought, I think somewhere along the way my mom said something about he, she didn' ; t know if he was dead. And I said, well why did you tell me? It was easier. Then you know you' ; re not going to fight your mother for having that lie to a child. So then I start, but I was grown woman, you know, with a child and called the radio station and Okinaga was such an unusual name. He said, oh, uh, I don' ; t think there are many Okinaga' ; s. And I said, what? And there was only like half a page and they were dates from, oh, I don' ; t know, a few years and of current people and where they lived. And then the people who have just died and my father had just died, just died. Imagine that. But at least his last address was on there. And so I got the address. I mean they were nice enough to send me what they had. Uh, I wrote to my father at that address saying, if you received this, and I enclosed my, birth certificate that had his name on it. So people wouldn' ; t say, why is this person writing to me about this guy who had died? His widow answered my letter and she said, by your, the copy of your birth certificate, that is my husband, who was your father. Said, I did not know he had a child before he married me in Manaznar. They had three children in Manzanar and if it weren' ; t for her kindness to filling me in what she could, she sent me a picture, you know, of the children, picture of herself and my father at you know, his seventy years old or whatever he was, I would have nothing. I would have just that blank space. So it' ; s real hard for me to tell the story of my parents because I don' ; t know it. Uh, the kindness of this woman who I don' ; t think I would have done it. I don' ; t think I have that in my heart to do it. She must have been distraught to know that this child was looking for her father who was married to her. He never said he had a child. He said he had been married before. Didn' ; t say any names. AT: 00:09:41 Did you continue to be in touch with her, after that exchange? YL: 00:09:45 I tried, but it' ; s really hard. Um, I heard from her children and they were very nice, but there was nothing a hook to get, you know, there were no interests. There were, our kids were different ages, you know, I mean it was just really hard and I didn' ; t, I' ; ve, I' ; ve heard kids, you know, who had like second families, but they were right there. These people lived in New Jersey, you know, when I lived in Champagne, Illinois. Um, but they know my name, you know, of course I know their' ; s, cause it' ; s Okinaga. And when it was, it was known that the child in the picture, you know, named at birth was Okinaga, this woman said, my children said, isn' ; t that fascinating? It' ; s our name and our name is so unusual. Are we related? And at the time it was like, well, no, I' ; m sure we would have known. So it was a little strange, you know, and I didn' ; t fault them for not contacting me. I tried later, I think it was too little, too late. Uh, the letters came back, you know, the address was not correct and I don' ; t know where she is. I don' ; t know where the children are. The, there was one boy and, uh, two daughters. And the boy was a police officer in Tennessee. And I thought he would be the easiest defined, but then it was also probably easiest for him to find me, you know. So I, I just let it, my son really want me to find him. And, and he, when he wrote to me, said, hey, great to have another boy in the family because he was a boy with two sisters and that sounded promising, but you know, I didn' ; t hear anymore. And um, Chiyeko was, her name was, I mean, isn' ; t that fascinating to have somebody with that much heart? This letter comes in the mail. AT: 00:12:14 Well, thank you very much for sharing. KS: 00:12:18 Do you want to hold the picture? YL: 00:12:21 Of? KS: 00:12:21 Of you. It' ; s interesting that they saw the photo of you and noticed that you had the same name. YL: 00:12:30 This is the picture you know, and, and one of the newspaper stories, you know, they said, oh, we found the little girl and her name at birth was, you know, Okinaga. But she' ; s been known as Hiyakawa until she got married and she' ; s now a Llewellyn, who knew? I mean there are some college friends where they knew me as Hiyakawa who don' ; t know about this cause I never talked about this when I was in college. Hm. AT: 00:13:05 When, when did you start talking about that photograph or that YL: 00:13:10 Probably not really until I came to the University of Illinois because when I was in grad school, I was in theater. And nothing about historical background of our lives ever. I mean I didn' ; t know the background of my colleagues in the theater department and they didn' ; t know. And at the time, of course my name was still Hiyakawa cause I got married, uh, end of my grad school year. AT: 00:13:44 Um, to go back just a little bit, um, so you, you were with your mom and camp, um, and would, would' ; ve been three years old. Um, can you tell me about what, um, given that you were so young, how were the, how was the information in the stories of yours and your mother' ; s experiences kind of passed down to you? Or do you have memories from camp? YL: 00:14:16 Oh, I would, four or five and six were your twinges of memories. But they' ; re all childhood memories there, there of friends coming to play, me going out to play a, having a sitter come to take me to the mess hall for movies. And that was when I saw that they were Westerns and the bad guys were always people who look like us. The Indians were not, they did not do well in these Westerns. But, um, I did have a, a teenage girl take me to the movies. And one time, I guess I was crying and she was upset that she had to leave the movie, take me outside because I was crying. Not a good babysitting job, I guess. But I had, my mom had pictures of my classroom at Christmas and we had a Japanese Santa Claus. And there are snapshots of Obon Festivals. And I was in a Japanese kimono and I had a dance lessons, Odori lessons, because there were so many Japanese people who were stuck in the United States when the war came and they were thrown into the relocation camps with us. But true to form, you know, it' ; s like, well, you could teach a class, you know, and so we had really good teachers of Odori and Shamisen. And things, I mean I don' ; t know where they got the things to teach with, but, uh, every little girl probably went to the dance class. And, um, and the irony of it is, you know, they were trying to get rid of everything Japanese before we went to camp, but here was a gold mine of talent and they wanted to do something in camp, you know, so teach a course. And I didn' ; t know that they were excellent teachers. I didn' ; t know that they were professional dancers in Japan, but they couldn' ; t get back to Japan. So they taught and I guess the parents were pleased as could be. They couldn' ; t afford to do that in the real world. But, uh, so I have, I have pictures of that. And, um, all the holidays there, there were always, you know, snapshots of that, uh, the making of mochi. And, and it was a great time to be a kid. AT: 00:17:18 Did your mom ever speak with you about it, about, you know, her experiences from her perspective? YL: 00:17:26 Only when it involved me. Oh you were so cute when you had on the kimono and all you did this and oh you did that. But of course, as a kid I never asked her. So what did you do mom during the day? I don' ; t know. She volunteered at the canteen are, I guess it' ; s not the canteen, it' ; s a store. It' ; s the camp store where they sold thread and cloth and she did the, I don' ; t, it was something like a quarter, an hour or something. But she earned money and she, that means she had expendable income and she could afford to hire a teenage girl to come take me to the movies that she didn' ; t want to go to. The movies were free. But the teenage girl was not. And uh, I loved it. I loved being able to go and then meet all the kids. We didn' ; t like the Westerns. But interestingly we found out later that they probably were filmed outside the camp gates cause the mountains looked familiar. Oh look at that. Doesn' ; t that look like the one behind our camp? AT: 00:18:45 But um, and then what, um, how long were you and your mom there at Manzanar? YL: 00:18:51 The entire time til it closed. From opening to close. 42' ; to 45' ; , I think is you, you, there were people there, you know, til 47' ; , I think. And we were among the last to leave because we had to have sponsors. So you couldn' ; t just leave because the camp was closing and if you had family that was reason enough to be able to get out of there. But we had no family. And so um a Buddhist church in Cleveland had a family said, we' ; ll take whoever, especially with a family, you know, who don' ; t have a place to go, we' ; ll bring them to Cleveland, you know, find them a job, put the child, children into school and if it weren' ; t for them, strangers, strangers, uh, we would, I don' ; t know what they would do with people who are still there. When the camp had to close, it said, no place to go. I don' ; t know what we' ; ll do with them. Really, never occurred to me to ask because we had a place to go. AT: 00:20:01 And can you tell me a little bit more about, um, uh, the, the process or what happens to you and your mom after camp? Um, so you all went to, you were sponsored by them? YL: 00:20:14 Yeah, we went to Cleveland. They found us a place to live in a inner city apartment and it was really an inner city hotel. And my mom was like the maid, she, she did, uh, picked up the sheets, the linens from the tenants and then washed them. Um, I don' ; t know. I can' ; t remember if there were washing machines or what, you know, but I' ; m sure there was, cause it was a business. And I was the, you know, person who swept the steps, all the public spaces and um, took the trash out to the back. There were all these um, trash cans, but you had, when you went out there, you, you took a broom and hit the side of the trashcan so the rats would jump out so you could, didn' ; t open the thing and have the rats come out at you. Interesting trick to that. And um, so that was the job they have for my mom. Um, I don' ; t remember getting paid at that either or some people really owe me money. And um, so we did that and I don' ; t know the timeline of that. All I know is that, um, my, my grandmother' ; s brother or some distant relative of my family in Japan, this older man he was like my grandfather' ; s age was in Manzanar and he also moved to, uh, Cleveland. There was some other people he knew, who were Buddhist, and he offered, uh, my mom, an opportunity to buy a house in a better neighborhood than the hotel, someplace where I would be able to go out and play with kids. But the specific reason was that there were so many Japanese American college students coming to Cleveland because there were a lot of institutions that people were looking for boarding houses for the students students want, that' ; s what they wanted there. There weren' ; t any dorms for them. These were like older students and my mom' ; s thought anything to, you know, make life better for us. And it turned out to be quite a good thing. We had a really nice house. It was lot of rooms, you know, a lot of bathrooms because we knew that we wanted to attract tenants. They were like friends. They were like family that you all of a sudden got because they were students at Case Western Reserve. You know, probably other schools too. But do you know what they were? They were the best tutors for me to speak English. They were already college students and I didn' ; t know how much that helped me except that every time I had a paper I had, you know, four or five people say, well that' ; s not good English. He said, How would I know? But it was great. It was great. AT: 00:24:06 And these students, were any of them Japanese American? YL: 00:24:09 They all were. AT: 00:24:10 They all were Japanese American? YL: 00:24:11 But they were outside of camp. None of them were in camp. They lived in Cleveland or around and had a hard time being students or whatever they were doing at the time. But they were all students when I saw them. And so it was wonderful for them to be in a house with other students, different ages. I mean some of them, there were a lot of difference in ages, but they all also spoke Japanese. So of course that was great for my mother because she didn' ; t care about the other stuff. But the fact that she had someone to talk to and someone for me to learn from. I get, I got to be really good in science because a lot of the guys were in science, I didn' ; t know what science was, you know. AT: 00:25:02 Would you happen to remember the address of that building? YL: 00:25:06 No, but I have pictures and I think the house, cause I had a dog and we sat in front. I think that the address and there' ; s got to be something, you know, in, in my box of photography. You know, yeah sure. It, it was on 30 something street and I could find it if I got to Cleveland. You know, cause the house was there a, I saw it when I moved my mom from her apartment cause there was just a few blocks from the apartment that she was in for years. Yeah. Cause we said, Oh let' ; s look at our house. You know, isn' ; t that nice that you call it your house? Yeah, it' ; s still there. It' ; s across the street from a school. I don' ; t know if the school is there, but. AT: 00:25:57 And can you, uh, describe for me what the, what that area where you first went to in Cleveland was like? YL: 00:26:05 It was the inner city. AT: 00:26:08 And so it sounds like there' ; s a number of Japanese Americans already there. YL: 00:26:14 No AT: 00:26:14 No YL: 00:26:15 No, we were the only Japanese American family. The students all came from different places to this house. And then when they got their degree, they left, you know, and quite a few of them went back to California. They were from California. They went to the Midwest during the war. And um, and some of them settled and they got married. You know, started a family in Cleveland. And I have um, one of the former student' ; s, wife' ; s family. The wife became a really good friend of my mom' ; s and their children and I correspond. But they, I don' ; t think the kids realized that their dad was a student in a boarding house that my mom helped to prepare the food, you know? But just the friendship became because of the church. Cause they were all Buddhists. KS: 00:27:25 Was that the church that sponsored you? YL: 00:27:28 Yeah. Yeah. KS: 00:27:29 That was a Japanese American Buddhist Community? YL: 00:27:34 Yeah, kind of, but the Sashihara' ; s were the only ones I ever met. They were the actual sponsors and they were kind of, you' ; d say, upper middle class. The girls were going to college. They were high schoolers at the time, but they were already planning to go to college. I didn' ; t know what college was. I didn' ; t know that everybody got to go to college, you know? But it was that kind of thing there. Their house was so luxurious in my eyes, and my mom confirmed later on, you know, I said, was it really as nice as I thought it was because I was a child? She said no, they had a very nice house in a very nice neighborhood, but they were like the only Japanese living in that area, so there wasn' ; t a Japanese community. I met Japanese people at church and when I went to school, there were Japanese kids already in school and there wasn' ; t a welcome feeling from them. They were not in camp. They were all still in Cleveland. Um, I had a hard time with the Japanese community. My mom didn' ; t, she, she had a better experience with the church. Um, made friends readily. I did not. Most of my friends were kids from school who were not Japanese. They weren' ; t Asian at all. Um, they just were, they lived in the neighborhood. You know, there were people who lived next door to me. Um, there were some racial things from kids, but not a big effort on anybody' ; s part. I was so used to it then as long as they weren' ; t going to hurt me or my family, you know, I didn' ; t care. AT: 00:29:46 Can you tell me a little bit more about the, um, the response of, um, the Japanese American, um, students, young people your age, who were already in Cleveland? YL: 00:29:58 We had a picnic, every year, the Japanese Americans and everybody was invited who was Japanese American, and I got to meet kids who were like lived in the suburbs, didn' ; t live in Cleveland proper. And they look like a different breed of kid. They were very open. They were friendly, they didn' ; t care about camp. You know, that was a stupid question to ask. Only your parents asked, their parents, you know, were you in camp? The kids never asked me if I was in camp. Uh, by then my English was good enough to pass, uh, because I could only speak English to this group from Cleveland, except I knew that they were bilingual because their parents spoke Japanese primarily. When we went to Buddhist Temple, that' ; s all I heard was Japanese. And of course all the movies they showed on the weekends were Japanese movies. And it was strange. I, I didn' ; t see a community except at Obon and that summer picnic every year. And the picnic I think really was because of the teenagers. Kids went to different high schools, then they went to different colleges and that was the only time they could, you know, meet each other. And it was invaluable. There were some good friends I made, but, you know, like one or two families. It wasn' ; t, I didn' ; t go to any of their events. It was the community event that everybody went to. But I know there were other things that happened and there were, you know, things that happened to me that didn' ; t happen to anybody else. But I, I dunno, maybe it was just the, I was, you know, not as understanding of what they were going through. I don' ; t know. I don' ; t know. AT: 00:32:19 Um, could you tell me a little bit about what it was like to, to start school in a, um, a totally new environment and, um, were you involved in any activities outside of school? YL: 00:32:39 Running away, does that count? I didn' ; t speak any English when I got to Cleveland. So when I was taken to Clara Morris Elementary School, they put me in the lowest grade, which was kindergarten. It was the only time I was a large kid in a group was smaller kids that didn' ; t last very long. But you know, there was, and the little kids were fine, you know, when I first got there. But when I couldn' ; t speak English, they, you know, I forget that I can' ; t talk to her. Um, I had trouble with, with language, I had trouble with the lunchtime, you know, trouble understanding what people were trying to ask me to do. It' ; s like I don' ; t speak the language, I don' ; t understand the language. Why are you speaking to me in that language, you know, little sign language would help, you know, a little demonstration, you know, sit here, you know, that would help. Instead of saying, sit in that chair, you know, it was, it was strange. But at once we got to the boarding school, leaps and bounds of understanding what people were saying. Typical things that teachers say. I didn' ; t know that they had typical things that they say. And these were college students, but they were older. They were all probably older than 30, when they lived in the boarding house. So they were grown men and women, you know, had, and in fact, the woman who lived there, Elaine, uh, became a secretary after she graduated and stayed in the boarding house until she got married. And so we were all there at the wedding because we felt like we were her family, you know, although her family from Hawai' ; i did come. And, um, but they, they were so helpful. I don' ; t know what I would have done. I probably would not have been able to go to college in that time where I was supposed to succeed at junior high, high school. And then pass the exams to go to college. Had I not had these hovering grown men and women, say that' ; s wrong, do it over, oh for Pete' ; s sake. It was, it was great. But you know, only in hindsight at the time it' ; s like, oh my god. But when I got the papers back, you know, and my grades kept getting better and better, especially the written stuff, you know, the science thing was really easier because a lot of it was in the lab. And if I understood what was going on, it was easier to do. I can see why people who don' ; t like English like to do science because they, I can do that. I can' ; t write it, but I can do it. Well they made me write it also, you know, this is the experiment, now write it. Well, there' ; s the experiment. What do you need me to write it for? It works. AS: 00:36:18 Talk a little bit about the difference from your, from Clara Morris, uh, Elementary School to when you went to Patrick Henry YL: 00:36:27 Patrick Henry. KS: 00:36:29 Cause you described how different they were and what was that like for you? YL: 00:36:35 It was a reva, revelation when after fourth grade or fifth grade they gave exams to all the students, academic exam. And I passed a test that I didn' ; t know I was even taking, you know, I whatever they gave me, you know, I would fill out, but my mother was sent a letter, I don' ; t know if you got a copy of the letter that said, you know, from, uh, the board of education that Yukiko passed this test. And that she qualifies for special, uh, accelerated program. But it' ; s only held at Patrick Henry Junior high school, which was like an hour and a half streetcar ride from where I lived. Cause this is, don' ; t forget the inner city. And this was almost in the suburbs. And I didn' ; t know what that was. I didn' ; t want to go there cause you know, my friends were going to the local school and my mother knew enough to, showed the letter to somebody in her church who understood English and said, no, no, she has to go to this school and explained, you know what it was. Patrick Henry was almost half Black and half Jewish from the inner city, which is kind of a mixture of the people who lived there. It, these are a mixture of people who lived near Patrick Henry. But I didn' ; t know that. I didn' ; t know the neighborhood' ; s changed so much. So we had holidays on all the Jewish holidays. So I know all the Jewish holiday' ; s and the Black kids loved it. You know, when I first got there, they tried to explain to me, you know, just as a new student, not of my color or anything. And they said, and these are the days that we get off because it' ; s a Jewish holiday. I said, Oh are you Jewish? No, but half the school is, and so on Jewish holiday' ; s, those kids don' ; t come. School closes. Hey, it' ; s all cool. I said, okay. It, it was wonderful, it was wonderful. I learned French with a Japanese accent. Not very well. It' ; s a different, you know, atmosphere. First of all, I had to get up early to get on the streetcar because it was an hour and a half to get there. But it taught me that there' ; s a progression in life. All the things I thought I knew, you know, I didn' ; t know, although my English was so much better that I got to speak it more comfortably. Um, people still said, you know, you speak with what kind of an accent? And I didn' ; t know I still did, but of course if the ear is just used to English, you know, there, there are some words that I didn' ; t do well. I, um, the sesquicentennial of Ohio was celebrated while I was there and we had this huge festival. It was the first one I was part of. It was just that every class had to do something, some dance, something. But it was so much fun. It was so much fun. It was my mom' ; s first experience with the parent teacher meeting. She who does not speak English well. She who smiles all the time is the quiet, docile parent. You don' ; t want me to tell her about her teacher? Well to show you the how, you should not underestimate your parent. She uh, went to the parent teacher' ; s meeting and I told all my teachers that she was coming, but you know that she didn' ; t understand English. And I said, I don' ; t know why she' ; s coming to tell you the truth. But she insisted because she got the letter cause you had to sign the letter and return it. So she was going. So she took the street car, in the evening, of the parent teacher meeting. Came back and I thought, oh this is going to be a breeze. You know how everything was wonderful. She laid into me for every everything I did wrong and every class. I found out later that she didn' ; t say anything. She just went to every meeting, talk to the teacher, not at her head, smiled, didn' ; t even write down anything, but she knew everything I had done wrong. Why was it that I had lipstick on when I got to school, but I didn' ; t have lipstick on when I left home. Well, because I put it on the street car. I see. I don' ; t do that anymore. Everything about Yuki talks too much. They said that, how could that be? She understood everything they said, everything they said. Hurt me a lot. I wish I could, I had the guts to go back to the teachers. How dare you. I didn' ; t, I understood what had happened and I would never underestimate my mother again if she was going to talk to anybody, go let her talk, but I probably should go along and make sure. AT: 00:43:04 Oh, one thing, I wa, I wanted to be sure to ask a, just to get a better sense of, um, kind of what the Japanese American community looked like in Cleveland in those, um, those early days that you all were there. Um, do you remember any, uh, Japanese American owned businesses or, um, did, did people own any kind of restaurants or, or property that, you know of. YL: 00:43:35 Not restaurants, but there was a grocery store, Toguchi' ; s. Um, they tell me that it had been there for a long time and it was the only one we, we went to, but it had everything that we needed, you know, especially tofu cause you can' ; t, couldn' ; t get tofu in the grocery store. Um, it was a while before we got stuff from Japan, you know, foodstuffs from Japan. But, um, actually the, the Japanese community individually did celebration dinners at Chinese restaurants, not, I mean, they never looked for, you know, the Japanese restaurant, cause there weren' ; t any, but they were fine with Chinese restaurants. I always remember going to a Chinese restaurants for weddings and, you know, things like that. And we always had favorite Chinese food. Um, we always made Japanese food at home for holidays and, uh, but I don' ; t recall businesses. I mean, if, if there were like insurance adjusters, I don' ; t know about them. I didn' ; t look in the yellow pages to see if any, you know, uh, companies had Japanese names. Um, most of my friends' ; , parents didn' ; t own businesses. They worked for somebody. Um, I would not call Cleveland while I lived there, an Asian American inspired community. We had a Chinatown, but the Japanese families usually told their teenagers to not mingle with the Chinese students, which of course made us mingle with Chinese students. We had a good time with them. They were our age. You know, we had interests similar to our, they looked like us. Um, we just didn' ; t tell her parents that we went to Chinatown because they had a gym, you know, so we could play in the gym and they were receptive to having us there. There were a lot of romances that sprung up with them. We just didn' ; t tell our parents because there was a taboo on them racially by them. You know, it' ; s just so silly, so silly. But no, I, I, I' ; ve heard a couple things during our visit from people who just came out and talked to us about one person said he was in Cleveland and about the Japanese community and I, I felt like saying what Japanese community? I don' ; t know. Is that something that happened recently? Cause you know, once I left in 1958, I didn' ; t go back, to Cleveland. That' ; s a long time from 58' ; . So if they were active any time from then on, I' ; m not aware of it, but there was nothing like that when I was there. And you know, to tell you the truth, I was looking, I was looking for it and it wasn' ; t there. AT: 00:47:48 As? Go ahead. KS: 00:47:48 I was gonna ask how long did your mother run the boarding house? That was her business? YL: 00:47:56 Yeah, yeah. KS: 00:47:59 Yeah, okay. YL: 00:47:59 Uh, it, it was, uh, my uncle, you know, the older gentleman in the family who financed it. He made it possible, uh, when you wanted to return to Japan himself, he still had family in Japan. You know, no children or anything but, uh, cousins thing and they knew that camps were over. So, you know, they wanted to know where he was. And then he said he was doing this a boarding house. They thought that was a good venture. So, you know, they didn' ; t complain. But, um, he made it possible for my mom to get enough money for the apartment knowing that she still worked as a garment worker. You know, part time. She worked there probably as long as she could, but we lived cheap and it was still in the inner city. It' ; s still, you know, the odd thing was it was a apartment building mostly with Japanese people in it. Uh, and I don' ; t know what, maybe the landlord was Japanese, I don' ; t know. But, um, the neighborhood was white, white, blue collar. My mom got a beagle dog when we were living there, Hiro, everyone thought it was H e r o, it was H i r o for Hiroshi. You know, so when I tell my kid my grandchildren' ; s, you know, we had a dog Hiro. Oh, Hero! Oh no, no, Hiro, little different. But Hiro had to be walked a couple times a day. Mom lived on the third floor, walked down every morning, you know, walked the dog around the block. Good thing beagles are small. And every night. And it got so that the teenagers, the boys in the neighborhood, noticed this woman, Japanese woman from that a corner apartment had a dog. Then they, so they started following her and I got alarmed when I when I, I can' ; t remember the timing of it, but I know I was away at school someplace, when she was living alone. That was why she got the dog cause she was living alone. And when I got home I was so alarmed that these boys were around and she said, oh no, no, no. They make sure I safe. I said yeah, right. I walked the dog one time, cause I didn' ; t believe her, cause ours is going to really get to those guys. And they said, why are you walking Hiro? I said I' ; m her daughter. Oh she' ; s okay. Isn' ; t she? She' ; s not sick or anything? No. Do you know her? Oh Mrs. Hiyakawa? Oh yeah, we' ; ve, we walk with her every morning. Oh my god. How mistaken was I? And she said, I tell you so, you know, what' ; s the matter with you? They took care of Hiro and my mother and called her Mrs. Hiyakawa. So I' ; m sure at some point she said, my name is Mrs. Hiyakawa, cause that' ; s how they addressed her. Wonderful. AT: 00:52:05 Are there any ways, um, you know, as an adult that you see yourself as being shaped by growing up in the Midwest or Cleveland? Are there any particular things about you that you, feel is relevant? YL: 00:52:24 The Cleveland Indians won the world series. My mother let me cut school and go to the ball games. She knew, everything about the Cleveland Indians, the batting averages, the pitching, you know, stats. I was like, why do you know that? Well, she listened, you know, we didn' ; t have a T.V. She listened to the ball games and she heard people talking about the Cleveland Indians and she just got herself fixated with the team, read everything about them, you know. And when she went to church, she found, you know, like people who also follow the Indians. So people say you' ; re from claims go Cleveland Indians. Now the Cleveland Browns are another story. AT: 00:53:30 But um, well, and we have a few more minutes, so I have just a couple more questions, but I want to be sure to ask you. Um, I do want to bring up the, the photograph of course. Um, I' ; m just, uh, one thing that I would like to know in regards to, you know, having your photograph taken, um, at a young age and like you say you did nothing, you know, to warrant. You were just a, a child that the moment captured. Um, in what ways, if any, uh, has that photograph, um, impacted your, your own life or your experiences? YL: 00:54:19 Huge. AT: 00:54:20 Can you talk to me a little about that? YL: 00:54:24 Well, for a long time, of course nobody knew about it, you know, and so I didn' ; t know that other people knew. And then I have, I have friends from college, from grad school, from the U of I who now, you know, and that' ; ll spend the 50 years or so, uh, will drop me a card saying your picture was in such and such, you know, as something I went to see in Vermont. And so that' ; s kind of cool to find out that people are using that photograph for something that would be social issues type thing. Um, I like it because it, it could be anybody, you know, it doesn' ; t say, here' ; s a picture of Yuki Llewellyn. I would hate that if every time the pictures was shown, they identified it, that would not work for me. But to see it and see the people' ; s reaction to it, that there was a child who was incarcerated and that puts a different picture on that whole thing. I like that. I like, later on when when they identified me and I had some calls, it, it was not intrusive. You know, they just want to know who I was. But since you know, I wasn' ; t a big celebrity, they just said, okay, thanks. And went on their way, which is great, which is great. But I enjoy this opportunity when there' ; s a concentrated effort and other people who have similar experiences sharing this with me, their pictures are also shown here at the gallery. And I remember some of those pictures. So I feel like I' ; m with my people. We are all the same on this. We had the experiences, different kinds of experiences, but in the same thing. That' ; s valuable to me and I will do anything to help people understand. Oh, but I think everyone understands, you know, it, my celebrity is just the picture, you know. Um, I haven' ; t a written anything except these speeches that I do for you guys. Um, I meet wonderful people like Karen who are doing other things too. So I like that. And then this film that you' ; re showing here, it doesn' ; t stop if there' ; s going to be a repeat of getting a bunch of people into prison because somebody doesn' ; t like them, we can' ; t let that happen. That is really scary stuff. Scary stuff. AT: 00:57:59 And um, can you elaborate a little bit? Um, um, you mentioned the impact that the film had on you. So could you tell me more about what exactly that was that touched you? YL: 00:58:12 I hadn' ; t realized how far it' ; s come to identifying a body of people who are now in United States who are trying to live their lives the best they can to be targeted similarly to the way the Japanese were. And luckily we have some Japanese people who say, wait a minute, we recognize that we know what it is. Nobody stopped it for us. We' ; re going to try to help, stop it for you. And I' ; d like to join that bandwagon AT: 00:59:14 Given the current, um political climate, um, are there any other ways that you see this particular history as, um, do you see any echoes of this history happening with other, um, communities or people today? YL: 00:59:44 I would like to not see it. Um, I would like people to come here and see what you' ; ve done here because some of the exclamations were strange to my ears when they said I didn' ; t know that' ; s what they did. It' ; s like, oh my god is, are there people still saying that? You' ; re going to be part of something just like it if you didn' ; t know that it happened before. So I don' ; t know how to make that happen. I mean, I was glad to see the crowds that were here yesterday, but I mean, the, those comments were, were really jarring. They said, did that really happen? Ah, hello photographs, you know, documentation. That' ; s the scary part. That' ; s the scary part. And as a people, the, the Japanese people, Japanese American people did not want to talk about camp when they left camp. My mother forbid it in the house. That was her and me. Why can' ; t we talk about it? I don' ; t know anything about what my mom did in camp, she died in 2009. I asked her more questions even to her dying day. Can we just talk about it? No. And you know, I admire her more and more as I learn, you know, the hardships that she went through. I couldn' ; t have been an easy child. I know you can' ; t believe that I could have been a hard child, but I, I mean, think of, think of the, the changes she saw me with, you know. Going into theater. Hello. I mean, you could teach, could go into a science, but I went to theater. She supported it, you know, she was amazing. Uh, compared to the lot of parents I see, you know, with, with students, they say, mom won' ; t let me do history. She wants me to go into engineering. I said, well, have you talked to her about you like history? You don' ; t like engineering? Uh, that was the first thing I said. Said, oh, you' ; ll get used to it. You know, so I, I get a lot of that. And a lot of them are Asian, you know, these are Asian American kids whose parents still want them to be doctors, lawyers, you know, teachers are okay, but it has to be professors. You can' ; t want to teach where they' ; re needed, in elementary school and the men especially where are the men teaching the children? And if you find a guy who be interested in that, you know, mom is pushing them for the Higher Ed, higher pay. I don' ; t know how to fight that. I don' ; t know. AT: 01:03:24 Do you want to ask something? KS: 01:03:24 You said, your, your mom kept a news clipping of the photo of you. YL: 01:03:31 Not the famous one. KS: 01:03:33 Not the famous one. But I know another one. But it meant something to her. Do you, did she say why it was special? YL: 01:03:42 It was me. KS: 01:03:43 It was you. YL: 01:03:43 She wanted to document that somebody took a picture of her kid at a time when she didn' ; t think anybody was going to care and she just kept. I was flabbergasted because it wasn' ; t the famous one. KS: 01:04:01 She knew you started talking about your experiences. Was she okay with you talking to a lot of people? YL: 01:04:12 She never heard me. KS: 01:04:15 Oh. YL: 01:04:15 And I don' ; t, I don' ; t think she ever really knew. She knew I had a lot of books of the, you know, times and, but you know, once you go away to college and don' ; t go back into the home where you shared, she doesn' ; t know anything about what I studied. And I mean she didn' ; t even know about theater until I said, you know, we' ; re going to New Orleans because I got a scholarship. Oh good. In what? Theater. What, theater? Although she likes movies, you know, but I didn' ; t make movies so. So much there. AT: 01:05:09 One, one thing I like to, to ask folks, um, especially in wrapping up, Uh, so you, you have children. YL: 01:05:20 One. AT: 01:05:21 You have a child. Um, if you could pass on any kind of legacy or, or message that your, your child' ; s and maybe grandchildren or future generations, um, something that they would just understand and have learned from you, what would you want that to be? YL: 01:05:47 Well, my son has three children. My son is half Japanese. His children are one quarter Japanese. They all get comments. Well, the little one is only five, but they get comments about who, what kind of person are they? They look different. I don' ; t think you' ; re white. And there wasn' ; t, no, we' ; re not white, but we' ; re American. That still happens, you know, in this day and age, my granddaughter' ; s 13, she, she only faults me for being so short because she wants to be taller and blames me for the fact that she' ; s not going to be six feet tall, which is what she thinks she has to be to be a good volleyball player. Said sorry, can' ; t do anything about that. And um, it' ; s interesting that that' ; s what, that' ; s what concerns is my height. You know, she likes being part Japanese. She likes it when she' ; s in the sun a lot in the summer and she turns bronze when her friends turn red and she said, must be by Japanese blood. You know, I thought, well that was never said, you know, 30 years ago. But, um, I would like them and I think they' ; re learning because their father is very good about it. To be kind to everyone and not be phased by appearances, good or bad, good or bad. And that if somebody reacts to them superficially, find out why, you know, don' ; t react to the fact that they' ; ve insulted you. You know? Why would you say that? And it' ; s hard to do that in the face of somebody yelling at you or calling you names. Just say, well, why? Why would you say that? What have I done to you? I don' ; t know if they' ; ll do that. I know my granddaughter 13, my grandson 9, and my other grandson 5. But if we keep saying the same thing for the same interactions, maybe they' ; ll learn that. But if they' ; re just kind to everyone, I think that' ; ll help in the long run. AT: 01:08:40 Well, thank you so much. YL: 01:08:41 Oh, you' ; re absolutely welcome. AT: 01:08:43 For taking the time. YL: 01:08:43 You' ; re absolutely welcome. AT: 01:08:45 Um, is, before we wrap up, is there anything else that you' ; d like to add or that we might have missed or maybe Karen, that there' ; s something else that you wanted to? YL: 01:08:54 Well, you' ; re only going til November 19. The marvelous exhibit. Marvelous. I learned so much and I wanted to come. How do you attract people who don' ; t want to come, to come? Thank you for everything you do. Copyright held by the Japanese American Service Committee, Chicago, Illinois. video Interviews may only be reproduced with permission from the Japanese American Service Committee Legacy Center. 0 http://digitalcollections.jasc-chicago.org/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=LlewellynYukiko20171105.xml LlewellynYukiko20171105.xml http://digitalcollections.jasc-chicago.org/omeka/collections/show/1 http://digitalcollections.jasc-chicago.org/omeka/find?tags=Series%3A+Then+They+Came+for+Me& ; layout=1
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4300
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Okinaga Hayakawa
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https://digitalcollections.jasc-chicago.org/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=LlewellynYukiko20171105.xml
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Llewellyn, Yukiko (11/5/2017)
Date
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2017-11-05
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video
Series: Then They Came for Me
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https://digitalcollections.jasc-chicago.org/omeka/files/original/73a865285ff955ab383f837f0aa32780.png
8af48683a54ab58977225da2397e7e9b
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Title
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JASC Legacy Center Oral History Collection
Subject
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Japanese Americans--History.
Description
An account of the resource
This collection contains oral history interviews from the Japanese American Service Committee (JASC) Legacy Center's holdings. Where available, transcriptions have been included and synced to the recordings to enable full-text searching.
Interviews were recorded at various times, some by JASC staff and some by external partners, often supported by grant funding. See the metadata associated with each interview for full details.
This digital collection will continue to grow as new interviews are recorded, and as additional pre-existing recordings are received by donation or discovered in the physical archives.
The digitization and transcription of many of the recordings in this collection, the recording of interviews between July 2018 and June 2021, and the creation of this publicly accessible digital platform, were funded by a Japanese American Confinements Sites (JACS) grant awarded by the National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior. The JASC Legacy Center gratefully acknowledges the financial support received between 2018 and 2021 that enabled this project to succeed.
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This material is based upon work assisted by a grant from the U.S. Department of the
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of the U.S. Department of the Interior.
This material received Federal financial assistance for the preservation and interpretation of
U.S. confinement sites where Japanese Americans were detained during World War II.
Under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973,
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Creator
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Japanese American Service Committee (Chicago, Ill.). Legacy Center
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Japanese American Service Committee (Chicago, Ill.). Legacy Center
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
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Lincoln, Emma Saito
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Machida, Ethan Michihiko
Interview Keyword
Shin-Issei
Mixed Japanese Ancestry
Sapporo
Moody Bible Institute
Christianity
Religion
Michigan
OHMS Object Text
5.4 3/23/2021 Machida, Ethan Michihiko (3/23/2021) 26:57:00 JASC_OHP JASC Legacy Center Oral History Collection OHP Oral History Project Japanese American Service Committee Legacy Center Recorded, transcribed, and made accessible online with financial support from the Alphawood Foundation Chicago and the Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Japanese American Confinement Sites grant program. Japanese American Families--Michigan Japanese American college students Shin-Issei Mixed Japanese Ancestry Sapporo Moody Bible Institute Christianity Religion Michigan Machida, Ethan Michihiko Lincoln, Emma Saito video 1:|19(10)|38(5)|57(7)|73(7)|99(7)|111(14)|124(10)|136(5)|161(10)|179(7)|190(2)|202(3)|221(7)|233(8)|244(3)|255(12)|268(14)|281(4)|292(2)|302(11)|314(13)|328(6)|340(13)|353(4)|362(3)|372(3) 0 https://vimeo.com/553128960/7e00dd8f90 Vimeo video < ; iframe src=" ; https://player.vimeo.com/video/553128960?h=7e00dd8f90" ; width=" ; 640" ; height=" ; 360" ; frameborder=" ; 0" ; allow=" ; autoplay ; fullscreen ; picture-in-picture" ; allowfullscreen> ; < ; /iframe> ; Ethan Machida is a first-generation Japanese American born in Sapporo, Japan. His mother is American, of Scottish descent, and his father is Japanese. When he was three years old, Ethan and his family moved to the United States, to a town in northern Michigan called Frankfort. After living there for about 10 years, the family moved for Ethan Emma Saito Lincoln (EL): Today is March 23rd 2021, and this oral history is being recorded at the Japanese American Service Committee building at 4427 N Clark St. in Chicago, IL. The interviewer is Emma Saito Lincoln, and the interviewee is Ethan Machida. This interview is being recorded by the JASC Legacy Center in order to document the experiences of Japanese Americans in the Chicago area. Okay, so to start off with, I' ; m just going to ask you a few background questions for context. So if you could please state your full name? Ethan Machida (EM): My name is Ethan Michihiko Machida. EL: And in what year were you born? EM: 1998. EL: And where were you born? EM: I was born in Sapporo, yeah in Hokkaido, Japan. EL: So, could you tell me a little bit about your parents? EM: Yeah, so my mother is white American, Scottish descent, and then my dad is Japanese. He was born in the near, near Kannami I think, yup. EL: And when and how did they meet? EM: So they met in Japan... It' ; s kind of funny because my dad was a foreign exchange student to the US from Japan as a high schooler. And then he also went to undergrad and graduate school in the US, and then went back to Japan. And then my mom went to Japan and then they met there. She was involved with the local church, and then through her friends got connected with my dad there. EL: And then when did your family come to the US as a family? EM: When I was three years old, so at that point my mom would have been living in Japan for 12 years total up to that point. EL: Do you know when they first came to the US, at that time did they plan for it to be a permanent move? EM: Maybe not permanent, but at the very least long term just because they thought it was important for the--for us kids being bicultural, to have sufficient exposure in each homeland. EL: And where did you move to when you first came to the US? EM: So we moved to northern Michigan to a city called Frankfort. It was like maybe 1000 people, mostly white, and my mom had friends that lived in that area. And since at that time it was a poorer economic situation, and so that' ; s also where job opportunity was available. EL: So did your parents have work lined up for themselves before they came? EM: Kinda, yeah not very solidly. My dad' ; s job in Japan ended, so then my mom' ; s friend just encouraged them to come over to the US and said that " ; Hey you' ; ll probably be able to find a job." ; EL: And then did you stay in that part of Michigan, or did you move from there? EM: Yeah we stayed for a while until I was in the end of middle school so it would have been like ten--about 10 years we stayed in that city. And then we moved again for my dad' ; s job to a part in lower Michigan called Coldwater, Michigan. It was maybe 10,000 people, and much more diversity. And there was--so there was no Japanese community in Frankfort, Michigan but in Coldwater, there was. Not significant, but it was still present. EL: Okay so in your early childhood you were living in a place that really didn' ; t have any other Japanese American or Japanese families to speak of, but, but then you moved to a place that was more diverse? EM: Yeah, yup. And then yeah throughout that whole time, our grandparents and maybe some aunts, uncles, cousins would come visit maybe once a year and hang out for about 2 weeks or so. So we would have that kind of exposure. And then in Coldwater, there was a few car manufacturing companies and then they would bring Japanese executives to stay for a year or two years. They would bring their families and then for whatever reason our--our family always got in contact with them and made friendships so there' ; s that connection. EL: So the, so the community that you had in Coldwater was more Japanese expatriates-- EM: Yeah. EL: --than Japanese Americans. EM: Right, yup. EL: And then do your parents still live in that area, or... EM: Mhmm, yeah. And yeah they' ; re happy there and I think the community' ; s a good fit for them. EL: So when did you come to Chicago? EM: So I came to Chicago in 2018 to start studies at Moody Bible Institute. Originally I was studying engineering in northern Michigan at Michigan Technological University, but then decided to switch majors to pastoral studies. EL: And when you came to Chicago did you know anybody here? EM: No I was-- yeah no connections. I' ; m very grateful for the-- The communal aspect of Christianity. That, as you' ; re involved with the church, ideally people ought to welcome you as part of their community. So definitely being engaged with the local church was such a lucrative opportunity for finding community quickly. EL: Is that something that you grew up with, or is it something that you explored as an adult? EM: I think it' ; s both. We grew up going to church on Sundays, my mom is a Christian and my dad isn' ; t. Oddly enough, he was very supportive of us practicing Christianity, and the values in Christian belief system he was very supportive of. But it wasn' ; t till maybe high school age that I--I took it more seriously and tried to explore it for myself and invest more time into it. EL: So, to take it back a little bit when your family first came to the US, or actually prior to that when your father came alone as a young man has he ever talked to you about how it felt to him to leave Japan? EM: Yeah and he' ; s a funny character I think. Somewhat, somewhat rebellious, very adventurous and entrepreneurial. So he was very open-minded about coming to America. And his father gave him the opportunity to send him to a university in Japan or send him to America. So he chose the America route and was eager to go. I think at the end of his time in America he was a little bit homesick so he was happy to return. EL: And when your parents got married, did he feel very accepted by your mother' ; s family? EM: Yeah, in--in general. So my mother' ; s father actually fought in the Pacific theater of World War II. And one of the--the things that my uncles on my mother' ; s side of the family say it was kind of poetic justice that from my American grandfather' ; s time in World War II, he fostered uh--I think you could even call it a racism towards Japanese and--yeah that existed, and then by the time my mother got married, I guess supposedly it toned down enough for him to accept my father as, as part of the family. But the rest of my family is very, or the American side is very... Welcoming of him, and even--at family reunions it' ; s kind of weird ' ; cause me, my siblings, and my dad are the only colored people in the family reunion. But we' ; re still just as equally loved and as equally embraced. EL: How many siblings do you have? EM: Two siblings, one sister, one younger brother. My sister is a year older, and she just got married two years ago. And then my brother is a high school in senior--ah senior in high school. EL: So you mentioned that when you were growing up your relatives from Japan would come to visit-- EM: Mhmm. EL: --and I' ; m wondering if there' ; s maybe some other ways that you stayed in touch with them during that time, how did you--your family remain connected to friends and family back in Japan? EM: Mostly with phone calls and packages, yeah we would call maybe--or I know that my parents would call them once or twice a month and they would--we would send packages to each other a few times throughout the year. EL: Do you remember what was in those packages? EM: Yeah lots of Japanese candy, or the, the plastic like figures that you' ; d punch out of the molds and then put together. Yeah. EL: And since, since the initial move to the US when you were three, have you or any of your family members gone back to Japan? EM: Yeah, so my, my dad and sister--of our nuclear family went back. My dad would go back every once in a while for business trips, and then my sister after leaving high school--or graduating high school, she took a trip to Japan also. One of the things our parents want us to do or wanted us to do is that right after graduating high school, we would go to a foreign country by ourselves for like a month or so, so she chose to go to Japan. EL: And where did you go? EM: I chose to go to Scotland. My Japanese is very little so... And I also, I hate depending on translators, so when I go back to Jam--Japan, I would want to have my language skills refined much better, yeah. EL: Do you feel that your parents made efforts while you were growing up to transmit Japanese culture to you? EM: I definitely think so, aside from the, the food aspect of cooking Japanese food there are--I think a heightened sense of humility and self-sacrifice that seem characteristic of Japanese culture, that they were impressing on us as kids that I didn' ; t really notice in any of my American peers. So yeah, along with the cultural values, they use a bit of slang words in Japanese, talk about political differences. So they were, yeah, still intentional to incorporate it. EL: I' ; m curious to know, when you would interact with some of those Japanese expat families, as a child or young adult how did you feel during those encounters? EM: I always felt somewhat odd, or as if I didn' ; t fully fit in or so with the American community. I' ; m too Japanese to be fully American, with the Japanese community I' ; m too American to be Japanese. So there' ; s that maybe unspoken barrier of feeling fully in the community, but then it still wasn' ; t anything significant to make me cast out or shunned or anything. EL: And did you, or--or have you had much interaction with Japanese Americans whose families had been in the country for longer? EM: When I came to Chicago, yes. Just because some of my classmates were also Japanese Americans so yeah we would eat lunch together, hang out every once in a while. EL: So, so that was not really until--what you' ; re 18, 19 years old before you-- EM: Right. EL: --become a little bit more aware of another category of Japanese Americans. EM: Right yeah, before then it was mostly exposure to Japanese, and not so much Japanese Americans. EL: And did you learn much about Japanese immigration history, or Japanese American incarceration in school? EM: Yeah briefly though, I think probably to the same extent that I would have learned about Chinese Americans or maybe even--I don' ; t know Arab Americans. So there' ; re... Yeah there were some aspects that we' ; d learn about like the incarceration camps, or even like I think in the 1960s, 70s, the riots that would happen. And especially being in close proximity to Detroit, in Novi, Michigan there are a lot of, I think more conversations that I heard about Japanese Americans in that time and kind of how as the car company manufacturers became more prominent there--they incurred some more hate, yeah. EL: Do you remember when you were first learning about those things, did you feel connected to the people that had that happen to them? Or did you feel like you were just learning about--it could have been any group of people? EM: Yeah I think more towards the second option, it seemed like a--a group of people. Mostly because, I wonder if it was the, the lack of pictures or stuff that I saw ' ; cause it was like mostly words. Yeah, then again that also made more, more clear the reality that in, in some circumstance, that could be me, that could be my, that could be my experience. So, even though I didn' ; t feel fully connected with the experience, it was still a opportunity of realization. EL: So, I' ; d like to kind of switch gears a little bit an--and explore your experiences here in Chicago. And I' ; m wondering to what extent have you felt welcome by Chicago' ; s Japanese American community? EM: I think t--to the extent that I put myself out there, welcomed. So I haven' ; t done much on my own part to engage, and I think for the Japanese community--Japanese American community, if they don' ; t know that I' ; m here then they can' ; t necessarily welcome me. But especially with JASC, there' ; s so many opportunities that they' ; re inviting anyone to come be a part of. Even with like the, the origami group, I signed up and they were very welcoming for me to come. EL: And I guess I' ; m curious to know, when you, when you meet people within this community do you feel any need to explain your own family narrative? EM: I think when I was younger, there was kind of like a, a shame for like the, the amount of Japanese culture--or the amount of distance that I' ; ve had with Japanese culture, and making excuses like " ; Oh well my, my parents didn' ; t raise me much with it" ; or " ; There are other priorities" ; or " ; I was busy with other stuff." ; And even though I think it is sad that I' ; ve, I' ; ve lost touch with a bit of Japanese culture, I think I' ; ve come to terms with it and I' ; m--mostly because as of now I' ; m trying to get back into it. That I think posture of re-engagement kind of helps me feel more comfortable with being, yeah being in the Japanese American community. EL: So what are some of the things that you' ; ve done to try and re-engage or reclaim this piece of your heritage? EM: I think one, definitely language study, in the summers I try to do whatever programs I can to bring back the vocabulary and the grammar, and listening to more Japanese music and intentionally buying recipes where I' ; ll be cooking Japanese foods to kind of hold onto those cultural aspects. Also, looking back more into history, especially Japanese Christian history as Christianity is a big part of my identity, and I know that it' ; s been seen as maybe antithetical, or somewhat unnatural to Japanese culture. Even though there' ; s kinda a not so well known about history of Christianity in Japan, so to study more about figures such as Toyohiko Kagawa, have been kind of, some of those other ways. EL: As you were growing up, did you know very many other mixed race, specifically other Japanese mixed with another race, families or children? EM: Mmm, not that I can think of, yeah I think, yeah growing up, very little exposure. EL: And, especially when you were living in, in the less diverse location, did you ever experience bias or prejudice that you were aware of as a child? EM: I think yes, but in, in a good way, where people made the uneducated stereotypes that oh, just because I' ; m Asian I' ; m smart, or I know karate so don' ; t mess with him. Or...Being, being different or unique, in that context was looked at as a good thing or like a cool thing, so in, in that situation it played toward my benefit. Even though I understand that for a lot of other people it normally plays towards their own downfall. So I was privileged in that area. EL: Do you think that your parents are able to fully grasp your experiences growing up in this country being half? EM: I haven' ; t thought about that question before. To one extent I would say, at least minimally, because they both know what it' ; s like to be an outsider in a majority culture. Maybe to the extent that not being a--or not having a full sense of belonging to either side, I--I don' ; t think they could real--identify much with that. Because, yeah while my mom was in America she could still fully relate to the American expats or even Americans back at home and same for my dad with the Japanese. And so yeah, for myself I think the, one of the unique feelings is not necessarily feeling like I fit into both, but when there is another Japanese American there' ; s that connection kind of maybe brings us closer in a, I don' ; t know, odd mystical way. EL: There are a lot of words they get used to--to describe people who are mixed race like us. Sometimes we refer to ourselves as half, or hafu, sometimes, sometimes it' ; s double, right? Some people use the term hapa, do any of those terms resonate with you? EM: To some extent, my, my dad would jokingly say " ; Don' ; t let anybody call you half." ; So from that I picked up that it was kind of more of a derogatory term. And so maybe in like self-deprecating jokes I would refer to myself as half. And then the, the peers that I were around there weren' ; t very culturally aware, or aware of diversity and the reality, so it would be much easier to call myself just Japanese rather than white or Japanese American mhmm. EL: And do you think your specific geographic location had a big impact on the types of experiences you had? EM: In comparison to others I--I would say so. If I was in maybe rural South America I might experience more-- I don' ; t know, more of a feeling of outcast or not, not belonging, or maybe if I was on West Coast, maybe I would see a lot more Japanese Americans and be more exposed to that culture. EL: This might seem a strange question, but I' ; m just curious to know if you' ; ve ever wondered what your life would have been like if your parents had chosen to stay in Japan? EM: Hmm, I haven' ; t thought about that, yeah. ' ; Cause I very much appreciate my experiences in the US, and definitely there' ; s been a lot of blessings from it and benefits from it. I definitely see that it would be different, and... Yeah so, when y--I, I don' ; t think I would have as much exposure to the Hispanic or Arab communities that I' ; ve had here if I were to be in Japan. I think a lot of the American mentalities or cultural values I probably wouldn' ; t be so understanding of if I were to grow up in Japan. So, I think those are some things that come to mind. EL: And do you still feel very connected to your family that' ; s in Japan? EM: Yeah, yeah we even have a group chat and so actually--maybe a month or t--yeah about a month ago my grandfather passed away from my Japanese side of the family. And even then we' ; re--I think yeah, all the more communicative, but, yeah we still send each other emails, or follow each other on social media. And that' ; s more of a surface, surface level way of connection, but then there' ; s also like the phone calls and relaying messages through other people and taking visits, mhmm. EL: What motivated you to participate in this oral history project? EM: I thought, yeah, just to... To share another, or let myself be a data point reference. I--yeah I' ; m not sure how much significance or relevance my story would have for, for anybody but for whatever it' ; s worth, I thought to offer it. EL: And specifically with regard to the Japanese American Service Committee, you mentioned to me that you' ; ve been receiving the emails, with announcements of things going on and that this is one of the, the first times that you' ; ve taken the step of engaging, right? And I' ; m curious to know, what would you like to see from specifically JASC, but also the larger Japanese American community moving forward? EM: I think yeah part--partly my, my answer would be ignorant since I haven' ; t seen all that JASC does. From, from the reports that I see or different stuff on social media and through the emails, I think they do a lot so I' ; m impressed by their activity and grateful for their intentionality. Maybe, maybe some more collaboration with different groups in Uptown in specific, I think would help promote JASC, help their presence be known more, and maybe open up more opportunities for them to be part of the community and serve and impact the community. EL: And then I guess my, my final question is what do you most want people to know or understand about you and your life experiences? EM: Mmm, I' ; m, I' ; m definitely a product of my environment, but there' ; s been so much undeserved goodness that I received from--and I, I truly, truly have to be humble. Because yeah, everything that I' ; ve received is a gift, and that my-- Yeah my, my Christian perspective of having God as the center and being able to relate through Jesus is very transformative for myself. I know that not everybody is into religion and not necessarily favorable to it, but I think that' ; s been the, the biggest impactor of my life. EL: I think we' ; ve covered most of the questions that I had prepared ahead of time, but I wanted to leave space for you in case there was anything that you felt we hadn' ; t yet talked about, that you would like an opportunity to share. EM: Mmm, yeah nothing, yeah nothing really comes to mind. EL: Okay, then I think we' ; ll conclude the interview there. EM: Okay. Copyright held by the Japanese American Service Committee, Chicago, Illinois. video Interviews may only be reproduced with permission from the Japanese American Service Committee Legacy Center. 0 http://digitalcollections.jasc-chicago.org/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=MachidaEthan20210323.xml MachidaEthan20210323.xml http://digitalcollections.jasc-chicago.org/omeka/collections/show/1 http://digitalcollections.jasc-chicago.org/omeka/find?tags=Series%3A+Oral+History+Project& ; layout=1
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https://digitalcollections.jasc-chicago.org/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=MachidaEthan20210323.xml
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Machida, Ethan Michihiko (3/23/2021)
Description
An account of the resource
Ethan Machida is a first-generation Japanese American born in Sapporo, Japan. His mother is American, of Scottish descent, and his father is Japanese. When he was three years old, Ethan and his family moved to the United States, to a town in northern Michigan called Frankfort. After living there for about 10 years, the family moved for Ethan's father's work, which took them to Coldwater, Michigan. In college, Ethan first studied engineering before feeling called to pastoral studies, which brought him to Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. As a young adult, Ethan decided to engage more with Japanese language, food, and Christian Japanese religious history in order to reconnect with his personal Japanese identity and ancestry.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Japanese American Families--Michigan
Japanese American college students
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2021-03-23
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
video
Series: Oral History Project
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3926a77228c9abe0b49ce0634e55797c
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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JASC Legacy Center Oral History Collection
Subject
The topic of the resource
Japanese Americans--History.
Description
An account of the resource
This collection contains oral history interviews from the Japanese American Service Committee (JASC) Legacy Center's holdings. Where available, transcriptions have been included and synced to the recordings to enable full-text searching.
Interviews were recorded at various times, some by JASC staff and some by external partners, often supported by grant funding. See the metadata associated with each interview for full details.
This digital collection will continue to grow as new interviews are recorded, and as additional pre-existing recordings are received by donation or discovered in the physical archives.
The digitization and transcription of many of the recordings in this collection, the recording of interviews between July 2018 and June 2021, and the creation of this publicly accessible digital platform, were funded by a Japanese American Confinements Sites (JACS) grant awarded by the National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior. The JASC Legacy Center gratefully acknowledges the financial support received between 2018 and 2021 that enabled this project to succeed.
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This material is based upon work assisted by a grant from the U.S. Department of the
Interior, National Park Service. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations
expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views
of the U.S. Department of the Interior.
This material received Federal financial assistance for the preservation and interpretation of
U.S. confinement sites where Japanese Americans were detained during World War II.
Under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973,
and the Age Discrimination Act of 1975, as amended, the U.S. Department of the Interior
prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, disability or age in its
federally funded assisted projects. If you believe you have been discriminated against in any
program, activity, or facility as described above, or if you desire further information, please
write to:
Office of Equal Opportunity
National Park Service
1849 C Street, NW
Washington, DC 20240
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Japanese American Service Committee (Chicago, Ill.). Legacy Center
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Japanese American Service Committee (Chicago, Ill.). Legacy Center
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Takada, Anna
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Maeda, Edith
Interview Keyword
Nisei
El Centro, CA
Poston
Dust
Goldblatt Department Store
West Side
McKinley High School
University of Illinois
National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)
Woodley House
OHMS Object Text
5.4 8/17/2018 Maeda, Edith (8/17/2018) 1:13:05 JASC_US JASC Legacy Center Oral History Collection US Untold Stories Japanese American Service Committee Legacy Center Recorded, transcribed, and made accessible online with financial support from the Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Japanese American Confinement Sites grant program and the Illinois State Historical Records Advisory Board. Nisei El Centro, CA Poston Dust Goldblatt Department Store West Side McKinley High School University of Illinois National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Woodley House Maeda, Edith Takada, Anna video 1:|10(4)|22(15)|42(16)|57(5)|68(2)|81(11)|90(7)|108(13)|124(11)|135(3)|152(14)|160(12)|174(13)|190(9)|205(4)|213(5)|233(4)|244(13)|252(4)|269(15)|281(10)|296(1)|306(2)|316(11)|327(5)|333(5)|353(3)|370(8)|382(11)|399(3)|408(6)|420(8)|433(3)|442(8)|458(2)|473(10)|496(14)|525(7)|535(11)|553(7)|571(15)|587(6)|610(5)|631(10)|647(3)|659(11)|676(3)|697(3)|716(10)|743(5)|754(4)|771(14)|799(8)|812(7)|827(11)|845(11)|862(4)|872(12)|888(6)|920(1)|930(11)|946(13)|967(9)|981(13)|993(2)|1006(4)|1017(10)|1033(4)|1046(1)|1057(4)|1068(8)|1084(12) 0 https://vimeo.com/389262781/ac2c3e7522 Vimeo video < ; iframe src=" ; https://player.vimeo.com/video/389262781?h=ac2c3e7522" ; width=" ; 640" ; height=" ; 360" ; frameborder=" ; 0" ; allow=" ; autoplay ; fullscreen ; picture-in-picture" ; allowfullscreen> ; < ; /iframe> ; Edith Maeda, a nisei, was born in El Centro, CA in 1927. In this interview, she shares memories of her life before WWII and her family's experiences as early arrivals at the WRA incarceration site at Poston, AZ. She recalls the pervasive dust in the desert and lack of a school facility on-site. Following their incarceration, Edith's family resettled in Chicago, initially on the West Side where she finished high school. After college, Edith's career took her to Washington, DC, where she worked at the National Institute of Mental Health and the Woodley House. Edith returned to the Chicago area with her husband and son after retirement in order to be closer to family, and stresses the importance of family at the end of the interview. Anna Takada: This is an interview with Edie Maeda, as part of the Japanese-American Service Committee and Chicago Japanese American Historical Society Oral History Project. The interview is being conducted on August 17th, 2018 at 11:04 AM at the Japanese American Service Committee in Chicago. Edie Maeda is being interviewed by Anna Takada of the Japanese American Service Committee. So to start, can you state your full name? Edith Maeda: Edith Michiko Maeda. Anna Takada: And, where and when were you born? Edith Maeda: I was born in El Centro, E-L, and then separate name C-E-N-T-R-O, California on 12/28/27. Anna Takada: Can you tell me a little bit about El Centro, California? What that was like growing up? Edith Maeda: Well, it' ; s a very small town, I think it' ; s probably about 10,000 people, but in California, not near the big city or anything. It was... And I would say it was about, a town with about 10-to-15,000 people, not, not many. Anna Takada: And, how about your parents, what, what did they do for a living? Edith Maeda: My parents, my mother did not-- she was at home caring for kids and so on. And my father was a shoe, owned a shoe repair shop, and he had, had always done that, even when he went to, when we moved to Chicago. Mhmm. Anna Takada: And, can you tell me about where, where your parents were from originally? Edith Maeda: Well, they were from Japan, I had visited, visited the little city, but I can' ; t really remember what it was. Myles Glasgow: Can I add... Edith Maeda: It was Miyazaki, was the, not the city, but the... What would you call it? Myles Glasgow: Region, prefecture. Edith Maeda: Yeah. Anna Takada: And do you know anything about when or why they came to the U.S.? Edith Maeda: I never asked why they came, I just figured, you know we always just operated in the present, not in the past, so... Anna Takada: So as far as growing up, were you speaking Japanese with your parents then? Edith Maeda: I was on the younger side, I had two older sisters who had gone to Japanese school, in other words, they learned the language. So, I did not know it, I couldn' ; t write it or speak it as well as they did, but I could understand you know, phrases and stuff, but, my broth-- Anna Takada: So, so you did not go to Japanese school? Edith Maeda: No, no. During the war and after the war, I, I guess they just didn' ; t have it. You know, and the Japanese were put into camps, either in somewhere, I don' ; t know where they were in California, but we were put into a camp in Arizona. So it was really in the desert. Anna Takada: Before getting into, into wartime, I' ; d love to hear a little bit more about kind of what it was like for you growing up in El Centro. So you said you-- you mentioned you had, had some siblings. Edith Maeda: Oh, yeah. I had older sisters, four, and two of the older ones I hardly knew, because they were in college all the time when my brother and I were growing up. And I had one older brother, but I never knew him very well, ' ; cause he was killed while he was in college at, in San Diego, which is in California. So he died before the war, but I hardly knew him, because he was always away. And, I had my younger brother and I grew up together. Anna Takada: So as a kid, I, I imagine you were probably going to school? Edith Maeda: Mm-hmm. Anna Takada: Mhmm. What was that, what was school like for you in El Centro, a small town? Edith Maeda: Well, we were in a small town of only 10,000 people, so you would grow up with kids you went to school with from kindergarten on up. So, my best friend was the superintendent' ; s daughter, she was my best friend, and so we sort of grew up together. But we were a Japanese family that lived in the little town, but there were many other Japanese that lived outside and they were usually farmers, or... I had an uncle who had asparagus, he introduced asparagus I think to, to the valley, so he was sort of a gentleman farmer and had four or five girls, all girls, no boys. (laughs) I know he always wanted someone, but a boy particularly, because he was a rancher, so... Anna Takada: Do you remember his name? Edith Maeda: Sonoda. Anna Takada: And, so it sounds like there were other Japanese American families. Edith Maeda: Yes, but most of the Japanese lived as farmers out in the country, but we lived in the city, so I never met any of them except my cousins, who, who we were always close with them. There were four girls, but they were all always in college, so I didn' ; t know them until afterwards, and after we got into camp my father sort of took care of them, because their father had died, and so-- Myles Glasgow: He had been arrested and sent... Edith Maeda: What? Myles Glasgow: Wasn' ; t he arrested and put into a camp in Texas? Edith Maeda: Yeah, that Mr. Sonoda was, for a while, but, and then he died I think in, in the camp or... I mean he was taken on Pearl Harbor Day, ' ; cause he was sort of a gentleman farmer that had a lot of contacts with people and land and stuff. Anna Takada: And so, right, because the, the FBI, they were taking a lot of... Especially Issei men. Edith Maeda: Oh, yeah. They took people like him, I don' ; t know why, but maybe because you know he, he was influential in the agricultural area. Anna Takada: Mhmm. Well connected, and-- Myles Glasgow: His daughter, one of his daughters, Mary, had worked with the royal family in Japan. Edith Maeda: He had only four daughters, he had four daughters, he wanted a son to carry on, but had four daughters and sent them all to college, so... Anna Takada: And so do you know, you said that your father was kind of taking care of your cousins, was that... Edith Maeda: Well, sort of, because the father of my cousins was taken early on Pearl Harbor Day or prior to, whatever, but he was sort of influential in the agricultural area, so he was taken and I think, I think he may have died in, while he was in camp. I don' ; t remember ever seeing him after that. I think he died. Anna Takada: And, be-before the war started, had you ever... Well, first of all, were you involved in any other activities outside of school as a kid? Edith Maeda: Oh well, our family always did a lot of volunteer work, so I did... Maybe that was more in Chicago though, when we moved. Anna Takada: Did you go to any, were you religious at all? Were you raised religious? Edith Maeda: Oh, the Japanese always had a church I think in every community they moved to, so we belonged to a, a Christian church. Anna Takada: In El Centro? Edith Maeda: Mm-hmm, mhmm. Anna Takada: And so would that mean going to Sunday school? Edith Maeda: Going to Sunday school, and knowing a lot of families, and our cousins who were there, the father was, had introduced asparagus in the community, but he was a gentleman farmer, but he had four girls, so no one to carry on. But he sent them all to college, and they were older. I had two older sisters, I had four older sisters actually, but two were always away in college, so I didn' ; t know them as well as the two that were closer. And then I had an older brother who was killed at college. While he was... He wanted a motorcycle, and unfortunately he got killed that way. A, a woman who was learning to drive, that was sad. And then I had a little brother, my brother and I were the younger ones, mhmm. Anna Takada: And before the war, had you experienced any type of discrimination as a, as a child for being Japanese? Edith Maeda: No, we lived in a small town and my best friend and a neighbor was the superintendent' ; s daughter. He was superintendent of the school, so I, we were very close. We sort of grew up together, so... Anna Takada: Does that mean... Edith Maeda: The, the Japanese were usually-- they were farmers mostly, so I never knew the children. We had cousins who were four older girls, and they were always in college it seemed. And he, their father had introduced asparagus to the valley, so he was always very busy, so I didn' ; t-- Anna Takada: Do you remember the day that Pearl Harbor was bombed? Maybe where you were, how you found out? Edith Maeda: Well, I remember there was a lot of discussion in the family and all that, you know, and the fact that we were put into camps because of, after that, mhmm. Anna Takada: And so, how old were you about at that time when the war broke out? Edith Maeda: Well, let' ; s see, when did the war break out? I was in, I did, let' ; s see, I went to high school and so I was still in lower school. I don' ; t, I went to junior high in Chicago, so I went to... Anna Takada: So you must have been a teenager when the war broke out, if you were born in ' ; 27. Edith Maeda: 12/28/27. I' ; m trying to think. Anna Takada: You would have been about 15 I think? Edith Maeda: Mhmm, was I in, I was in high school then, I would have been in high school, ' ; cause I went to high school about 12. Uh-huh. Anna Takada: And so, so when, do you remember kind of what, what that time was like when the war broke out? I know you said your family went to camp, but how about... Edith Maeda: Only because when the war broke out, Japanese, being Japanese, you know you, you really felt it, and especially because we were put into a, a camp in the Arizona desert. And my father volunteered and my eldest sister volunteered, she was in college. I had two sisters who had been in college. So anyway, we went in and it was the complete desert. We were the first family in, the first... In fact, the only family in, because all the other volunteers came from Los Angeles and they were, they went there because they needed people to help set up the school system and so on, and so all those people volunteered. Anna Takada: Mhmm. So that' ; s, that' ; s something that I think a lot of people don' ; t know about that, that when... Edith Maeda: The camp? Encampment? Anna Takada: Not, not only the camps, but the fact that the first move of the government was to offer people to volunteer to evacuate, so to leave their homes and to go into camps. Edith Maeda: Not to volunteer, you were ordered to. You were ordered out of California. Anna Takada: Right, but the, the first, the first order that went out... Edith Maeda: Oh, yeah. Anna Takada: Because you said you were the first family. Edith Maeda: People, when they were developing these camps out in the desert, they asked for volunteers. So busloads of young people, educated, educators and people like that volunteered and came from California, but my father volunteered and my s-- I had an older, oldest sister who was in college, volunteered to be a teacher and so on. So volunteers went in and my brother and I were kids, and we were the only kids around, so when they were training the educated Japanese to be teachers and so on, they bused us to a Indian school and we were the subjects, my brother and I became the subjects, because there were no other kids. We were the only kids in the whole volunteer area. The other groups, the families had not come in. They came in much later. Uh-huh. Anna Takada: Mhmm. So can you tell me about, well, first of all, do you, do you remember what you were thinking or feeling at the time that your family kind of left your home in El Centro? Edith Maeda: Well, it, it was, yeah the feeling was, when you' ; re smaller, leaving your neighbors and your friends, and particularly your, the neighbors who you grew up with. So that was probably had more impact on me and my brother. My older sisters, some had finished college, Marvel, Betsy, yeah, so it was... In fact, when we got to camp, because my family volunteered, and we were the only kids, on a couple of blocks that were all volunteers, they were mostly people who could be teachers or set up the kiosk or whatever it was like I said. So just me and my brother were the only kids in, until they finally... And we went to an Indian school until they opened schools in the camp. Anna Takada: And do you know what, at what time it was that your family left? I know, so the, what time it would have been that your family went to camp, was it still 19-- Edith Maeda: Well we were the first family in camp, it was the desert and so on. Anna Takada: Do you remember what time of year it was, or... Edith Maeda: But what, what time of the... Well, it was in the desert, so all I remember was dust, dust. Anna Takada: For sure. Edith Maeda: And the barracks were a family in each unit, so there were four bar-- compartments, and so our family at that time, I had two sisters who were really, my two older sisters were married, so I had two sisters older than I, myself and my little brother. My older brother had been in college before the war, he was killed just before we went into camp. He was in college and he was killed in an accident, automobile accident. Anna Takada: Mhmm. Your, your cousins, were they in the same camp as you? Edith Maeda: Mm-hmm. And my father sort of took care of them, because their father, who, through his eldest daughter, owned a lot of land and so on, and he introduced asparagus to the valley. He was, he was not a farmer who farmed, he, he sort of introduced asparagus to the valley, and he had four girls. Anna Takada: And so they, they came to join you and your family. Edith Maeda: They, we... They were, we were always together, we were in the same block. And he had been taken by the government because of his position. Anna Takada: Was his wife or, or the girls' ; mother, were they, was she also with you all in camp? Edith Maeda: Yes, my father took care of her and the four girls, and then our family. Anna Takada: And so if you remember, did they leave early with you all? Like, what, what were you also alone? Edith Maeda: Oh, yeah. So they, you had to have positions or someone, something if you were of that age, so they are... I think, I remember the eldest, oldest sister, there were four girls, became an instructor in a college in Chicago. So you had to, the older ones like my father and so on, had to have jobs, you couldn' ; t leave without one early, I mean you couldn' ; t leave early, and you couldn' ; t go back to California, you had to come east. Anna Takada: Do you know how long you were in camp with your family? About how long? Edith Maeda: As long as, you couldn' ; t leave until you had a job, and I think it was within the year, first year. We, my brother and I were kids and they didn' ; t have any schools or anything yet, because we were in a volunteer block, and they were all women and men who had volunteered to go in early, who became school teachers and kiosk openers and so on. So my brother and I were always, we were bused to a Indian school. Anna Takada: Do you remember maybe your first impressions of going into that camp as a 15 year old? Edith Maeda: It was dusty, it was a desert, and the barracks were a family in each section, the sec-- the barrack was divided into four. So my father and mother and my brother, little brother and I, and then I had two sisters just a little bit older than I, we were all in one unit, which was about this size, because a barrack was divided into four. So a family in each. Anna Takada: Do you remember having conversations with your family about the situation or about what was happening? Edith Maeda: Well, we were all there exposed to the same. I mean we had to, it was a desert, it was dust, we, we were always ordering things from the catalog, because the dust would come up, so we ordered linoleum and stuff, so everybody was sort of busy trying to make it as homey, homey as possible. You had to walk to a dining hall for breakfast, lunch and supper, so, and some of us liked to sleep later, so you know we, we just all cooperated. Because a family of my mother, father, my little brother, myself, and two sisters close to me, older, were all in one room that was maybe just a size bigger than this room. And so, and when you came, you had wooden bunks against every wall in the cabins that were built, they were just constructed, and the floorboards, they were in the desert so the floorboards, you still got a lot of dust. So my mother was ordering linoleum for the floorboards. And oh, they did put tar paper on the outside, so the dust didn' ; t come in that way. But it was in the middle of the Arizona desert. Anna Takada: And so you and your younger brother, you were going, you were being bused out to go to a school outside... Edith Maeda: Well, because my family volunteered, there were no kids in the camp, in the volunteer section, they hadn' ; t come, they hadn' ; t been bused in yet from Los Angeles. Anna Takada: So you were, there weren' ; t even schools ready. Edith Maeda: So we were bused, we went to a, we were sort of driven to a Indian school. Anna Takada: And can you tell me about what that was like? You were must have, you were probably the only Japanese. Edith Maeda: Oh, yeah. We were, but we were, it was just like any other school. Anna Takada: Mhmm. How, how big was that school, if you remember? Edith Maeda: It was a... ordinary sized school. Uh-huh. Anna Takada: And so was it on a, a reservation? Edith Maeda: No, they had to... We were in a camp, which was dust, a dust bowl, and they were one family in a unit, one unit, I mean, cabin or whatever you call it, had four rooms and one family in each room. Anna Takada: Mhmm, And I, I was just curious to learn more about the school that you were going to. Edith Maeda: The Indian school? Anna Takada: Mm-hmm. So-- Edith Maeda: Well, we didn' ; t actually go with, to a Indian group, they used the Indian school for volunteers, we were in a volunteer block, so all of the volunteer teachers, Japanese-Americans and different people who could help settle the encampment. So my little brother and I were bused with these volunteers, who were trained teachers already, and we went to an Indian school. It was, we didn' ; t have class with the Indian kids. Anna Takada: I see, you were just using the building. Edith Maeda: I don' ; t know if the time was different or not, well we certainly went at summertime, but we never went with other kids. Anna Takada: Mhmm. The, so I know there were two camps in Arizona, do you remember which camp? Edith Maeda: There were three. I mean there were three, Poston One, Poston Two and Poston Three. There were three in this desert in Arizona, but there were many other camps in other areas I' ; m sure. Anna Takada: Mhmm. So this was, do you remember which camp in Poston? Edith Maeda: Oh, we were in camp one, because my father volunteered and I had two sisters who volunteered. Anna Takada: And, how about your parents, do you know what they were doing in camp, if they were doing anything, work, or... Edith Maeda: Well, I think my father volunteered, but I don' ; t know what he did, but my sisters, my eldest sister was a, had her master' ; s I think, so she was, helped set up the school system, and my-- Myles Glasgow: Marvel you mean? Edith Maeda: Yeah, and Betsy, who was married, she and her husband helped set up the kiosks, because he was a businessman. And I had one sister who had been in nursing school, so they had to set up the place for illness. That was Grace. Alice, I think Alice worked with like the director of the, the three camps. And my brother and I were guinea pigs and we were sent off with the, the Japanese Americans who were teachers or educated to be a, to be a teacher, and we were bused off to a Indian school and we were the only kids, so we were taught by... We were just volunteering, because they needed, they were not trained teachers. uh-huh. Anna Takada: Do you remember what that was like being the only kids in... Edith Maeda: Well, I know we were the only kids, my brother and I were-- it was just, it was just full of mostly women volunteers. I don' ; t know where the men volunteers were. There were some married couples, but there were mostly women. That was interesting, ' ; cause they came in busloads from Los Angeles. Anna Takada: Did you have any, any reactions to that, to being the only kid? Was that, was that kind of strange to be, you know just you and your brother... Edith Maeda: I guess it was more strange to be away from your home and your friends and so on. So you didn' ; t, you know, we just knew we were there, we had no way to get out. Unless you, well, they didn' ; t want people out yet, but by the end of the year, they were letting people out. So we left just before the, we didn' ; t stay a year, but you could get out if you could confirm that you had a job. And that' ; s how we got to Chicago. Anna Takada: So can you tell me more about, about that process of-- You mentioned that your, your father had to find another job in Chicago, so, so what happened sort of after camp and as your family was leaving camp? Edith Maeda: Well, you had to have a job, but I don' ; t know if they let you out. I think we had to stay a year. It seems to me, although... We were bused, my brother and I were bused to a Indian school for a while, so I don' ; t, I don' ; t remember, I don' ; t know if it was a complete year. And then, but you couldn' ; t leave unless you had a job, and actually we were the only kids because most of the volunteers were people who you know, could help settle the camp. Anna Takada: Mhmm. And so-- Edith Maeda: So we were the only kids. Anna Takada: How did you get to Chicago? Edith Maeda: Well, we had a friend who drove us into camp and our car, we had a, a big Buick, and then I think he came, gave us, brought the car and we were able to drive out you know when you' ; re leaving. I think that' ; s after a year. Anna Takada: And so-- Edith Maeda: And we drove to Chicago. Anna Takada: When your family first came to Chicago, do you remember who all came? Was it everybody? You, your brother, your... Edith Maeda: My two older sisters were married and they came, and our family came. And, I' ; m-- we had a, a friend who kept our car and, so I don' ; t know how he got back home. Myles Glasgow: That was the sheriff. Edith Maeda: Yeah. I don' ; t know how he-- Well, he might have had somebody else come with him with another car, because they had our car. Anna Takada: And this was a friend, non-Japanese, so he was not in camp? Edith Maeda: Oh, no. They were not Japanese, they would have had to be in camp. Anna Takada: And so when you first came to Chicago, where did you stay? Edith Maeda: You had to have a place to stay, I don' ; t know who found it, but I know it was, it was an apartment with three bedrooms in the West side. And, somebody must have found it for us. Anna Takada: It was on the West side you said? Edith Maeda: Mm-hmm. Maybe, maybe... Maybe I had a cousin, I had four cousins who may have come early. I think they came out to college, but I think they found us an apartment it was, on the West side. Anna Takada: And um... Myles Glasgow: These were the Sonodas. Edith Maeda: Huh? Myles Glasgow: These were the Sonodas. Edith Maeda: The Sonodas are the ones that-- Myles Glasgow: Mary. Edith Maeda: Mary, Margaret [Marguerite], Pearl and Louise, uh-huh, four girls. Myles Glasgow: Mary ended up being the assistant to the president of Roosevelt College. Edith Maeda: Roosevelt College, yeah. Was it because Roosevelt College was just opening? Myles Glasgow: I don' ; t know. Anna Takada: You said it was Mary, Margaret ... Edith Maeda: Pearl and Louise that were our cousins, their father was a rancher, or a farmer I guess you' ; d call him, because he introduced asparagus. And he always wanted a son, he had four girls, so he had to send them off to college, but they-- Anna Takada: And their last name, it' ; s-- Edith Maeda: Sonoda. Myles Glasgow: S-O-N-O-D-A Edith Maeda: S-O-N-O, Sonoda, D-A. Anna Takada: D-A, okay. Edith Maeda: S-O-N-O-D-A. Anna Takada: And, while we' ; re doing names, can you tell me the names of your parents and your siblings? Edith Maeda: My parents were Junichi and ... What was my mother' ; s name? We never called her I... I forgot what her first name was. Junichi and-- anyway. Mr. and Mrs. Junichi Maeda. Anna Takada: And how about your siblings? Edith Maeda: I had Mar-Marvel was my eldest sister who had finished college I think by then, ' ; cause she went to the University of California. I think she had finished college, she was the oldest, they named her Marvel, M-A-R-V-E-L, because she was first. And Betsy and Alice and Grace, four sisters, and then myself, Edith. And I held-- I had an older brother who I did not know, his name was Jack and he was killed when he was in college. But my brother and I were too young to really know him, because he was always away. Anna Takada: What was your younger brother' ; s name? Edith Maeda: Robert. Myles Glasgow: So he must have been about six years old when he was in the camp. Edith Maeda: Yeah. Myles Glasgow: And his daughter is Kimi, and she put this play together about the impression that the sculptor Isamu Noguchi had on Robert, and she' ; s performed that play and it' ; s on the web. She was trained in Williams College. She' ; s now living in Japan, her mother was born in Japan. Edith Maeda: Is she? She' ; s still there? Anna Takada: And so when you came to Chicago, and you settled on the West side, you must have still been of high school age? Edith Maeda: Mm-hmm, mhmm. Anna Takada: Did you enroll in a high school in Chicago? Edith Maeda: Oh, yeah. You had to enroll. Anna Takada: Do you remember which high school that was? Edith Maeda: It was called McKinley. Anna Takada: Do you remember your... some of your first impressions of Chicago when you came, because that was probably the first time that you had come? Edith Maeda: Well, I didn' ; t concentrate so much on that, but I mean it' ; s a big city when you come from a little town of El Centro, which is about 20,000 people, but you go to school or your neighbors are you know close so... But Chicago was just a big city, and... Anna Takada: And, what was, what was McKinley like as a school? Edith Maeda: That was the high school, let' ; s see did I go to junior high school? I, I actually lived near and I became friendly with a, a girl that lived not too far from us, and she happened to be the superintendent' ; s daughter, the superintendent of the schools. So she and I were very, I mean it was very helpful because she had a lot of people, contacts, she knew some of the teachers and so on. So, so it was easy for me, because of her. Anna Takada: So this was in Chicago. Edith Maeda: Yeah, mhmm. Myles Glasgow: No, that was in El Centro. Edith Maeda: Oh, no. This is when we came to Chicago. I was-- Myles Glasgow: When you came to Chicago was one of your friends the daughter of the superintendent? Edith Maeda: Yeah, Esther Weekly. Myles Glasgow: Weekly is from El Centro. Edith Maeda: Oh, I have her in Chicago. Why do I have her in Chicago? You' ; re probably right. Was I in high school? Myles Glasgow: I don' ; t know. Was Walt Disney connected to any of the schools? Edith Maeda: No, but I went to elementary school with her. We just sort of grew up together, so I, she was in El Centro. Yeah. Anna Takada: And then so Chicago then, were there, on the West side, do you remember other Japanese families? Maybe people who had also come from camp? Edith Maeda: There weren' ; t any... We had, my parents volunteered and then volunteered to leave too, early, so I don' ; t remember. Anna Takada: So you were, you were probably one of the few, if not the only Japanese student at McKinley. Edith Maeda: Mm-hmm, mhmm. Anna Takada: What were some of the, the demographics of that area at that time? Edith Maeda: Where, in Chicago? Anna Takada: Mm-hmm-- Edith Maeda: Oh. Anna Takada: On the West side where you were and at McKinley. Edith Maeda: It was, they were mostly Caucasian, and there were very few Blacks there, because Chicago is sort of isolated. I think it' ; s, you know most of the African-Americans live on the South side I think, and we lived on the West side. Anna Takada: And do you, do you remember being aware of maybe your, your Japanese-American identity, as a-- Edith Maeda: Oh, always, always. Yeah. Myles Glasgow: Mhmm. Anna Takada: Can you tell me more about that? Edith Maeda: Well, where we grew up, it was very integrated. I mean, there were no Japanese living in the little town, they were mostly farmers and lived in the country. So we were used to being always in school and around neighbors who were non-Japanese. So my brother and I hardly knew any Japane--, we didn' ; t know any Japanese. Except, my parents did attend a Japanese church. But still, there weren' ; t many kids and we didn' ; t have a Sunday school that I know of. Anna Takada: And how about in Chicago, did you do anything outside of school, any other activities, or... Edith Maeda: Well, I had developed friendships and we did, did something. I was, somehow or another I got acquainted with the superintendent' ; s daughter, not knowing she was that or anything, but she was sort of a quiet... and I don' ; t know why people didn' ; t mingle with her, but we sort of got close. In fact, we got very close, we sort of grew up together. Mhmm. Anna Takada: And in Chicago, did your family, did you find any church or did you go to church in Chicago that you recall? Edith Maeda: My parents, when there, there became a Japanese community, they, they started a, a Japanese church. I think they rented or something. But my brother and I did not get involved, ' ; cause they didn' ; t really have anything like a Sunday school for... yet. I think it was more of a church. Anna Takada: Do you remember what that church was called or maybe the people that were involved? Edith Maeda: Well I, I think, I think they rented you know, the use of it, I don' ; t know what the name of it was. Anna Takada: Mhmm. Was that on the West side or somewhere else? Edith Maeda: I gu-- Yeah, it would have be on the West side. Anna Takada: Did your family move anywhere after first staying on the West side? Edith Maeda: I don' ; t know. I think that we bought the house, but it was a two-story house, so... I think we stayed there, and then my brother and I went to college out, out of the city, so... Anna Takada: Where did you go to college? Edith Maeda: University of Illinois. Where did Robert go? Bra-Brandeis? Myles Glasgow: He went to Michigan, and then he went to Harvard. Edith Maeda: Oh, who went to Brandeis? Myles Glasgow: Robert taught at Brandeis. Edith Maeda: Oh, he taught at Brandeis, oh. Anna Takada: And was that something that was kind of expected for your family, ' ; cause I know your, your older siblings went to college? Edith Maeda: Yeah, yeah. All my older, we all went to, to college, mhmm. Anna Takada: Would you happen to remember what year you graduated from high school? Edith Maeda: What year I graduated? Let' ; s see, from McKinley High School, gee, I don' ; t know. I can' ; t really... I just, I didn' ; t even keep a diary. Myles Glasgow: Well you might have a yearbook. Edith Maeda: Huh? Myles Glasgow: You might have a yearbook. Edith Maeda: Could. Oh, yeah. I think there is one, but... Anna Takada: So when you were, before we started recording you had mentioned a, a house on Magnolia, was that before you left for college that you, you moved to Magnolia Street? Edith Maeda: Yeah. Yeah, we lived on Magnolia, uh-huh. Anna Takada: And, but that, that wouldn' ; t be the west side, I don' ; t think. Edith Maeda: Magnolia? Is, is it near North S-- Myles Glasgow: Oh, she' ; s talking about the school down near the, you know university. She, she' ; s talking about-- Edith Maeda: University of Illinois? Myles Glasgow: --the house that you and I went down to visit on Clifton. Edith Maeda: Yeah, we lived on Clifton Street. Well wasn' ; t that the West side? Myles Glasgow: Clifton might be the West side. Yeah. Edith Maeda: Yeah. Myles Glasgow: I' ; m not from Chicago. Anna Takada: When you were still in high school, well earlier you mentioned that when you were first here, there wasn' ; t much of a Japanese-American community, but it sounds like over time people were coming? Edith Maeda: I guess so, uh-huh Anna Takada: Do you remember that or do you remember experiencing that shift? Edith Maeda: Well, we never, in our hometown of El Centro, we were, there were never Japanese who lived in the city. And we, we lived in the city. Mostly they were living in the country, because they were farmers. So when we came here, there were less, I mean we had less contact. So my brother and I were basically, I don' ; t think he had much contact with Japanese children either. Anna Takada: Mhmm. And, what about, do you remember any other maybe Japanese-owned businesses or grocery stores, or... Edith Maeda: In El Centro or in Chicago? Anna Takada: In Chicago. Edith Maeda: Hmm... Anna Takada: Or any other families? Edith Maeda: I' ; m trying to think of... Well we had cousins and my father sort of looked after them, there were four girls, they were all college educated, but their mother, her husband had died early. So he sort of, you know, he always kept in touch with them, they always called him. Anna Takada: You said that there was a two-story building on the West side that your family shared? Edith Maeda: Well, when we first came, you just had to get something quickly, and so we lived on the West side and there was an empty storefront, but upstairs there was a three-bedroom apartment. And it was empty, so that' ; s how we got here, ' ; cause you had to have a place to stay. And then after that, my father found a house out... Where was it? Myles Glasgow: I think it was on Clifton. Edith Maeda: Clifton Avenue, is, that was in the suburbs, right? Myles Glasgow: No, Clifton is down near one of the main streets. Edith Maeda: Clifton, it was in the city? I' ; m trying to think of what school. Myles Glasgow: Yeah, and the first house that you' ; re talking about is... Edith Maeda: There was an apartment we lived in. Myles Glasgow: Yeah, yeah. Edith Maeda: On Clifton, what was it? 2241 North Clifton. Myles Glasgow: Clifton was a really nice house. Edith Maeda: 2241, I remember the address. Myles Glasgow: Right, walk, you know, stairs coming up from the sidewalk. Anna Takada: And what did your father find as work in Chicago? Edith Maeda: He worked at the Goldblatt. You had to have a job I think before you came out, so at the Goldblatt department store, they had a, a shoe repair section I guess. But you had to have a job in order to come out, so that' ; s how we came out early. Anna Takada: And, your mother, did she find work? Edith Maeda: No, she, she was always... because, she had a lot of kids! (laughs) Anna Takada: Then so you mentioned you went to University of Illinois, after graduating from college, where did you go or what did you do? Edith Maeda: Well, I majored in occupational therapy, so I always had a job, and I always liked to work with kids. So I worked at the research hospital, what was it called? What is the research hospital? But anyway, I worked with the... Myles Glasgow: NIH? Edith Maeda: NIH. I worked for NIMH, National Institute of Mental Health. Myles Glasgow: That was in Bethesda. Edith Maeda: Mm-hmm. And they had a wonderful pediatric, pediatrician, and he was wonderful. So he was opening up a ward for disturbed kids, they were all boys, and he was doing research, so he, I' ; m an occupational therapist, so he, he wanted that definitely in a school teacher. Mhmm. Anna Takada: And, was that, that position, was that in Chicago? Or, where-- Edith Maeda: It' ; s in Chicago, yeah. Research, at the Illinois Institute. Was it the Illinois Institute of Psychology? Myles Glasgow: The name of the psychologist was Doctor... Edith Maeda: Oh, yeah... Gee. Anna Takada: And so, so you moved back to Chicago after college to work? Edith Maeda: Mm-hmm. Myles Glasgow: No, you stayed in, you stayed in Bethesda, and your, your teacher from the University of Illinois connected you to your... Joan Doniger. She too was a graduate of occupational therapy from-- Edith Maeda: The university. Myles Glasgow: The University of Illinois. So there, they had this occupational therapy professor in common, and Joan Doniger and Edie hooked up in Bethesda, Maryland, and Joan said to Edie at some point, " ; I want to start a halfway house for the mentally ill." ; And, Redl was the name of the psychologist you were working under in-- Edith Maeda: Fritz, Fritz Redl. Myles Glasgow: Fritz Redl, who was an outstanding psychologist. So anyway, Edie and Joan Doniger hooked up and used their occupational therapy training to start a halfway house for the mentally ill, applying occupational therapy principles to how they would run the halfway house. And so Edie worked there for 40 years after she came back from Norway or someplace where-- Edith Maeda: Norway. Myles Glasgow: Where she was working with... Edith Maeda: Disturbed kids, yeah. Myles Glasgow: Disturbed kids, and she said to Joan, " ; I' ; m going away to work there." ; And Joan said, " ; Well, when you come back, well I' ; ll have started the halfway house." ; And Joan' ; s father was well-endowed from inventing the X-Acto knife, and so the family money helped start the halfway house, which was then used. It followed, the, I think the Menninger' ; s Clinic also started a halfway house late-- years later on, but they used the halfway house called Woodley House, because it' ; s at Woodley Road in Washington DC, so that' ; s where Edie, Edie worked for 40 years. And Joan died with a car accident in New York when she was hailing a cab, but she adopted a girl and helped bring Edie' ; s life into that adoption by letting Edie be the godmother of that daughter, who is now in California, et cetera, et cetera. So Joan Doniger obviously played a very big part in Edie' ; s life post... Probably when you started that it was somewhere around 1950. Edith Maeda: Probably. Anna Takada: So... Myles Glasgow: So she left in 2000. Edith Maeda: Yeah her, her father was so nice too. How was she killed, in an accident? Myles Glasgow: Yeah, she was hailing a cab outside of her sister' ; s home and the cab stopped and then another cab came too fast and wiped out Joan, who was by then standing in the street trying to get into the car that had stopped. So... so we got through that. Edith Maeda: So I carried on, but that was so sad. Anna Takada: And so where, I' ; m sorry exactly were you living at that time? Myles Glasgow: We were living in Washington DC. Anna Takada: In DC. Myles Glasgow: On Lanier Place. Anna Takada: So you spent a bit of time there, it sounds like. Myles Glasgow: Oh, yeah. Edith Maeda: Mhmm. Anna Takada: In DC. And so when, when did you come back to Chicago or to the Chicagoland area? Myles Glasgow: In 2000. Edith Maeda: When was it? Myles Glasgow: 2000. Edith Maeda: 2000? Myles Glasgow: Edie was retiring after 40 years at Woodley House, and Joan had died, and our s-- we had adopted a boy in ' ; 89 from Guatemala, and Joan had adopted Kiyo and Teresa before that, so Edie had formed the... Edith Maeda: Adoptees club. Myles Glasgow: The adoptees club of these four or five adopted girls, so that was, adoption was part of our mode of living. And she, she was like a den mother, and she had a chance to adapt a, a boy herself, and that was a total surprise. But anyway, we moved here and when Jose was moving from middle school to high school, or from grade school to middle school, we figured that was a good time. She wanted to be closer to her sisters here, so she had two sisters living in Chicago on Magnolia Street a block apart, and, with their, with their children. So she wanted to be close to the family, and part of it was to put Jose close to that family too, those families. Anna Takada: So Jose was your first adopted son? Myles Glasgow: Only adopted son, yes. So he' ; s 30 now, and... Anna Takada: And so which two sisters were on Magnolia Street? Myles Glasgow: Alice and... Edith Maeda: Grace, was it? Myles Glasgow: Grace. Grace Tatsui and Alice Hashimoto. So Grace' ; s husband is still living in Skokie, and Alice died about five years after we were here and her husband George had a some kind of a stroke at our house. Anna Takada: What did, what did your sisters end up doing for work, or-- Edith Maeda: One was a nurse. Myles Glasgow: That was Grace Tatsui. Edith Maeda: Uh-huh. Alice was a... Myles Glasgow: She was a volunteer, I thought. George was a jeweler, jeweler. Edith Maeda: Uh-huh. But she went to business, she went to business school, so she had always worked in business. But Grace was the nurse. Myles Glasgow: I think Alice probably volunteered a lot down here, that' ; s my impression. But it' ; s her son who is the jazz player, Steve Hashimoto, so it was Alice Hashimoto. Edith Maeda: Excuse me. Myles Glasgow: So Steve' ; s a very sophisticated Chicago guy, he grew up on the streets and he grew up in the music and he grew up playing jazz. And I think he' ; s had a regular gig at the Green Mill for many years. Anna Takada: And so when, when you first came back to Chicago in 2000, were you living close to your sisters or were you out in Skokie? Myles Glasgow: Skokie. Anna Takada: Mhmm. So when you came back you' ; ve been in Skokie since? Myles Glasgow: Yeah, we did surveys, my brother was already here, and we did surveys of school systems and we were severely discouraged from putting our son into a Chicago school. He was born in Guatemala with a learning disability called an auditory processing disability, and the people we spoke to were very closely connected to the Chicago school system and, and said, this is, " ; This would kill him." ; Not kill him, but anyway, today he left for graduate school in Southern Illinois University in marketing but you know. The idea was to follow the advice of somebody who was in the school system, my brother knew him, so... Anna Takada: And, you said that, Edie, you had retired before coming back to Chicago? Is that right? Myles Glasgow: Yeah. That, that was the only way that she would have left Washington. She had a very good staff and you know it was... Retiring is one thing, but living two and a half blocks from where you had worked and committed your life, your professional life, would have been like looking over the shoulder of somebody who was essentially doing your job. And so the thought was it' ; s better to separate yourself and gain the support that your family has. So Betsy Hashimoto is Alice' ; s daughter, and you know, Betsy is a mainstay in our lives, and, and it' ; s great to have that connection. Anna Takada: So, so your niece. Myles Glasgow: Yeah, so you hand over your Woodley House connection and you pick up your Betsy connection, and Steve and, and Glenn, Glenn Tatsui, who lives in... Edith Maeda: The nephew. Myles Glasgow: They live in Skokie, so there was reasons to go ahead and move into Skokie. Anna Takada: One thing I wanted to ask you was, do you remember what motivated or inspired you to work in occupational therapy and then you know, start that career that you had? Edith Maeda: Oh, going into it? Well, it, I went to the University of Illinois and they were, they had the course, the graduate course, and I just got acquainted with a lot of people who were in that field. So I got interested, mhmm. And I was working with mental health, and I worked with the mentally ill in the halfway house, so, so it was just fine. ' ; Cause, yeah, it was a great place to work. Myles Glasgow: Well when you worked with Fritz Redl too-- Edith Maeda: Mhmm oh yeah. Myles Glasgow: --you had already been trained in occupational therapy, but he showed you how a, an occupational therapist could fit within a team structure. Edith Maeda: Oh yeah, yeah I worked with disturbed kids with Fritz Redl, who was very well-known and, oh he was unbelievable. (Laughs) Everybody, when he talked, everybody stopped and listened, yeah. Including the kids, disturbed kids. Myles Glasgow: These were fire-setters. He had specifically asked principals of schools in Maryland near NIMH to take advantage of the support and program that he was directing at, in Bethesda, Maryland. So the principals knew who to encourage to go to this program, so Edie says that she was one of the few who were not tackled by these kids. Edith Maeda: Yeah, he was doing research at the, was... at the National Institute of Health, Mental Health. Myles Glasgow: --Mental Health. Anna Takada: And so we have time for a few more questions. One thing I, I want to ask is just about, kind of overall and in general, what are, what' ; s... When you think about your experiences of living and in part growing up a little bit in Chicago, you know how does-- I guess, how has Chicago played a part in your life, if at all? Edith Maeda: Well, played a big part, because the Japanese were put into camps and this was in the middle of the Arizona desert, is where we ended up, and so my father volunteered, so we were the, my brother and I were the only kids in the whole camp and it was a dust bowl. And so as soon as he, we could leave, we-- Which you, you had to have a position, my father got out here and worked at one of the department stores, Goldblatt' ; s, I think it was Goldblatt' ; s. And so we got out of camp fairly early, I don' ; t know if we even stayed a year, but we were guinea pigs in camp because we were the only kids, because the people who had come in were volunteers and they were all adults. School teachers and so on, people who were being sort of trained to, you know to welcome the crowd. And they were, really, it was in a desert, all dust bowl. Anna Takada: Well and, and back to Chicago, how do you feel about living in, in Chicago? Edith Maeda: Oh, we enjoyed it, it was good to be in Chicago and go to school here and I went to college here at U of I downstate. So my brother really liked it, as far as the schools go and mhmm. Anna Takada: One thing, one question I like to ask people, as we' ; re wrapping up these oral histories, is if you could leave any kind of legacy or message with your children or your son, what' ; s, what' ; s something you would want to leave with them? A message or legacy? Edith Maeda: A legacy? Anna Takada: Mhmm. Edith Maeda: Well, I think for any child or any family, is you know certainly registering you know the fact that growing up in a family is a way hopefully that we did that would sort of sustain him I think. We have one child, uh-huh, yup. And he was adopted, so it would be important to, to have, leave that with him. Anna Takada: Mhmm, kind of the importance of family. Edith Maeda: Mm-hmm. Anna Takada: Are there any last things that you would like to, to share with me or that I might have missed in this conversation? Any other things you' ; d like to add? Edith Maeda: I can' ; t think of anything, except, what is this for? (laughs) How did we get in contact with this? How did this happen? Anna Takada: Well, your, your husband, Myles, reached out, since we' ; re, we' ; re working on this oral history project. Edith Maeda: Oh, how did you find out about it? Myles Glasgow: I must have read something. Edith Maeda: Oh, and what is this connected with? Anna Takada: The Japanese American Service Committee. Edith Maeda: Oh, the Service Committee. Anna Takada: And, and the Chicago Japanese American Historical Society. Edith Maeda: Oh, oh so you work with them? Anna Takada: Mhmm, yes. Edith Maeda: Oh. Anna Takada: So thank you so much again for coming in and for taking the time to, to speak with me. Edith Maeda: Mhmm. Copyright held by the Japanese American Service Committee, Chicago, Illinois. video Interviews may only be reproduced with permission from the Japanese American Service Committee Legacy Center. 0 http://digitalcollections.jasc-chicago.org/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=MaedaEdith20180817.xml MaedaEdith20180817.xml http://digitalcollections.jasc-chicago.org/omeka/collections/show/1 http://digitalcollections.jasc-chicago.org/omeka/items/browse?tags=Series%3A+Untold+Stories
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https://digitalcollections.jasc-chicago.org/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=MaedaEdith20180817.xml
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Maeda, Edith (8/17/2018)
Description
An account of the resource
Edith Maeda, a nisei, was born in El Centro, CA in 1927. In this interview, she shares memories of her life before WWII and her family's experiences as early arrivals at the WRA incarceration site at Poston, AZ. She recalls the pervasive dust in the desert and lack of a school facility on-site. Following their incarceration, Edith's family resettled in Chicago, initially on the West Side where she finished high school. After college, Edith's career took her to Washington, DC, where she worked at the National Institute of Mental Health and the Woodley House. Edith returned to the Chicago area with her husband and son after retirement in order to be closer to family, and stresses the importance of family at the end of the interview.
Date
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2018-08-17
Format
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video
ISHRAB
Series: Untold Stories
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eb22fec93458bd14bd45c3149349311f
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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JASC Legacy Center Oral History Collection
Subject
The topic of the resource
Japanese Americans--History.
Description
An account of the resource
This collection contains oral history interviews from the Japanese American Service Committee (JASC) Legacy Center's holdings. Where available, transcriptions have been included and synced to the recordings to enable full-text searching.
Interviews were recorded at various times, some by JASC staff and some by external partners, often supported by grant funding. See the metadata associated with each interview for full details.
This digital collection will continue to grow as new interviews are recorded, and as additional pre-existing recordings are received by donation or discovered in the physical archives.
The digitization and transcription of many of the recordings in this collection, the recording of interviews between July 2018 and June 2021, and the creation of this publicly accessible digital platform, were funded by a Japanese American Confinements Sites (JACS) grant awarded by the National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior. The JASC Legacy Center gratefully acknowledges the financial support received between 2018 and 2021 that enabled this project to succeed.
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This material is based upon work assisted by a grant from the U.S. Department of the
Interior, National Park Service. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations
expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views
of the U.S. Department of the Interior.
This material received Federal financial assistance for the preservation and interpretation of
U.S. confinement sites where Japanese Americans were detained during World War II.
Under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973,
and the Age Discrimination Act of 1975, as amended, the U.S. Department of the Interior
prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, disability or age in its
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write to:
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Creator
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Japanese American Service Committee (Chicago, Ill.). Legacy Center
Publisher
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Japanese American Service Committee (Chicago, Ill.). Legacy Center
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Takada, Anna
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Matsumoto, Jason
Interview Keyword
Yonsei
Rohwer
Gila River
Military Intelligence Service
Midwest Buddhist Temple
Full Spectrum Features
Taiko
The Orange Story
OHMS Object Text
5.4 9/10/2019 Matsumoto, Jason (9/10/2019) 2:01:11 JASC_US JASC Legacy Center Oral History Collection US Untold Stories Japanese American Service Committee Legacy Center Recorded, transcribed, and made accessible online with financial support from the Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Japanese American Confinement Sites grant program and the Illinois State Historical Records Advisory Board. Yonsei Rohwer Gila River Military Intelligence Service Midwest Buddhist Temple Full Spectrum Features Taiko The Orange Story Matsumoto, Jason Takada, Anna video 1:|20(7)|36(13)|48(6)|60(4)|68(12)|86(11)|106(10)|114(12)|123(14)|136(6)|145(1)|157(14)|176(1)|187(13)|198(1)|208(6)|222(11)|234(3)|245(11)|269(10)|279(10)|290(6)|300(15)|310(4)|323(8)|334(5)|346(13)|364(6)|382(3)|400(1)|410(8)|420(13)|430(6)|442(11)|454(11)|466(8)|475(13)|487(8)|499(14)|527(7)|541(8)|551(2)|565(11)|581(11)|593(6)|601(9)|610(12)|622(6)|633(11)|643(4)|664(9)|675(3)|687(15)|699(12)|710(15)|723(7)|733(5)|747(12)|762(2)|773(1)|784(14)|796(9)|809(7)|823(6)|834(12)|844(9)|856(8)|867(15)|879(3)|891(12)|901(5)|911(9)|923(2)|935(4)|948(5)|959(4)|970(9)|977(9)|990(9)|1002(3)|1014(8)|1026(1)|1037(14)|1051(1)|1063(9)|1077(12)|1087(12)|1104(7)|1116(5)|1126(9)|1137(16)|1154(13)|1167(10)|1178(4)|1188(1)|1198(12)|1209(9)|1217(2)|1230(15)|1242(8)|1253(7)|1264(10)|1277(1)|1289(5)|1300(10)|1308(15)|1319(1)|1333(7)|1343(5)|1352(11)|1362(12)|1372(11)|1385(6)|1398(6)|1405(7)|1418(3)|1427(14)|1438(4)|1448(12)|1461(2)|1471(11) 0 https://vimeo.com/601369712/e820845729 Vimeo video < ; iframe src=" ; https://player.vimeo.com/video/601369712?h=e820845729" ; width=" ; 640" ; height=" ; 360" ; frameborder=" ; 0" ; allow=" ; autoplay ; fullscreen ; picture-in-picture" ; allowfullscreen> ; < ; /iframe> ; Jason Matsumoto is a yonsei born in Chicago to sansei parents who were also born in Chicago. His maternal grandparents were incarcerated at Rohwer, paternal grandmother was incarcerated at Gila River, and paternal grandfather served in the MIS. In this interview, Jason discusses his experiences growing up in Wilmette, IL, his family's involvement with the Midwest Buddhist Temple, the influence of his grandfather Ben Chikaraishi, and his interest in taiko drumming. He shares his reasons for leaving Chicago to attend college in Seattle, WA, his motivations for studying abroad in Japan, and the path that ultimately led him to become one of the founders of Full Spectrum Features, a Chicago-based nonprofit film production company. Throughout the interview, Jason reflects on his evolving sense of identity, the strengths of the Chicago Japanese American community, and the importance of aligning his work with his personal values. Anna Takada: Start with a slating, just introducing the project. Jason Matsumoto: Okay. Anna Takada: And we' ; ll get right into questions. This is an interview with Jason Matsumoto as part of the Japanese American Service Committee and Chicago Japanese American Historical Society Oral History Project. The interview' ; s being conducted on Tuesday, September 10th, 2019 at 11:41 AM at the Japanese American Service Committee in Chicago. Jason Matsumoto is being interviewed by Anna Takada of the Japanese American Service Committee. So to start, can you please state your full name? Jason Matsumoto: Yes, my name is Jason Katsuo Matsumoto. Anna Takada: And where and when were you born? Jason Matsumoto: I was born in Chicago on November 23rd, 1982 at St. Joseph' ; s Hospital. It' ; s the one you can see from Lake Shore Drive that has blue facade. Anna Takada: And can you tell me about where and when your parents were born? Jason Matsumoto: Well, yes. So they were both born in Chicago in, I believe, Morton Grove. My mom was born in Morton Grove and my dad was born in the city, I believe, close to like, either in Lincoln Park or Old Town area. Anna Takada: And what years were they born? Jason Matsumoto: Oh my God. 19--, (laughs) 1950-- something. Anna Takada: In the ' ; 50s. Jason Matsumoto: Yeah. Anna Takada: Cool. So like I mentioned, we are interested in hearing about your family' ; s experiences during the war. You know, of course, with our generation, we don' ; t have all of the details, so like whatever you can offer about your family' ; s background is like totally fine. So I guess to, to start, I know you mentioned you know more about your mom' ; s family' ; s background? Jason Matsumoto: Yeah. Anna Takada: So, would you be-- Do you know like maybe where, where they were from originally, how they ended up in, I believe, it was California? Jason Matsumoto: Yeah, sure. So I' ; ll start with my grandmother on my, my mom' ; s side. So Kiyo, her, her maiden name was Chino, so Kiyo Chino. She was born in Utah, actually, and her father had come over and was a coal miner in Utah. I think the story is that he, he landed somewhere either somewhere on the West Coast, I, I think in Seattle potentially, and at that time they were sending people to Utah to do coal mining. They were sending Japanese Americans to Utah to do coal mining. He ended up there, and he had a picture bride wife and so they, they started their family in Utah, so my grandmother was born there. Um, s-- Anna Takada: Do you know when she was born? Jason Matsumoto: No, I don' ; t know the day. She' ; -- It' ; s 2019. She was 95... Yeah, I don' ; t know. I can fill in like dates late-- dates later. And, she actually grew up... You know, I think there were some Japanese Americans there, but not a lot. And, she grew up Mormon. So maybe the, the influence was from Utah, or just being, just being specifically in that area. And she remembers her, her, her mother was a housewife and was, you know, aside from taking care of all the, all the, all of her siblings and, and her, she would do things like wash all the miners' ; clothes and... like for a fee you know? So, they were, they were fairly poor. And I think what happened was one of the family members, I believe it was of, my grandmother' ; s mother, was living in Terminal Island and they were working in the canneries in Terminal Island. And so, at some point before the war and before the forced removal, they moved from Utah as, as an entire family to Terminal Island and began working in the canneries. And so she ended up... It' ; s, it' ; s kinda funny I-- You know I think if they had never done that, they wouldn' ; t have been incarcerated, right? Because I think Utah was outside of the zone, but they ended up moving... I think, just a few years, maybe like three or four years before the forced removal. They, they lived in Terminal Island. They moved around a few different times before you know eventually being removed from where they were, so it was kinda this interesting... I, I just didn' ; t know that many people that were, that were living or from Utah, you know? So it was an interesting thing. I wonder how many folks were, were there. Anna Takada: Mhmm. Jason Matsumoto: Yeah. Anna Takada: And so that was your maternal grandma' ; s family. Jason Matsumoto: Mhmm. Anna Takada: And do you-- Let' ; s see. Do you have details on your paternal grandfather' ; s family, where they started or... Jason Matsumoto: Paternal grandfather' ; s? Anna Takada: Mhm-- Ah, your mom' ; s dad. Jason Matsumoto: Yeah. So they... So, so my grandfather, Ben Chikaraishi, he and his family were from Stockton, California. I-- I actually think they, they lived in a few different places before Stockton in California. And yeah he, so he' ; s... So my, my grandfather, he was one of... one, two, three... Maria Pimentel: Sorry. That was so... Anna Takada: Very loud. Jason Matsumoto: Oh, you pick that up? Yeah. Maria Pimentel: Yeah. Jason Matsumoto: He was one of what, four kids, right? Yeah. So, yeah. I think he was one of four kids? Four or five, maybe five? Yeah. I should know all this. (laughs) And, so yeah. So he was, you know they were, they were in Stockton, which was a much bigger Japanese American community, obviously, than Utah. And they owned a, like a transient hotel, like a hotel for, for like farm laborers. And so he remembers kind of having, kind of a strange upbringing, where you know, all the kids were fairly separated in this pretty large hotel. And they... As, as kids, they had to, had to kind of like experience and deal with like very interesting people, mostly men who were, you know farm laborers. And he remembers things like you know, you know just like a transient scene, like some prostitution going on, maybe some like fairly, you know, nefarious things happening in the hotel. And a lot of him and his siblings' ; jobs were to take care of the hotel, so he, he talks about, you know taking care of, you know the toilets in the different rooms and cleaning things. He... It was interesting. I think he, he never really had like a, a strong like drive or aspiration to go to college. He mentioned to me one time that he was going to be a barber and his, his advisor in school, maybe a mentor, maybe a teacher, potentially saw something in him and was-- and, and kind of encouraged him to think bigger and go to college, and so that was like kind of a pivotal person, a pivotal moment. He talks about that person, and so he ended up going to Berkeley to study and he was, I think, three quarters of the way towards an optometry degree when the family was removed, but he, he seemed to have like a very vibrant life, I think, growing up. He was, he was part of the temple because-- or he went to church because he didn' ; t want to go to Japanese school, but that became like kind of a strong thread within his life. Anna Takada: In Stockton? Jason Matsumoto: In Stockton, yeah. He played baseball. He did, he did things like kendo, you know, so he was fairly active. And, yeah I mean he was... I-- It' ; s hard to imagine like being three quarters of the way through a degree and then like kind of, getting that taken away from you. But, he talks about, you know, he was away at Berkeley when Executive Order 90- 9066 came out, and then having to make the decision with his family about what to do. And they were trying to tell him to stay in school for as long as possible to see if he could finish the degree ' ; cause they didn' ; t know what was going to happen. But his, his father... So, so his mother, I think, was fairly sick and his... She passed away before they were effectively incarcerated. And his father got picked up by the FBI, I think, kind of like in a dragnet kind of way, where he wasn' ; t really like a strong community leader, but he had donated money to Ben' ; s kendo club at one point. And the publication where his name was printed had a, like a headshot of, I think, one of the military leaders of Japan on it ' ; cause I think that, that, that military leader was like a high level kendo player. And so, basically anybody that had donated money, it was the equivalent of a, you know 50 or 100 bucks, he had donated cash to his son, Ben' ; s kendo club and then that landed him in you know the FBI-- the, the Department of Justice camps. So without the mother and-- or the mother being sick and the father being taken away, Ben came back to kind of figure out what to do with the family. Anna Takada: Is he the eldest? Jason Matsumoto: No, he was, he was the second oldest, so his, his older sister was the one that you know, was there to kind of see the FBI come and take, and take their father, but he was still at school at that time. Anna Takada: And would you happen to know details on like whether there was any kind of like, official guardianship or something offered to the eldest siblings because... Jason Matsumoto: By, by the government? Anna Takada: Yeah. Jason Matsumoto: They' ; ve never mentioned that to me. I don' ; t know. Like was that a thing? I don' ; t know because-- Anna Takada: I, I, I don' ; t know, but I, I' ; m curious about it because you know, by removing the head of household and I know that that was very much how things were organized, by head of household, so I just wasn' ; t sure. Jason Matsumoto: Yeah. No, they never mentioned anybody kind of coming in to... At least from, you know like a government perspective or a government official or somebody that was, that was assigned to them. Anna Takada: Or like I wonder if looking through their documents if Ben and maybe his older sibling were like marked as head of household or something. Jason Matsumoto: Yeah, yeah I would assume it was that and I would assume it was the oldest... The oldest child w-- you know kind of became the head. But I don' ; t know. It' ; s a good question. I don' ; t know. Anna Takada: I did want to go back a little bit, just to see if, if you happen to know any information about your grandparents' ; parents in coming to the U.S., if that' ; s safe to, to assume that it was their parents who came to the U.S. from Japan? Jason Matsumoto: Yeah. I don' ; t know a lot about like the circumstances. I know that at least for, so for Ben' ; s ... So Ben was the second son and so they, that family, like the Chikaraishi family, they were from Hiroshima, and this is kind of vague, but I think, you know they-- So, so actually, I visited them, that, that kind of like that, that side of the family at some point, and they still actually have a farm or some kind of like plot of land that, that is like farm land in Hiroshima. And what I' ; ve been told is that it was bad crop, but the house was valuable, so they, you know they, they left the eldest son, I think as, as many families did, in Hiroshima. And that' ; s actually something that, that my grandfather Ben talks about all the time. That' ; s like... He knew that his father felt incredibly guilty about that, because Hiroshima ended up getting you know, bombed right? And he felt so guilty about leaving his eldest son there, that like most of the money that they, the family had made would be sent back to Japan to kind of like, in some, in some way, to feel in some way that he was contributing to the eldest son' ; s life in, back in Japan. And so... I think there were like a few back and forth trips. I know, I think Ben, my grandfather had... like remembers his father going back a few times prior to the war, but I don' ; t know the circumstances. What I' ; ve been told is that it, you know it was like a really bad crop and they weren' ; t... Just life was very difficult, and they weren' ; t able to make money and so they were looking for something outside of Japan to do. Anna Takada: Mhmm. Jason Matsumoto: And then... Yeah, I don' ; t know much about my, my... So, so Kiyo' ; s family. I know that... I don' ; t know where her father is, is from, specifically in Japan, but I do know that you know, h-his-- her mother was sent over as a picture bride. I don' ; t know where they' ; re from in Japan, though. Anna Takada: Mhmm. And how, how about your, your dad' ; s family? Jason Matsumoto: Yeah, so my dad' ; s family, you know, in the U.S., his mother, so that' ; s Yoko and her maiden name is Yamamoto, they were from, I believe, the Tokyo area or maybe somewhere like a bit more rural than Tokyo, but they had like relatives close or not far from Tokyo. And then his father was from the Fukushima area. And, so yeah it' ; s kind of interesting because it' ; s, it' ; s vastly different from like the concentration of people that came from you know Hiroshima, like, you know more towards the South, that my father' ; s side of the family, I think, came from closer to Tokyo area or a little bit further north from where like a lot of pre-war Japanese Americans came from. I believe they were also farmers, and... At least on, on my, on my dad' ; s father' ; s side. Yeah. Anna Takada: What was your dad' ; s father' ; s name? Jason Matsumoto: Katsuo Matsumoto. He always used to talk about this place called Aizuwakamatsu, which is somewhere within Fukushima. And I think that' ; s, that' ; s, they w- they were from a place close to that area. There' ; s a really famous like samurai story that he would like incessantly tell me all the time. Anna Takada: Your grandfather? Jason Matsumoto: Yeah, yeah. From like that town, so I think he was from somewhere close to that area. I should ask my cousin, he' ; s got like the entire family tree memorized. They, so my grandmother on my dad' ; s side, they were from like the Santa Maria area in, in the U.S., at, at least, so they, they lived in and around Santa Maria. And then my... The, the Matsumoto side were living in Los Angeles, I think pretty close to like, you know what is now like Hollywood area, so like, you know prime real estate. (laughs) Anna Takada: And both of your dad' ; s parents came to the U.S. from Japan? They' ; re originally from Japan? Jason Matsumoto: My, no my, I think they were both born here. Anna Takada: Okay. Jason Matsumoto: So yeah like their, their families came. My grandfather was Kibei though, so he went back and, and was you know educated, I think, for like five or six years, fairly formative years in Japan. Anna Takada: I' ; m sorry, you said your grandfather was? Jason Matsumoto: Yeah, yeah. And, yeah so... That' ; s like I don' ; t... yeah I just don' ; t know a lot about them. Anna Takada: Mhmm. Jason Matsumoto: Yeah. Anna Takada: Well, and then so when the war broke out, do you know where, let' ; s see, where all of your grandparents, respectively, where they ended up, like, assembly center, camp? Jason Matsumoto: I was asking my aunt this last night. I, so we don' ; t-- I don' ; t know where my... So, I' ; ll start with my father' ; s side. So, on my dad' ; s side, my grandmother' ; s family, the Yamamotos, they... I' ; m not sure what assembly center they went to, but they ended up in Gila River and then my grandfather, he actually was never incarcerated because he was, he joined the military and I think he was within MIS but he wasn' ; t like, like an intelligence officer at all. I think he, he was a, like an army cook, and he was based, he was, I think, eventually based in Minnesota, but I think spent some time in Kansas, too. Anna Takada: And then your mom, your mom' ; s parents? Jason Matsumoto: They both were at Santa Anita. Yeah so they were both in like the horse stalls in Santa Anita. And, yeah my grandmother remembers, you know I think, graduating high school in... on a horse track. So, she was there and my grandfather was also at Santa Anita and then they both were moved from Santa Anita to Rohwer, Arkansas. Anna Takada: And so as far as... Well, I guess first of all, I want to ask, like when you were growing up, was this particular family history, was it something that you guys talked about or that you were aware of as, you know as a kid, or... Jason Matsumoto: Yeah. I mean I don' ; t remember really engaging with it as a kid. I think I was lucky ' ; cause my grandfather was fairly outspoken about it, maybe more so than other families were. Although he never... You know when you go back and you try to find out information from just my aunts and uncles and my parents, it' ; s very clear that like their parents never spoke to them about it and I, you know that' ; s a, that' ; s a, that' ; s a common narrative. But it was never, it never felt like a huge family secret. It' ; s just something that I didn' ; t know to ask about and maybe my parents didn' ; t have any like any information and also felt like it was, it, there was a weird relationship to actually ask those questions. But you know I will say that Ben was always very outspoken about it and would speak at you know various public things and events about it, so it wasn' ; t, it never felt like it was a huge secret. It just didn' ; t feel like it was, it ever bubbled up to the surface naturally in any kind of conversation you know when we were having, having any kinda like family gatherings. But in, in... I was in junior high school. I think it was seventh or eighth grade? And, yeah, I think it was a history teacher. He... Yeah he was very interested in the fact that we were Japanese and that we were living in, you know the ' ; burbs of Chicago. Anna Takada: Where did you go to junior high? Jason Matsumoto: Wilmette Junior High School. And, you know, he just asked me this question, like " ; Hey, do you, does your family have any connection to this history?" ; And through that, you know we had, I asked my mom. You know I don' ; t remember this exactly, but I came home from school and was like, " ; Hey, my history teacher asked me about our family history. Do you know anything about this?" ; And then eventually led to my grandfather doing like a presentation at, at my school. And you know, I think when he retells the story, he always retells it as though he was coming to speak to just my single class, but they ended up, the school and this teacher ended up creating like an entire like school assembly around it, so he got very nervous and he, I think he holds it against me in a way like, " ; Hey, why' ; d you put me out there?" ; Yeah. But you know he, he, I think that just goes to show like he' ; s, he was willing to go out and speak about his experiences and talk about them. And I think through that, that got me like slightly interested. You know, just like, " ; Hmm it' ; s, it' ; s interesting to, to see like a school kind of organize a thing, like a full school assembly around like my grandfather' ; s story. There must be something more to that." ; But I, I don' ; t feel like I got super invested in you know working in this history or like learning more about it for a very long time after that, still. You know, I think it was something that was like, " ; Okay, that' ; s interesting. Maybe there' ; s something behind that," ; and maybe it like stuck in the back of my mind, but it wasn' ; t like I became like a social justice warrior from that you know, from that like seventh or eighth grade class you know? Anna Takada: But it does seem like that was kind of a moment where you understood that this was your, your family' ; s history. Jason Matsumoto: Totally a pivotal moment in like my understanding of, that, that something about that was very important. Yeah. Anna Takada: So, the next question I wanted to ask is just about you know, if there were any particular family stories or maybe memories that you have heard about from your family about their experiences in camp. I just, you know ' ; cause family folklore is like always a big thing. So I' ; m just wondering if, if there were things either you know, from a younger age or later in life that you heard of about or heard repeated in your family about their experiences? Jason Matsumoto: Yeah, so one th-- so one story that my grandfather on my, on my father' ; s side used to always tell us, I mean I think he... He had a very difficult life because as a Kibei, he came back to the States and then you know he was, he was-- like a lot of his formative years like learning language and kinda how to communicate were in Japan and in Japanese, and so he, I think he had this like bitterness about kind of what that felt like to come back and to be like maybe six-- four, five, or six years older than like the people that he was actually in class with because he, his English skills were like almost nonexistent when he came back, and so-- Anna Takada: Do you know when he came back? Jason Matsumoto: Um, no. Anna Takada: Like either age within his life or actually years? Jason Matsumoto: I think it was like sixth or seventh grade, maybe? Anna Takada: Okay. Jason Matsumoto: Or maybe fourth or fifth grade. Anna Takada: And was that before the war? Jason Matsumoto: That was before the war, yeah. So I think he always felt like, outcasted from the very beginning. And this is not necessarily in camp ' ; cause he didn' ; t go to camp, but when he was serving for the military, he remembers, you know, I think there was... One of the Roosevelt family members was visiting this base. I think it was, I think it was Eleanor Roosevelt, but it might have been one of the kids. I don' ; t think it was the president. And, they, they got all the... All the soldiers you know were obviously getting ready. It was a very exciting moment, like you know a political leader' ; s coming to kind of like rally the troops and you know everybody' ; s you know like getting dressed and you know putting their best on. And they ended up funneling all the Japanese Americans into this like barrack and they locked it or something. It was a mess hall or a barrack and they locked it because of you know, just, just distrust, right? And I think there' ; s like, there' ; s a corroborating story about this and I think, I think JANM did a whole thing and they, they found some of the guys who were there to come and talk about this and I think it happened in Kansas? My grandfather always used, used to tell me that it happened in Minnesota, but I think it actually happened when he was on base in Kansas and he kinda remembers that as like you know just a complete blow to like what it meant-- Maria Pimentel: Sorry, can you repeat that? What you were saying about your grandfather? Jason Matsumoto: Yeah. Maria Pimentel: Realizing what happened, you know-- Jason Matsumoto: Yeah, sure. So you know these, the, the Japanese American unit was kind of funneled off into a separate part of the base and he recalls, this is, this is my grandfather on my father' ; s side, he recalls that barrack or that like mess hall or whatever being locked as a way to protect whoever this was, like the, one of the Roosevelts, from you know, the Japanese Americans who, who they thought could, could maybe try to like, I don' ; t know, attack that person? And I think for him, somebody who just felt completely outcasted from like a very young age, and you know I think entering military service for him was a way to prove loyalty. And then like in that singular moment of like being locked up and distrusted when somebody who' ; s coming to like rally the troops from like a very high political stance, it, it, it kind of embodied you know the, the conflict of like what that must have felt. I mean, for me to imagine what that must have felt like, but for him to, to be like, " ; I' ; m, I' ; m doing all the right things. I' ; m, I' ; m trying to, to serve my country," ; right? But like at, at every turn, even like something as simple as like a visit from one of the Roosevelts, we can' ; t even participate in that. So that' ; s one of the stories that he used to always tell me. And then, I think maybe on a lighter note, you know how we always talk about how like we can' ; t drink a lot of beer, or a lot of whatever. His, his, his nickname in, in the Army was " ; One-Can Matsumoto" ; . Yeah. Or no, no, sorry, " ; Half-Can Matsumoto" ; . (Laughs). So I get my drinking abilities from him. Yeah, and so that' ; s always one that kind of like comes to mind. On, on the other side of my family, you know I did this like oral history with my, with Kiyo and Ben Chikaraishi a few years ago and it was really great ' ; cause we just got to ask a bunch of questions and kind of hear more about their life, and it gave us an excuse to like ask very specific questions, and... One thing that my-- It, it' ; s always interesting to hear how people meet, you know? And you know, one thing that my grandfather and grandmother told us about how like they met was, so my grandmother was, she lived in, in Rohwer, like one of the barracks that was close to the hospital. And so my grandfather would have to kind of walk past... Was that right, or is it the other way around? Anyways, he, he, he was always, he was always attracted by her long legs. (Laughs) And he' ; d always tell me like, this is like really kind of mean, but he' ; d always tell me, he' ; s like, " ; It wasn' ; t like the other Japanese American girls who had like you know, kind of like short stubby legs, you know? She had long legs, you know?" ; And it was just, it' ; s, I think, for me, it' ; s funny to kind of like think about them as like a romantic, like in some kind of romantic relationship, because you get so caught up in like these, like the facts and like the, the terrible aspects, and-- But like you know these people are just like 18- to 20-year olds who are, have the same kind of like romantic feelings, and they' ; re just trying to like find, find and make, make the situation normal for themselves. So like, you know comments like that were really hilarious, and just a good reminder of like, you know they' ; re just, they' ; re just, just kids who are trying to figure it out. Just recently, too, like my... So, there' ; s that like, there' ; s that Rohwer Pilgrimage that, that' ; s starting to happen every year, and they' ; ve been distributing old like publications from, I don' ; t know what it' ; s called, but like whatever publication was, was being created as like a newspaper in the camp at Rohwer. And there was this, there was this article about my grandfather who played baseball you know in camp, and it' ; s a hilarious article about how the bespectacled Chikarai-- Ben Chikaraishi hits like a three run homer, or something like that. And, and it' ; s just really like th- those moments where you just like get a glimpse of what, what maybe like the more positive side of like living in those places was, and just like normal daily life. And I actually got to like, I talked to him maybe a week ago and I was like, " ; Hey, and so I read this article" ; and there' ; s all these names that are in this article who are like his teammates. And so I was, I' ; m, I' ; m, I' ; m reading names, and he' ; s just like kind of sitting there kind of like smiling and thinking about... I guess all those guys played baseball together in Stockton, so this is like even pre-war. They kind of like kept this, this unit and this team you know together, and like when there was a baseball you know league created in camp, like they, they again, formed a team. So it' ; s, it' ; s kind of like a cool moment where like you see like... We think of these, these incarceration sites as like just a, just a huge aggregation of people, but they have all these little cliques and these, these, these like social, kind of groups that I think remained and existed, throughout both like coming into the incarceration, but then also where people resettled too. Anna Takada: Mm-hmm. On that note, do you know about when, when family members left camp and, and where folks ended up? Jason Matsumoto: Yeah, I don' ; t know, I don' ; t know years like really well. I know that... So, again, I know that Ben, my grandfather on my, my mom' ; s side, he left pretty early. I think he, he was able to find a job in Chicago as a way out. So he left... Three... Yeah, I think like as early as ' ; 43? And he left on July 4th, of, of, of all dates. He tells a really great story that I think-- about his departure date that I think is like really telling for like you know, America, and kind of like what was happening. Maybe both like back then, but also today, just in, in terms of how we order ourselves by different characteristics. And he, you know he' ; s, he' ; s been incarcer-- Like, so he' ; s been removed from his home in California, brought to a prison in the middle of Arkansas, where they' ; re like the only like non-white and non-Black people, like in, probably in the state. And he gets released on you know, Independence Day, the 4th of July, and he gets on a bus. And it' ; s like the segregated south, so there' ; s white people in the front and Black people in the back. And, I can never tell the story the way he tells it, ' ; cause he' ; s got like, he uses the word " ; Gee" ; a lot, like, " ; Gee, what do I do?" ; you know? But he, so he was like, " ; Well, I just, you know I was just imprisoned by the government for the past like few years, and I must be like you know, in the back with, with the Black people. So he goes to the back and he sits down, and the bus driver then stops the bus and is like, " ; Hey, what are you doing back there? You don' ; t belong back there." ; And so he was like, " ; Well, what do I do? You know, like where do I belong?" ; And so he ended up like finding a seat like literally kind of in like the, the color spectrum of the bus right? So he found a seat right in between the Black and white sections. And I think that, he says that that was one of the first times that he realized, you know, despite what Japanese Americans had gone through, being imprisoned and losing all their property and possessions, they were still considered to be above Black Americans, and they were still considered to be ' ; better than' ; , or, or you know whatever. They were still considered to be more accepted and more acceptable than Black people, you know in that time. And he was like, " ; Wow, that' ; s, that' ; s like a really..." ; It, it was interesting backdrop in context for him to think-- Maria Pimentel: Sorry, can I pause you? I can hear what they' ; re saying outside. Anna Takada: Oh, okay. Jason Matsumoto: Okay. Anna Takada: Sorry about that. Maria Pimentel: Sorry about that. Jason Matsumoto: That' ; s cool. This story is like well documented. (laughs) Anna Takada: I, I have it from him as well. Jason Matsumoto: Yeah, totally. Did he use, did he say gee a lot? " ; Gee, where do I sit?" ; I, he, always says that. Anna Takada: There' ; s a good chance. Maria Pimentel: Sorry, I can hear you with the microphone. I can hear you. Anna Takada: Oh. We' ; re filming something right now, do you guys ... Maria Pimentel: Oh, if you turn on the sound, then you won' ; t be able to shoot. Anna Takada: Okay. Sorry about that. Thank you-- And resettling. So your grandfather left in ' ; 43 to Chicago. Jason Matsumoto: Mm-hmm. I think my grandmother left the year after that. I don' ; t know, I don' ; t know when my grandfather was, either discharged or left the Army to come to Chicago. I don' ; t really know when my grandmother, on my father' ; s side, left either. Anna Takada: But everybody went to Chicago? Jason Matsumoto: Everybody went to Chicago. Yeah. Anna Takada: Do you know where folks ended up in Chicago, or what they were doing? Jason Matsumoto: So I know that, so on my dad' ; s side, I don' ; t know where they started off, but they did, like eventually, and nobody knows if they owned it or just managed it, but they, they had, they were running a place called the Windsor Hotel, which was like a boarding house on, somewhere on Clark Street. I just found that out from like a completely random letter that like my mom just showed me. But, so I' ; m going to try to dig more into that because it' ; s like fascinating. And, and then they, this is the, sorry, this is my father' ; s mother' ; s family. So the Yamamotos. Yeah. I also asked because it was curious to me, I didn' ; t think they had a lot of money. Like they weren' ; t... My grandmother, so my grandmother on my dad' ; s side, her father was a truck driver back in, back in California. So he didn' ; t, you know he was like a truck driver for like produce, he didn' ; t have a ton of money, so I' ; m not really sure how they were able to afford either like renting the entire Windsor Hotel and like running it, or purchasing it. But I know that a lot of my, a lot of that family lived, were like tenants. So I think they filled it out with both their own family and then plus you know renting it out to people, probably other Japanese Americans who were coming to Chicago. And then, they eventually bought a place on Racine, which was also like a larger building. I think it was South Racine, like on a larger building that, that also housed some family members and some other folks, so property game. And then my, my grandfather on my mom' ; s side started off on the-- Anna Takada: Sorry, Jason. Jason Matsumoto: We' ; re good. Anna Takada: I' ; m so sorry, but I just got to start doing this at night. Maria Pimentel: Yeah, last time it was so... No one interrupted... Jason Matsumoto: He remembers like these like streets. Yeah, it was funny, we were doing this like taiko show maybe like five or six years ago. UChicago, and we were going to do it at the International House. And then like I don' ; t know, later on I found out that both my grandparents like served food at the International House on Chicago. Sorry, at, at, at the, at the University of Chicago. So I think that was like maybe a, a job that people were able to pick up. Yeah. So they... And then after Ben and Kiyo got married, they were one of, one of the, one of the first families, I think, to kind of move to the suburbs, and they ended up moving to Morton Grove. Anna Takada: And you said that' ; s where your mom was born? Jason Matsumoto: Mm-hmm. Anna Takada: Did your dad' ; s family stay on the North Side? Jason Matsumoto: Yeah, so my f- my dad grew up on Hudson, like right by the temple, right by the Midwest Buddhist Temple. So they were kind of in that community, near like, in and around Lincoln Park and Old Town. Anna Takada: And so let' ; s see, as far as what you' ; ve heard from your family, or know of your family' ; s history, was resettlement ever something that was kind of talked about, or did you ever get information or stories about moving to Chicago from the camp? Jason Matsumoto: Yeah I mean not... So, my grandfather on my mom' ; s side, Ben, he would always talk about the housing situation, and how difficult it was to, I think, first, you know just even find housing that, that would be consistent and clean. And yeah I--, besides kind of the challenges of housing, not much. Like I know a little bit about how my grandmother and her sister, on my dad' ; s side, they were domestics. And I just found out that they had like changed their names to be like very American names. Like I, I can' ; t remember what it was, but it was like, like Lucy or something like super kind of generic names they had changed. And I' ; m not sure if it was in order to work as a domestic, or kind of in order to maybe just like fit in, or assimilate. But they never really... you know I think we all have come to understand that resettlement, in a way, was chapter three, and like the hardest part. But I didn' ; t get a lot of like individual or like kind of family stories about how difficult that was. Yeah. You know I know my grandfather was like very active, this is my grandfather on my, my mom' ; s side, was very active in trying to like help rebuild the community. So he was, I guess, in a way, kind of dedicated to that. Both like through his profession, he, he eventually became an optometrist and was like, became a very central figure to the community through his work, and he also, he dedicated so much time to these like social organizations. Like the sports leagues, like CNAA, and also the temple. So I know that, in a way, he was, he was like very dedicated to trying to figure out like things, or activities, or institutions for people to become a part of, or to do. And some of that, you know like he doesn' ; t talk about it too often, but like you know like when I ask him about the reason why, like there' ; s often mention of like you know there' ; s just like a lost generation of people that don' ; t have anything to do, or like no community, as they, they move from you know like maybe a very strong community, from what they knew in Stockton, California, or wherever, on the West Coast, to coming to a place where they h- they literally had to live in the same place and build you know relationships and communities, to a place like Chicago where you can just get lost in the sea of things. And you know like the risk of like young people getting tied up in whatever. I think he had like a strong interest in trying to create some semblance of a community here. Maria Pimentel: Sorry, I' ; m going to possibly stop. I' ; m going to, since they' ; re talking, I' ; m going to move the mic a little bit. Anna Takada: To start, would you be able to tell me about, ' ; cause like we' ; re really interested in identity here in this part, but like when you were growing up, and then your upbringing in the Chicagoland area, in what ways were you connected to your Japanese heritage, or, or you know family heritage? Jason Matsumoto: Yeah, I think the strongest connection to family, or maybe some, some idea, like without really knowing it or thinking about it intentionally, of, of the community was through the Midwest Buddhist Temple. You know I grew up in a place that... Wilmette, did not have like a large Japanese American population, or even Asian American population, or any population outside of just you know, like white American, right? And so that was, I think, the strongest connection to the community. Was every Sunday we would go and you know like I' ; d just be like hanging out with my classmates throughout the week, and on Saturday, like just friends from the neigh-- from, from Wilmette, and then... that looked very white and American. And then we would go on, once a week, on Sunday, to the temple, and that would be all my cousins and my family, and like the, the larger... and all, all my grandparents and all their friends. So just a one day blast of the community, right? And yeah, I think that' ; s kind of what that represented to me without, you know I wasn' ; t like acknowledging it or like aware of it really, but that' ; s, when you look back on it, that' ; s what was happening, like that was the connection to the community. Maria Pimentel: Sorry, I can do something really quick. Anna Takada: I' ; m so sorry! Jason Matsumoto: Okay. Maria Pimentel: Okay. Good. Anna Takada: So attending temple on Sundays was a big connection... Jason Matsumoto: Mhmm. Anna Takada: Were there other ways that you were involved with the community? Jason Matsumoto: Yeah, I mean, I think-- There was... So when I was growing up I always played taiko, which I think, in this kind of weird way, like again, I never thought of it this deeply when I was like a young kid, but that was certainly something that kept me connected to something that was Japanese, or felt Japanese, or Japanese American. And, I also did, did kendo for a little while with my cousin. And again, so you know I think that that' ; s like... I, I don' ; t know whose idea that was, like if it was my parents' ; , or my cousin' ; s parents' ; , or my grandfather' ; s, but you know it was interesting. I do remember my grandmother giving us rides there. So maybe there was some influence from, you know my grandfather doing kendo like a long time ago. He' ; s like, " ; Hey, you should do this thing." ; So yeah, there was like you know, pockets and like moments where certainly there was some connection back to you know, like the community, and kind of these activities that, that you can call Japanese or Japanese American. Yeah. Anna Takada: Growing up, did your family speak any Japanese at all? Jason Matsumoto: No, my, my parents, not at all. And my grandparents, very rarely. You know they would, on my mother' ; s side, they would talk about how they, they knew very old-style Japanese. But then on my father' ; s side, my, you know ' ; cause my fath-- my father' ; s father was a Kibei, so he, he was the only person with a really deep accent when he spoke English, almost to the point where you couldn' ; t... sometimes you couldn' ; t understand what he was saying. And he just wouldn' ; t talk very much. And so yeah, there was li--, there was no, there was no like learning, or, I mean there were just a few words, I think, that like many families heard. Like urusai, like, " ; You' ; re loud," ; or, you know like " ; Stop that," ; stuff like that. So just these very, very sparse, very sparsely used. And I think our parents passed it... Like my, my parents passed it on based on what their parents would say to them in Japanese. Yeah, but besides that there was, there was really no, no connection to the language. Anna Takada: And, growing up in Wilmette, you mentioned that it was predominantly white. Did you, did you ever experience any kind of discrimination or... like growing up? Jason Matsumoto: I think, overtly, like there were, there, there' ; s a few moments I can remember... It was, it was really interesting. My cousins, who had grown up kind of in a lot of different places but were living in California at that time, we were at a Blockbuster here. Blockbuster, so, yeah, that, that dates it, right? We were at a Blockbuster here, when, maybe I was like nine or 10 years old, and my cousins were also here from the West Coast. And, this kid, we were leaving the store and this white kid like said something, like, he did the eye, like the eye? (gestures) Said, " ; Chink," ; or something like that, and I had no idea what was going on. I was just very oblivious to like, " ; What is racism?" ; Or like, " ; What does it mean to be like you know, overtly, you know like called some name?" ; And, but, but my cousin, who was I think one year older than me, and again, I think maybe because he like grew up in like a more predominantly Asian setting, like he was like livid and wanted to fight this kid. And my mom was like, " ; No, let' ; s not fight him." ; You know so it was just this, this moment where like I had to think, I, I didn' ; t know what was happening, and I had to think about like what that meant. And watching my cousin like get so angry about it, made me, it was kind of like one of those moments where you' ; re like, it made you think a little bit deeper about what the situation was. Yeah. But I don' ; t really remember a lot of overtly racist things, you know like, thinking about like systemic oppression and things like that. I' ; m sure there' ; s plenty of stuff happening in Wilmette, and through like the school systems, and all that stuff, but I never felt like, you know I had like a group of friends and I never felt like it was like, I was super different in any way. Yeah. Anna Takada: And-- Excuse me. You mentioned that, you know like, even from a young age you had plenty of connections with, with the Japanese American community in Chicago and this, this heritage, but you weren' ; t totally aware or thinking about it from like an identity lens. Like, " ; This is my personal identity." ; So at, at what point did you... Like I guess, how would you like describe the, the process of your own like personal identity development? Jason Matsumoto: Sure, yeah. I should also mention, too, that I was part of the youth group at here at, at JASC, right? And there was, there was a time in which we, there was a youth group. I remember there was a woman named Mayumi Willgerodt that was leading it. I think with her husband, and again, like I never thought of these things in any deep way at the time. It was like, " ; Oh, cool, it' ; s a thing with people my age. Mostly my cousins and some people that like go to MBT, and let' ; s do this, let' ; s hang out." ; Anna Takada: So that was just a social, what was the youth group? Jason Matsumoto: I think it was just social. I' ; m sure there was more to it, but I, I didn' ; t really engage like enough to be, to think about identity, you know? I think I was just like... Yeah, in a lot of ways, just like maybe like the way that I thought about identity was that I was always trying to fit in, in the place that... Like at New Trier High School, you know like in Wilmette, like with my group of white friends. Like, maybe that was the way that I was engaging with it, by just trying to like, kind of be accepted into that, but I never, it, it never occurred to me that like working towards a specific identity-- Maria Pimentel: Sorry. [inaudible 00:58:05] do that. Jason Matsumoto: Yeah. You know, there' ; s these big taiko conferences in LA where, in, like in the early years it was predominantly Japanese American people. And I think to see a lot of people that look like you, who are older than you, who you can kind of, kind of look up to and aspire to, and see them in a, in a massive group like that, like you know, talking about whatever they' ; re talking about, but just being normal people and like existing, that could have been influential. But as I was deciding on going to college, I was like, " ; Well, it' ; s probably really important for me to like engage in a place that has more Asian people, you know just generally. Like I, like I wonder what that would feel like." ; You know? And so I, I remember going, like that as like a pretty big decision point. That, and I think, in a way, through taiko too, ' ; cause I was much more invested in taiko, and getting better at taiko by that time, like in junior, senior year of high school. And, and so that was also a big decision, like, there needs to be a vibrant taiko community wherever I go to college, because I want to play. And I remember going to, I think it was like a 1999 taiko conference where there was a group in Seattle who was like, they were all my age, they were all Japanese American, and they were, they were good. And I was like, " ; Oh, I want to be part of that group." ; You know? And so, I think that was also very influential in my decision to go to Seattle specifically, where there was a vibrant Japanese American community, there was like four or five different taiko groups that were really good. The one that I wanted to get into, I did get into. And, yeah, and then I think, from there, you know like I was in... At, at Univers-- sorry, University of Washington, I had no idea, like there was a guy... So like I was, I was in like the business school, right? But I could take electives, and so my friend and I, we were like, " ; Oh, we should do something, like Asian American related." ; Just, you know " ; We' ; re both like Asian Amer--" ; He was from a completely different place, like half-Japanese, half-Chinese, from Hawaii, like v-very different. Like I don' ; t think a direct connection to the incarceration. But the person who was teaching that class was, I think it was a class about Japanese American incarceration specifically, I think. Yeah, it wasn' ; t an intro class. But the person who was teaching it was Dr. Tetsuden Kashima. Yeah, and I had no idea who this guy was, but I' ; ve come to realize now, through the work that I do, he' ; s like a big shot! You know? And he was like relentless on me specifically. I was like, " ; Is this, is this allowed? Like can you do this as like a professor?" ; He was like, " ; No. Whatever you' ; re doing, don' ; t do that project. Do this project." ; And he, and he made me like interview my grandfather ' ; cause he found out that my grandfather' ; s father had been picked up by the FBI. And he was like, and I think, at that time, he was doing a lot of work around that particular part of the history. And so he was like, " ; Go back. Like you cannot do any project, but this project. Here, here' ; s your project." ; You know? And like I was like, " ; All these other people aren' ; t doing anything. They' ; re just doing like, you know like two page papers." ; And I was like pushing back really hard. I didn' ; t understand why he was pushing me so, so hard to do this project. And he had me interview Ben Chikaraishi about his grandfather. And so I learned a lot about the Department of Justice camps, and kind of the difference between those and the internment camps. And I think that was an-another like one of those milestone moments, like very specific towards the incarceration story, that it was a, a pivot to be like, " ; Okay, this is, yeah this is like, it' ; s even within, like, the history is even within my own family." ; Like, " ; This guy is super interested in this particular thing, like why is he so interested? And why is he making my life so much harder? Like I thought this was just a random elective that I was going to take to like get more credits." ; You know? And that was, that was still my mentality, even like in college, at that time it wasn' ; t like an important thing to me to be like, I need to learn, learn about my family history, I need to learn about all this stuff, I need to understand what happened to Japanese Americans, like none of that was like really like right in front of me or like driving me to kind of like learn that. Yeah. So, you know I think then like for me like, from an identity perspective, I was like very much, I think, from the time that my father, my dad was like, " ; Hey, like why you have all this Japanese stuff in your room?" ; Like from that moment, to going to college, specifically because I wanted to be more involved or like surrounded by an Asian American community. And it was funny, I remember like the first few years I would like hang out with these people that were like really into like, I don' ; t know, I don' ; t want to like categorize things, but like you know very like I don' ; t know like shooting pool and going to like cool dance clubs and like driving like really fast, fancy cars, like... And I was like, " ; This, I don' ; t know, this, this, is this what being Asian is, like this feels really weird to me." ; You know? So like I was always on this like kind of, I think, without knowing it, on some kind of identity search, and so I... I was like, I started like dating some girl from, from Japan, you know? And I went, I went to live in Japan for a year during college to like, you know like, this doesn' ; t like... " ; Seattle feels different and cool, and there' ; s more Asians, but like it' ; s not... I don' ; t know, it' ; s not me." ; You know? So I was like, " ; Maybe I need to go back to Japan." ; So like you know, my junior year I, I like, I went to Tokyo and, and studied abroad for two years.. --or sorry, for one year, and I think it was like one more chapter in trying to figure out who I was, right? Like, maybe if I go here and just like invest in it, just you know completely like submerge myself in the culture, and the language, and the people, and the food, and you know everything, right? Like maybe that would, will make me feel more comfortable. And that was great, you know I felt like I learned a little bit about like, some of my family, like my grandparents and some of their like intricacies and ticks, you know? Like oh yeah, that' ; s, that feels familiar, like all these different things. But like, I mean culturally it was like a complete-- It was like, if you came here to, to feel more comfortable, I think the end result was that you realized that you are something completely different. You are, you' ; re very, very American, and you think differently, and you act differently, and you live differently, and you even dress differently, and you, you know, everything about you is different. But you know like another like checkbox in like the ' ; Jason Matsumoto journey of self-identity' ; right? You know, I, I joined clubs like the shamisen, like the, the traditional music club, you know shamisen, koto, fue, stuff like that, and I met my family out there. I got to speak to my... So, I had mentioned earlier that my grandfather on my mom' ; s side, yeah, my grandfather on my mom' ; s side, his brother was left in Japan, in Hiroshima, and when I was living in Japan his wife was still living, so I got to speak to her. And like, at that point it was like maybe nine to ten months into my trip to Japan, and so my Japanese was pretty decent so I could actually have a conversation with her. And she told me about... They lived in this valley in Hiroshima, and they, they lived kind of like-- Sorry, Hiroshima is a valley and they, they lived a little bit further away from like the city center, and so when the city center was bombed, you know with the nuclear bomb, basically every single person who wasn' ; t dead or like, had skin just melting off their bones, became nurses and like housing for those people who were just like directly attacked. And so she, she painted this picture for me, not that she was trying to, we were just having a conversation about what it was like to be in Hiroshima during that bombing, and it was like an, it was such an unreal moment to listen to this woman, who I assume was maybe like a few years older than my grandfather, to kind of know a little bit about his experience, but then to hear about what she had to go through during the war, right? Like literally, she would, she was saying that they were just truckloads of people being... you know ' ; cause she wasn' ; t directly affected by like the impact, of course, I' ; m sure like radiation has like you know affected her, but at that time she was still healthy and could, and could do things, and there was just these bodies that would be pulled into their house with like skin just like literally melting off their face and their bones, and they were trying to figure out how to just, just take care of these people. You know? And so it was just this unreal moment to like sit there and talk to somebody who' ; s my family, right? Who sat in a, in a position to like see what was happening on the other side of the war. Yeah. So that was kind of an unreal moment, and I think, again, just like a, just like a, just like a milestone in like understanding like, the, the, the family' ; s history. Anna Takada: Thank you for sharing all that. So, another thing that I wanted to be sure to talk to you about, or talk to you about was, you know, of course as far as your personal career you made a big shift in, you know the field you' ; re involved in. But I' ; m wondering if you can just share with me a little bit, just for context, maybe like what you had been doing professionally, what the shift was, explaining the shift, and, and then maybe getting into some of the reasons why you made that decision. Jason Matsumoto: Yeah. Yeah, when I got back to Chicago after college I-- Anna Takada: What year was that? Jason Matsumoto: That was, I guess it was 2005? Or ' ; 06. Yeah, 2005 or ' ; 06. I actually played, I spent a year like living at my parents' ; house and playing with Tsukasa Taiko for a little while, and trying to like make that-- trying to figure out how to make that like work by only playing taiko. And I think I was just like, way too naive and didn' ; t understand how to like, you know, structure a day, and like do, and like you know, create opportunities that were not like... that were more freelance, you know? That I think artists who are starting out have to figure out. So I went like, you know, I think in a lot of ways I was, I was pushed, not, not pushed, but there was, there was like, there was some, I, I wouldn' ; t call it pressure, but there was like some... Success, like in a way, looked like a certain path, right? For me. And I went to business school, and so I, I' ; ve, I always felt like I need to figure out how to like work in corporate America, and like do that, and that' ; s, that' ; s the thing I' ; m going to do. And my father, was like, you know he made it very high up in corporate America, became like a CIO of a company, right? So like there was like a model for that. And so I went into like the financial field, and I spent like a good decade, kind of floating around and doing things in like the financial derivative sector at places like the Chicago Board of Trade and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. And yeah, I, I did that, and I like, I, I worked my ass off, and like you know, tried really hard and, and you know got like to a, a very decent level for like what, for like, the time I had spent, you know doing that work. And just, I think in a way I like, proved to myself that, like, " ; Oh yeah, okay, this is like, this isn' ; t that like, this is doable." ; You know? And, but there was like always something kind of like pulling at me, to like, there was something like missing, I guess, and I, it' ; s, it' ; s... And it kind of all comes back to taiko. Like I was, we were playing taiko at Ginza, right? Like the festival at the Midwest Buddhist Temple, and a friend of mine, he had, he had brought like a few of his friends to the show, and one of those friends was this guy named Eugene Park, and he was a filmmaker working in like kind of like experimental film specifically around Asian American identity. And we finished that show at like, on the Ginza stage, and Eugene came back and was like, " ; Hey, you know I' ; m doing this experimental film, it' ; s about this thing," ; which was Asian American identity, like what it means to be American and the experiences of that when you' ; re not white, and he was like, " ; I' ; m looking for some music that' ; s like, kind of blends this idea between like you know like maybe s-some semblance of like, traditional music, or like a lineage to a different culture, but then also like how do you meld and, and create like a new sound from that?" ; And so he asked me to do the soundtrack for the film, and we did that project, and then once we finished that he was like, " ; I' ; ve got this script, you know, it' ; s a script about this Japanese American guy who owns a store and then has to..." ; Or no, it was a different script, but it was, it was, it was effectively the, it was " ; The Orange Story" ; in like a very early format, and it was about the incarceration. And he just said, " ; You know I' ; ve, I tried to launch this project here in, in, in Chicago but I just don' ; t have any connection to the community, would you come on board and kind of help me figure out how to like engage with the community that you' ; re a part of?" ; And it was really attractive to me. So, so I was still working at the time, and I-- At, in, at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, but we started working on this project together, and it, it, it grew into something that was much bigger. We got the funding from the National Park Service grant that moved the film from like a $5,000 project that was like funded by all of our parents, to a $200,000 project that now had like this whole educational component to it, and it had like a whole like academic team to it. And so I credit that, you know like, my meeting Eugene and kind of like what his artistic vision was, and then also like, us working on this, this project, which became " ; The Orange Story" ; , I credit that as like kind of the seedling to what eventually became like what I' ; m doing today, right? So maybe like three or four years after that project I had been taking all my days, all my vacation days from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, to either go play taiko, or to go out and like present the film, you know somewhere around the country, and I was like, " ; Wow, this is, this is like a very viable option, and it feels really good, you know?" ; Despite like the money being very, very different and like the lifestyle being very different. And it took me two years to kind of like, think through that. I think when you' ; re on a particular track, right, especially when you get kind of like deep into the weeds of like corporate America, it' ; s, it' ; s really difficult to, to figure out how to separate yourself. It' ; s very good at like, it' ; s a very good mousetrap, right? Like the benefits, and like the li-- and you know, all these different things. And it took me a long time, but in 20, was it 2017? In 2017, in the summer of 2017, I left that, you know the financial derivative world and path, and then just completely cut over to start like putting all my time into things like building this film company. That' ; s... It' ; s a nonprofit, and it' ; s, it' ; s based, it' ; s mission is to increase diversity and awareness around these untold stories from different communities, the Japanese American story being one of them. And I think in a way like, the, " ; The Orange Story" ; , and then these other projects that we' ; re doing around the Japanese American community, really inform what the mission and model of the, of the company is, because we' ; re trying to create narrative films that might not have like you know, star power, or might not like, end up in Hollywood, but create in some way some empathic understanding and some emotional understanding of somebody else' ; s story, and then combining that with the right set of academics and educators and curriculum developers to try, try to leverage the platform of like popular media to educate people about whatever it is, social change, or communities of color, or history that' ; s, that' ; s untold. Anna Takada: Quickly, what year was the, what year did you meet Eugene, and what year was " ; The Orange Story" ; project completed? Jason Matsumoto: I' ; m probably going to get this wrong, but I think 2013 was the year I met Eugene. We finished " ; The Orange Story" ; project in 2016, I think we probably started it like late-- early 2015, and then we finished it like late 2016. Yeah, ' ; cause then we went out and we did the tour with it on the 75th anniversary of EO 9066, which was 2017. Yeah. Anna Takada: So that, I mean like you, you mentioned it was quite a drastic change to go from working in finance and to... I mean here, you know for the sake of this interview focus on Full Spectrum, but... Yeah, you mentioned that it, you know it felt good to be doing taiko and to be working on these Full Spectrum projects. Can you say a little bit more about you know why you were, why you eventually got to that decision? Jason Matsumoto: Yeah, I mean I think, so I think like when I look back there' ; s, there' ; s... Part of like the, the self identity discovery is like really trying to understand or like figure out what your individual values are, you know? And I think for a long time, especially when you' ; re in like finance and when you' ; re in trading, it' ; s very easy to get caught up into like, the goal here is to make money, that' ; s the goal. Like there' ; s, there' ; s nothing beyond that, right? Like, to be good at that, in that profession, it' ; s, it' ; s about figuring out how to make the most money, whether that' ; s in your salary, or whether that' ; s if, if you' ; re a trader that' ; s like, that' ; s the goal, right? And so like as, you know I think as I became more invested in doing this parallel path of like pushing this film out, which was " ; The Orange Story" ; , but still working at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, I would like go on these weekend trips to have these deep discussions about history and identity, and why, why the Japanese American incarceration matters today, and what' ; s happening politically, what' ; s happening socially, and then coming back into this world where-- Of like, of like high finance where you felt none of those things really mattered, right? Like nobody really cared about any of those things at the end of the day, right? I mean, I' ; m, I' ; m blanketing a whole company, so I know like there' ; s individuals in that company that, that are good people, and I still talk to them and I do care, but on the whole, right, like the deci-- the decisions they make are very economic. And I remember after the 2016 election there was like a number of things right, like everybody' ; s talking about, like we need diversity and inclusion at, at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, and I got really invested in working with this guy who was like, who was... He was like a big Black man working at CME, which is very rare, and he w-- and we would sit there, and we got put on a team together, and it was, it was one of the best things that happened ' ; cause we' ; d just sit there and talk about what the experiences were like, you know? Not being white and working in this place. And he was doing this project where he was mapping all of the senior leadership against like a, a race and, and identity chart, and we were doing percentages and like, you know what that looked like. And he was, and then we were talking to the D& ; I folks, the, the " ; Diversity and Inclusion" ; , I put that in quotes, right? People at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, and so many of their policies were like just completely like empty, and, and you know it just felt like a very corporate style of like checking the box to ensure that you' ; re good, you know like your brand image is good. And then I remember things like the, Trump' ; s immigration policy at the very outset of his administration. There were people on my team, there were people like on teams that I was on that were from those countries that were like stuck and couldn' ; t get back to work, and I was, I was good friends with people in Communications, and I was, I was, fairly high people, and I would like email them and say, " ; Hey, what are we doing about this? What are you going to do about this? Like are we, are we taking any kind of stance?" ; And they' ; re like, " ; No, we can' ; t do anything at this time." ; You know and it, it, it comes from a different place, right? Like it' ; s not their fault, it' ; s the board of directors and all these different institutions that, that are making these high level decisions. But you got to imagine, like I' ; m, I' ; m going through this stuff and listening to these answers, or like watching this stuff happen to humans you know, Monday through Friday. And then on like Saturday, Sunday I' ; m like flying to someplace to talk deeply about you know these, these things that I guess are more aligned with my own values, right? So that, that really started to kind of like tip the balance for me, and it made me, I think, expedite how I was thinking about, like, " ; Can I leave and still live? Or can I, can I leave and what' ; s going to happen to my 401k?" ; You know like all these different things about, " ; Will I personally survive?" ; became a little bit less important to-- and, and like maybe secondary to like, " ; Well what does it mean to continue to work here?" ; I don' ; t feel like, like when I look back I don' ; t feel like it' ; s much different, what, what I' ; m doing today versus there, like, I still really value the time there. Like I, I tell people all the time like, the number one skill I got working at, you know working in like a really kind of like high pressure, high stress environment of like finances, you know you walk in, you have to continuously walk into rooms full of very rich, very powerful white men, and then you have to walk out, as like a small Asian American person with what you want, and that skill goes a very long way no matter where you are. And, and I, I think when you compare the film industry to the financial industry, it' ; s, there' ; s a lot of parallels to like who has power and who has position and who has these different like decision rights, and also who has the money to fund these things. So, in a, in a strange way like I think five-- four and a half years into building this film company, those skills that I built you know like in 10 years of finance are coming in very handy to what we' ; re trying to do to like break down these barriers in the film industry. So I wouldn' ; t trade it for anything, and I think it' ; s like one of those things, it' ; s like, you just, it, it, it kind of like continues to go back to this identity thing where it' ; s like that was what I wanted to do, right? I wanted to work in a company and that' ; s what felt successful to me, you know? And I wanted like a certain lifestyle. But once I realized, like, I think once my values caught up, like my true values caught up and were like and were brought like more to the forefront through the work that I was doing with " ; The Orange Story" ; and, and through Full Spectrum, that helped to shape kind of my, my worldview and thinking today. And then now I' ; ll just say like, this podcast, " ; Seeing White" ; , c-changed it all! (laughs) Has completely shifted, like once again, like my worldview. And that' ; s like, it' ; s a joke, but I think that that' ; s like, I was very naive and I was very like, immature in the way I thought of the world, even like as a 35-year old, 34-year old, and I' ; m, I, I still feel that way. But I think once you' ; re introduced to the work that Full Spectrum' ; s doing, and the work that you' ; re doing, and the work that we' ; re collectively as a community doing, and you get deeper and deeper and deeper into that work, like, things start to shift in the way that you kind of understand the world, and I think that at least today, like the activities, like the, the places where I spend my time are much better aligned with what I believe in as a, as a, as a human. Anna Takada: Um...(tape cut) Jason Matsumoto: Effectively giving us a roadmap for the mistakes we' ; ve made in the past, and they' ; re very clear. Like I think when you look at things like the Japanese American incarceration, and you, and you, and you boil things down to like the very base of what was happening, right, it was economic anxiety and it was racism. And I go back to the story of my grandfather getting on that bus, like that' ; s how we structure our world, right? We understand our world through a series of very simplistic things, and it, it, it just continues to happen in, in every community' ; s history. You know like I, I joke about saying like white Americans, but like even within whiteness there' ; s like ethnic whiteness, and, and, and we' ; re using some, some characteristic of some person that' ; s completely arbitrary to make a decision about what should happen to them, or like what they should have access to. And history is important because you can see that pattern happen over and over and over again, and there' ; s ways to change that trajectory, but I think without engaging in those stories, that, that, where there' ; s like deep humanity, right, and real impacts to those decisions that are based on characteristics that might be arbitrary, if you don' ; t understand those, and you don' ; t follow through the kind of like the line of, of that impact on somebody' ; s life, the trauma, the access, their social mobility, right, then you can' ; t understand and you can' ; t fix those things. And I think that' ; s, that' ; s the essence of why historians care so much about history, and it' ; s the essence of why I now go to history conferences to, to present " ; The Orange Story" ; and talk about how we' ; re using this educational model, and you know shooting films about like historical moments that, that, that matter. That' ; s why me, Jason Matsumoto, who has never, like that has, like didn' ; t study history, you know business school, like not, not really engaged with even my own personal history, that' ; s why I' ; m going out now and talking about this stuff. Maria Pimentel: Can I ask something really quick? Jason Matsumoto: Yeah. Maria Pimentel: Why do you think that as a filmmaker, like a filmmaker, you-- and I' ; m including us, we' ; re able to tell these stories now, and maybe in a way that weren' ; t told before, why do you think that, from a perspective that' ; s, you' ; ve been in the business and doing this now, why do you think that now it' ; s-- Perhaps you know like there are more opportunities to see stories like the ones we' ; re doing, do our work, and then our documentary, and even having more people telling us their individual stories. Jason Matsumoto: I' ; m, I mean I, you know I think it' ; s, so I think there' ; s an opportunity to tell these stories, and there' ; s an appetite and interest to tell these stories because of like the larger political factors that, that dictate what' ; s happening in our world, right? Like there' ; s, there' ; s like, just at the broadest level there' ; s, there' ; s moves towards you know, authoritarianism, and there' ; s moves towards just continuing to bucket and make decisions about people and communities like at a very broad level like in the exact same way that that, that happened to Black people prior to civil rights, that happened to gay people and, and you know people from the LGBTQ community before there was any you know advocacy for that, right, to the Japanese Americans. And so, in a strange way, right like, the movement that, that is Donald Trump, and the movement that is, you know, Nigel Forage in the UK, and the movement that, that' ; s happening in like places like Hungary, like all that stuff forces everybody else to, to, to want to engage, and to-- Because you want to understand what' ; s happening. You know, and I think, I think the, the challenge for us, like as media makers, or people who are trying to, you know talk about our values as humans, and spread those values, is to figure out how to responsibly engage as many people as possible, especially people who disagree. That' ; s the challenge, right? Is, is-- because you can dig in and you can tell the same people that already agree with you over and over and over what you think the right thing to do is, through whatever kind of medium you' ; re doing, whether it' ; s an oral history, or whether it' ; s a documentary, or whether it' ; s a narrative film, or whether, whether it' ; s a podcast, but it doesn' ; t do anything unless you' ; re having, you' ; re opening up a conversation and having that conversation with people who like might disagree, or, or might have a different opinion. And I think that' ; s, that' ; s where I kind of like bang my head against the wall all the time to figure out like what, what can you do like responsibly, and what can you do in a way that will engage somebody like that? Anna Takada: I just want to mention, we, we' ; re getting to be at time, however there' ; s still a few things that I wanted to ask you. Jason Matsumoto: Yeah, sure. Anna Takada: So if that' ; s cool. So one thing that I want to be sure to ask is, so you know, I know that through... One of your current projects at Full Spectrum, you all are working on a narrative film about the resettlement experience of Japanese Americans in Chicago. Jason Matsumoto: Mhmm. Anna Takada: Can you explain why that particular story was something that you guys wanted to, to highlight and you know base this whole project around? Why, why resettlement? Jason Matsumoto: Yeah, I mean I think, so for me personally resettlement is important because it, it dictates the reason that I' ; m like, live, live in Chicago and I' ; m here, not dictates, but is, is kind of the factor, right? Like, all of my family choosing to resettle in Chicago, for whatever reason that was, is the reason that I' ; m here, and I think that like, I think fundamentally that' ; s, that' ; s very important to me personally. To the larger community, and to this, and to the narrative of the incarceration, I think we have, there' ; s many different levels to educating people about this history, right? One is that some people just don' ; t even know it happened or existed, the whole thing, so there' ; s like a level in which you need to educate people about that. But then there' ; s a deeper level where you want to expose and really offer the opportunity to, to learn and understand about every nuance and every moment in that history and Chicago resettlement or resettlement in general is, I think, an understudied component or chapter in that story of Japanese American incarceration. The more I' ; ve learned about it, the more I' ; ve realized that in a lot of ways, you know, I think losing all of your possessions at the outset of the incarceration, your land and your property was incredibly difficult. I mean, no part is not hard right? Living in a bar-- or a horse stall or a barrack. That' ; s not easy to do. But people who I' ; ve spoken to who went through that talk about how resettlement, like, you' ; re poor, you have nothing, right? And then you' ; re in a new city, you have no connections outside of the own, your own community and you' ; re being told not to create community. Like, in a lot of ways, people say that that' ; s, that was the hardest part, right? And so we' ; re studying, there' ; s so much history about kind of, the beginnings of, of the removal and what, what happened inside of these camps, but there' ; s not anything about... I' ; m not going to say that, there' ; s not anything. There' ; s, there' ; s less about what it was like to resettle, the struggles and the challenges, the economic factors, the, like institutional oppression and racism that they were facing now that they' ; re free again, right? I think the assimilation that was kind of being impressed upon them, like all these factors I think, in a way, create trauma. And I don' ; t think that people have had a chance within the community to really have a discussion or like a, or, have had a, an opportunity to, to kind of think about that and talk about that, and you know I think it, it plays out in the fact that our Nisei grandparents didn' ; t talk about this to our Sansei parents, which in turn didn' ; t talk about this to me and like my Yonsei counterparts, right? And I think all that has to do with, of course, the shame and like, you know whatever' ; s tied up, whatever emotions and feelings are tied up in the whole experience, even though that' ; s, you know we know that it, it was put upon them, there' ; s a way in which the resettlement part of this story can become like a very like freeing or kind of opening moment for, for the community, and so I think both like, getting that story out there for the people who went through it and getting that story out there, for the people who don' ; t know anything about this, equally important. Anna Takada: And in what ways... So I know that you' ; ve, you' ; ve also, you mentioned that you' ; ve been doing research on this particular historical moment within our community. In what ways do you, do you think that, this process of resettlement impacted, shaped, changed the community here in Chicago? Jason Matsumoto: Yeah, that' ; s, that' ; s a really good question. I don' ; t, you know, I think... I' ; ve heard statistics that like, there' ; s more interracial marriage of like primarily like Japanese American women marrying white men in Chicago than, than an-, than anywhere else. I don' ; t, I don' ; t know if, like I haven' ; t studied like you know the numbers or the trends, but I do think that there was, there was less of a concentration of Japanese Americans here than like that, that ended up going back to the West Coast. And I think that probably has an impact on like how close we are to our like cultural identity and going all the way back to Japan, like the language, the food, the, the general culture. And I don' ; t know. I mean I think, I think... Yeah, I don' ; t know. Anna Takada: Maybe if I' ; m re-- I' ; m thinking about reframing the question. I guess to think about it from a more personal perspective. Like do you, as a Yonsei who grew up in Chicago or the Chicagoland area, like if you, from what you know about resettlement and your family' ; s experiences, do you think there are any ways that like resettlement or maybe the legacy of it has like impacted or informed your own life at all? Jason Matsumoto: Yeah... Anna Takada: I know it' ; s a big question. Jason Matsumoto: No, I think... So... and these are all assumptions ' ; cause I' ; ve never spoken to my family about this, but I think there was a lot of like deep value in, in... Like so my father, for example, like, there were moments like when we were growing up where we' ; d be at the dinner table and I could tell my mom would be pissed off about something that happened at m-, at, at work for my dad, ' ; cause he told the story. And one of the phrases that I used to like hear a lot was like oh it' ; s just, like my dad would say, " ; Oh, but it' ; s, it' ; s fine. It' ; s just an old boys club." ; You know? And he was talking about things like, things that would happen to him at work, right? And he was like, especially as you moved up, right, I think you could see these like different structures of oppression and racism happening in these like massive corporations. But I always felt like the value of what it meant to be successful for my family at least, was you know, to move to the suburbs, to have, to have a nice house, and to have two cars and to work in a place like a, a massive corporation that, that you know like, you can continually move up in. And like, you know effectively it' ; s like the American dream, right? Like middle class family values, right? Like, and I think that, that in a way, like we lived in Wilmette, like we were the only, one of the only Asian American families there, and like I think not seeing other people that were like me, not engaging in like a deeper way in the community outside of just going to the temple once a week, all that stuff has an impact because you, I, I think as a, as a per-- we want to engage with communities that have shared, shared experiences and shared values. And something like the incarceration, I think, creates that maybe in an, in an artificial way, but it, it certainly creates that, that like type of shared experience that everybody has, right? And so there' ; s a, there' ; s maybe a need to engage with those communities to, to heal or whatever, right? And, but I think there, that like, in a way like, assimilating towards like white middle class culture brought us out of that, like brought, brought our family out of that as like maybe... I don' ; t know like maybe in places like Los Angeles or places where there' ; s like a much stronger community with like a physical presence they, they might have had, right? And I think that' ; s completely dependent on your individual family ' ; cause I know that there' ; s families in Chicago that did engage that way, but I' ; ve never spoken to my parents about that. But I, you know like even today, like as there' ; s, like even my mom who' ; s become like much more... Like she went to a rally, you know? Like the, the Women' ; s March. And it was, it was amazing to see. Like I never thought my mom would do something like that. But like even her and like the conversations that we' ; re having these days, are, they' ; re more willing to question the structures that are around them, like specifically like what it means to live in Wilmette, what it meant to move there, what it meant to like build a house there, what it meant to work in a structure that was like the, the, the old boys club, right? Like, they' ; re more willing to have those conversations. And even like I, you know I just learned that like my dad was like a long-haired freaking you know, like anti-war, like, never saw that side of him. Right? Like you just wonder like what, what caused him to like never talk to me about those kind of things. You know he was at that JASC Convention where that, that woman was killed you know? Like never, I' ; ve, I' ; ve never heard any of these. Or sorry, the, the JACL Convention where that woman was killed in Chicago, right? He was at that and like he was, he was like on the front lines of the, these like different movements. Like we never talked about that stuff, and you know, I don' ; t know if that' ; s like from like, an, an assimilationist pressure? And I think it' ; s really hard to like look at your own life and be like, " ; Yeah, that' ; s the thing. That government policy is the thing that caused me to like, you know X, Y, Z." ; ' ; Cause it feels like you don' ; t, then it feels like you don' ; t have like, like any control over like what, the decisions you made. So it was, I think it' ; s really hard to look back like, when you' ; re so close to it to be like, " ; That' ; s the thing that caused our family to do X." ; But if I like, if you sit down and you just like kind of stew over it for a little while, like, and then like I think Lisa Doi' ; s work, right, about like showing how there was such an intentional idea behind the process of resettlement. Right? All those things kind of like start to kind of, I don' ; t know, come together in a way that makes you question you know, how much autonomy you have or, or even if it was your own decision to do something, how much, how much of it was like you know, part of like a larger thing that was happening? And that' ; s like scary to think about. Anna Takada: Just a, a couple of questions before wrapping up. If you were to briefly describe the Japanese American community in Chicago, how would you describe it for someone who isn' ; t familiar. Jason Matsumoto: Well, I just came back, like, this weekend, I went to a Knu Basic' ; s rehearsal and it was like, it was kind of amazing to see like, just four Sansei sitting in some guy' ; s basement, like practicing, you know sixties, seventies rock. So I feel like, you know that kind of stuff creates a really v- like it, that' ; s, that-- Those kind of things are happening like in small pockets in different places. And I think we have something very special in Chicago. I think that there' ; s these kind of like institutions that have survived for 70 to 75 years that are pillars of our community. And without them, I don' ; t know if the work that you' ; re doing or the, or the work that I' ; m doing is possible. And so I have a lot of reverence for like the difficulties and the challenges of you know like, our community that have like stayed the course, no matter how hard it was, no matter how much like, outer fighting or infighting there was, like these places still exist. And there' ; s like a really vibrant like you know, 18 to 30 year old community that' ; s like, building. And so, you know I think it' ; s, it' ; s, we' ; re getting a lot better at building inclusion into these institutions. And I think we' ; re getting a lot better at spreading the ways that people can become involved, maybe without being part of an, a, a historic institution. I think that' ; s incredibly important, but we' ; re on like a really, really, really good path. And so to me, like, maybe you know, some of the physical buildings and you know like Clark Street or like Clark and Division or you know, Lincoln Park is no longer like, primarily Japanese American. But the conversations that I have with people who are doing work in this community and you know things like, you know like just ' ; cause top of mind, like the Knu Basic rehearsal is like such an amazing example of the resilience. And I think in a way it' ; s not even resilience. Like there' ; s, there' ; s enough of a diversity of events and opportunities and people that it' ; s like there' ; s like joy behind those things that, that are, that are happening and like real will to want to do them. And it' ; s not like, " ; I have to do this because it' ; s my legacy." ; You know, I think that there' ; s a lot of that, which is very important. But I think that people are driven by like, more positive reasons to do things. And that, I think, is the fabric of like a really positive, strong, and hopeful community. Anna Takada: You mentioned the, the work of, you say, young people in the community that that' ; s very strong right now. Jason Matsumoto: Mhmm. Anna Takada: Why do you think that is? Jason Matsumoto: So I think in a lot of ways it' ; s... You know I don' ; t know like a lot of history about how leadership has passed on, but I' ; ve heard stories about how... And maybe this comes back again to you know to our, to like this discussion about what impacts, like what like systemic or uncontrollable things impact the way that a community continues to build itself, right? One thing I' ; ve heard is that there was a, there was a, a huge challenge for like the Nisei to pass leadership onto the Sansei, but one difference that I see in the Sansei, not all the Sansei, but many Sansei passing leadership on to Yonsei, is that it' ; s happening in a real and genuine way. And it' ; s happening much earlier than I think it happened for the Nisei into the Sansei. And that to me, like these partnerships or like you know, joint programming or joint leadership, it' ; s, it' ; s passing on knowledge, it' ; s passing on like... It' ; s passing on knowledge and it' ; s passing on history and legacy, but it' ; s also, it' ; s also being open to the knowledge and legacy of younger people, which I think is like, it' ; s the only way to build good teams right? Is to truly value everybody' ; s input. And, I think that' ; s a big factor in the way that even like outside of Chicago, right, like we' ; ve heard you know how people from places that have like really large Japanese American communities are looking to Chicago to be like, w- how like, " ; What' ; s the secret sauce?" ; You know? And I think it' ; s, of course, it' ; s like, you know these, these, these development programs that are at these different institutions that have been the pillars of our community, like the Kansha project, right? Of course it' ; s things like that, that are like finding the next generations to actually engage in these conversations, but I think it' ; s also really important for like genuinely and, and truly valuing in both directions right? From like the generation above you to the generation below you like thinking of that as very, as a very flat hierarchy and taking, taking cues from both sides to, to build something new. And that, I think, is like maybe what I feel is different or is just not different, but is working very well in Chicago. Anna Takada: And I promise just one or two more questions. Jason Matsumoto: Yeah, I got time. (Cut) A few things. One thing is I think there' ; s relationships that need to be built and preserved or discovered. Right, so like the work that the JASC is doing, for example, in engaging with Shin-Nikkei and you know, post-war Japanese immigrants, right? The work that the JACL and the JASC do around engaging with other communities of color, like just continuing to expand our impact and our reach beyond our, our kind of like, historic you know, incarceration story. Legacy, I think is super important. And then I think finally just, just really thinking about what, how to marry all that with like, you know honoring the people that went through so much stuff to get us here. Right? Like, those are very different constituents and they can all, like there' ; s a way in which every single one of those constituents can be served in a very meaningful way. And I think it comes to being open-minded and I think it comes to being creative, right? In the way that we engage in the story, honor the legacy, and think about its impact beyond you know, our families. Anna Takada: And so you- Jason Matsumoto: And also more like, you know, more like ramen shops and like more like you know physical spaces, right? Like land ownership, like you know, having some stake in, in like real development of a community that, that maybe looks like a physical space or maybe looks like a street, you know? Or maybe looks like, I don' ; t know, something that, something that like reclaims you know like what we used to own or have in this city. Yeah. (Laughs) That was awesome. Just, just for the camera, she just spit her Halls into the garbage can. That was that noise. (Laughs) Anna Takada: We' ; re going to edit it out. So one question I like to ask, in wrapping up these oral histories is if you could leave behind some kind of message or legacy, doesn' ; t necessarily have to be for the community, but just you know, for future generations, what' ; s, what' ; s something that you, Jason Matsumoto, want to leave behind? Jason Matsumoto: Yeah. That is... yeah. I think, so it took me a long time to figure out what it means to like align my values with the time I spend like living in this world. And I don' ; t think like, nobody should force themselves to like, to just constantly think about that. But I think the way that I' ; ve gotten there is to basically, like I think there' ; s a philosophy in just trying to put yourself in situations that make you feel uncomfortable, and I, I don' ; t think I would' ; ve gotten to this place where like I, I really feel like the time I spend like, in my awake hours are aligned with what I care about. I don' ; t think I would' ; ve gotten to that place without putting myself like over and over and over again in situations that make me feel really uncomfortable and then having to figure out how to, how to exist in those spaces. And so there' ; s no way to expedite that process for any single person. You might have to work for 10 years in corporate America, or you might have to, you know do something that, that doesn' ; t feel right, but if you can think about that concept of, of comfort and discomfort and what it can do to your like personal development, I think that' ; s one way that can help everybody more closely align their values with you know, the way they spend their time. Anna Takada: I do have one more question before totally wrapping up. Jason Matsumoto: Mhmm. Anna Takada: What... I guess, what, what does the, the Japanese American, or Nikkei community of Chicago, what does that mean to you? Why is that important to you? I' ; m assuming, I' ; m assuming it is because I know you. Jason Matsumoto: I think there' ; s... Sorry. The Nikkei community is important to me, I think, one: because of the legacy of my own family, and two: because the legacy of what people had to go through to allow us to even be sitting here and talking about this community. And the fact that it, it still exists, it' ; s, it' ; s really amazing to me. And I think this, this story, right? You can kind of like put the same concept onto many different communities across the world and you know, in the United States, and it, it' ; s like, our, our path creates a lot of like hope for me personally because, because of the fact that you can take something so terrible and you can get through that and you can come out the other side. Not everybody, right? Like there' ; s there' ; s people who have come out of this, the other side not very well and they' ; re part of the story too. But the fact that we can still talk about these things and, and talk about our history in a meaningful way to help other people, I think that' ; s why the, the community is important to me. And when I think of the Nikkei community, I, you know it' ; s, it' ; s this fascinating thing where like, what does it mean to, like for example, at the Midwest Buddhist Temple, what does it mean to build and continue to honor and like have reverence for you know, the people that founded that place, the people that went through every single you know challenge and, and roadblock to get that thing built and then people to keep it running? You can say that for every single institution right? And every, every component of our community. What does it mean today like in 2019 and how do you, how do you create inclusion where the history and legacy of, of those places and things will always remain to be understood and they' ; re spaces that are like sacred and important and continue to be sacred and important to those who like risked their lives or maybe, maybe in some cases gave their lives to create those things, how do you blend that with like a much different looking community, right? And I think that' ; s like, if we can get that right, that' ; s, that' ; s what I think is like the future of the community. If, if we can figure that out and learn how to be inclusive and at the same time express the importance of, of why we continue to talk about 75 years ago and have people come together you know without feeling alienated, that' ; s, that' ; s to me like that' ; s the future of what we' ; re doing. Anna Takada: Well thank you so much again for taking the time to, to share with us. Before we completely wrap up, are there any last things you' ; d like to add or anything that I might have missed in this conversation? Jason Matsumoto: Just one thing, I think. I think, because I came into this so late, you know like you just mentioned to me that not many Yonsei have a, as much understanding of their own history. But I think that' ; s, for me personally, that' ; s like a big, maybe barrier or roadblock and you know, a personal hope and dream of mine is to like, like in a, in a very meaningfu-- like I guess in a very genuine way, try to do that research and history for like... This interview made me realize that I don' ; t know enough of like, I don' ; t know enough about like, not just like the dates and the locations, but like what were people doing and what were their lives like? And I think I' ; ve avoided that because I can ' ; cause the work I' ; m doing is like more general and I can talk to people that are not my family about this history and still get like a sense of what was happening, but I think this interview' ; s made me realize that like I want to do that, you know like for my own family, so thank you. Anna Takada: Thank you so much again. Thank you. Copyright held by the Japanese American Service Committee, Chicago, Illinois. video Interviews may only be reproduced with permission from the Japanese American Service Committee Legacy Center. 0 http://digitalcollections.jasc-chicago.org/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=MatsumotoJason20190910.xml MatsumotoJason20190910.xml http://digitalcollections.jasc-chicago.org/omeka/collections/show/1 http://digitalcollections.jasc-chicago.org/omeka/items/browse?tags=Series%3A+Untold+Stories
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Matsumoto, Jason (9/10/2019)
Description
An account of the resource
Jason Matsumoto is a yonsei born in Chicago to sansei parents who were also born in Chicago. His maternal grandparents were incarcerated at Rohwer, paternal grandmother was incarcerated at Gila River, and paternal grandfather served in the MIS. In this interview, Jason discusses his experiences growing up in Wilmette, IL, his family's involvement with the Midwest Buddhist Temple, the influence of his grandfather Ben Chikaraishi, and his interest in taiko drumming. He shares his reasons for leaving Chicago to attend college in Seattle, WA, his motivations for studying abroad in Japan, and the path that ultimately led him to become one of the founders of Full Spectrum Features, a Chicago-based nonprofit film production company. Throughout the interview, Jason reflects on his evolving sense of identity, the strengths of the Chicago Japanese American community, and the importance of aligning his work with his personal values.
Date
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2019-09-10
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video
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Oral History Interview: <a href="http://digitalcollections.jasc-chicago.org/omeka/items/show/11" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Chikaraishi, Ben (10/31/2017)</a>
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Series: Untold Stories
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The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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JASC Legacy Center Oral History Collection
Subject
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Japanese Americans--History.
Description
An account of the resource
This collection contains oral history interviews from the Japanese American Service Committee (JASC) Legacy Center's holdings. Where available, transcriptions have been included and synced to the recordings to enable full-text searching.
Interviews were recorded at various times, some by JASC staff and some by external partners, often supported by grant funding. See the metadata associated with each interview for full details.
This digital collection will continue to grow as new interviews are recorded, and as additional pre-existing recordings are received by donation or discovered in the physical archives.
The digitization and transcription of many of the recordings in this collection, the recording of interviews between July 2018 and June 2021, and the creation of this publicly accessible digital platform, were funded by a Japanese American Confinements Sites (JACS) grant awarded by the National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior. The JASC Legacy Center gratefully acknowledges the financial support received between 2018 and 2021 that enabled this project to succeed.
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This material is based upon work assisted by a grant from the U.S. Department of the
Interior, National Park Service. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations
expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views
of the U.S. Department of the Interior.
This material received Federal financial assistance for the preservation and interpretation of
U.S. confinement sites where Japanese Americans were detained during World War II.
Under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973,
and the Age Discrimination Act of 1975, as amended, the U.S. Department of the Interior
prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, disability or age in its
federally funded assisted projects. If you believe you have been discriminated against in any
program, activity, or facility as described above, or if you desire further information, please
write to:
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Creator
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Japanese American Service Committee (Chicago, Ill.). Legacy Center
Publisher
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Japanese American Service Committee (Chicago, Ill.). Legacy Center
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Takada, Anna
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Matsunaga, John Michael
OHMS Object Text
5.4 10/7/2018 Matsunaga, John Michael (10/7/2017) 0:57:28 JASC_OHP JASC Legacy Center Oral History Collection TTCFM Then They Came for Me Japanese American Service Committee Legacy Center Recorded with financial support from the Alphawood Foundation Chicago. Transcribed and made accessible online with financial support from the Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Japanese American Confinement Sites grant program. Matsunaga, John Michael Takada, Anna video 0 https://vimeo.com/309192129 Vimeo video < ; iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/309192129?h=b0ced68f4c" width="640" height="360" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay ; fullscreen ; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen> ; < ; /iframe> ; [NOTE: This transcript has not undergone a final proofreading and may contain errors. It is being provided in draft form to enhance access to the video recording. As soon as possible, it will be replaced with a final, corrected transcript and will be synced to the video to provide clickable timecodes.] Anna Takada: 00:01 This is an interview with John Matsunaga as part of Alphawood Gallery's Chicago resettlement experience oral history project. The oral history project is condu-conducted in line with the current exhibition "Then They Came for Me: Incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War Two and the Demise of Civil Liberties." Today is October 7th, 2017 at about 5:45 PM. We're recording at the Alphawood Gallery Oral History Studio. John Matsunaga is being interviewed by Anna Tacada of Alphawood Gallery. Um, so to start, can you just start by stating your name? John Matsunaga: 00:38 I am, uh, John Matsunaga. AT: 00:41 And, um, where are you from? JM: 00:43 I'm from Los Angeles, California. AT: 00:45 That's where you were born? JM: 00:47 That's where I was born, yeah. AT: 00:48 Okay. And how much time did you spend in LA? JM: 00:52 I lived in LA for, or the LA area in Southern California, for about 29 years. And then I moved to the Bay Area and lived in Oakland and Berkeley for a number of years. And then now I live in Minneapolis. AT: 01:13 Um, I guess to start, could you tell me a little bit about, um, your family and maybe how they were impacted by, the war? JM: 01:27 So, I'm a Sansei. I'm a third generation Japanese American. My grandparents, my parents and all of my aunts and uncles were incarcerated, um, during the war, during World War Two. Um, my dad's family, my, my dad's dad, uh, he died before the war in 1940 so he was not incarcerated, but, um, the rest of his family, um, were incarcerated. Uh, they lived in, uh, Sanger, California, which is, uh, just outside of Fresno. And, um, they were farmers and his family went to Gila River in Arizona. And so they lived, uh, in California. The, um, the way that the forced removal occurred was that if you lived west of Highway 99, which was the main highway that cut through north, south, through California at that time, um, if you'll live west, um, when exclusion started, you were guaranteed to be removed from, from the, um, that area. JM: 02:47 Uh, if you lived east, uh, you, it wasn't at, early on during the forced removal, it wasn't clear that you were going to be removed, but so they were, they, um, didn't have to actually go to, uh, a temporary detention center or an "assembly", um, center as a result of living east of Highway 99. And so, um, my father has kind of an interesting, I just learned this in talking to him that um, there was a, uh, uh, temporary detention center in Fresno. Um, but because they lived east of highway 99, they didn't have to go there, but they visited there, seeing people who live west of the highway that were incar- So it is this odd thing of being incarcerated in that camp. And then just because of where you lived. And then on the other side, there were free Japanese Americans still at that time who could go and were appearing through the fence or seeing people that they knew and things like that. So that was just sort of an odd little story that he told me recounting, you know, early on in his experience. AT: 03:56 So did they do that, did they go...? JM: 03:59 They went and visited and saw, you know, from like the out- just to see what was going on. Because again, you know, no one knew- in hindsight, we know how it plays out and kind of what happens and it starts to make more sense of what exactly happened. But, um, well not the justification for why it happened, but, but the unfolding of history, you can kind of, you know, and hindsight's always clear, but at the time, you know, thinking in their mind and then looking forward, um, you know, they didn't know what was going to happen to them. And so it's this very, and it happened very quickly. So it was just as quick thing of all of a sudden those west of Highway 99, were in this camp. JM: 04:38 And then they didn't know. They really didn't think. I think at that time my dad was telling me, they didn't think that they were going to have to actually move because you know, the orders hadn't come yet. And so they thought maybe they would, they would have escaped this. But um, you know, so it was just sort of an odd, to me it was kind of an odd little story just because you know, this, this idea of military necessity and then of of removing Japanese Americans. And then on the one hand, just because you live on one side of a highway or another, you're either incarcerated or you're free. And so that must have been just sort of both an odd experience of, of being free on the one s- But I, I think that some that you had that same situation inland, um, in, in the camps and in for example, like say Colorado where there was no forced exclusion, but there was a camp there and then so fewer Japanese American living in Colorado, you, you already, you know, before the war, you weren't in camps. JM: 05:39 So you have this like free and incarcerated Japanese Americans in the same area. So it's always an odd kind of thing to me to think about... AT: 05:50 Almost like emphasizes how arbitrary... JM: 05:52 Yeah. And, and how, how that, that the actual threat that Japanese Americans supposedly posed or this idea of military necessity was completely false. Because, you know, just because you're from California and you're in this, in these, incarcerated in prison, in these camps. Um, whereas if you just living in that area where that camp is, you're not really, doesn't make much sense, especially when your Japanese ancestry is the reason why you're being incarcerated. Um, and so, so come coming back to your original question too. So on my mom's side, um, they lived in, um, southern California and um, they went to Santa Anita, so they left. I think they had to leave in April at that time to go to the Santa Anita. And so that was different than my mom, my mom's and my dad's experiences were very different because my, um, my dad never went to a, uh, assembly center and he left in August, whereas my mom's family went, um, into, uh, Santa Anita in April, so several months earlier. Um, and then I think it was in October, that's when they went to Jerome in Arkansas. And so she was young. Both of my parents were relatively young. My Dad was, um, 13 I think when they went, and, and, and my mom was 11 when she went. Um, and I don't have that much of a story about the train. I don't think she remembers that much about the train ride and all that. I mean it's the typical thing of being on the train, pulling the shades down and, and, and that kind of thing. But they were, you know, they were pretty young at the time. Um, she also has an interesting story. She did that-she told me that the first time that she had ever seen an African American person was when she was in camp, at, um, at Jerome in Arkansas. Um, that she hadn't actually in Los Angeles, she'd never seen an African American person before. Um, and she recalls, cause she, her, her barracks was at the end of, edge of the camp and she recalls seeing a man, um, with like a cart with horses pulling it. And she was looking out and he was looking in at the camp and he waved to her and she waved back. And so this is like sort of her first, she had never seen an African American person before until going to Arkansas. And so that was like something that stuck out in her mind, um, about, you know, being there in that experience. AT: 08:59 And, um, to go back to your dad's experience, um, first, uh, what kind of f- do you know what kind of farm you had? JM: 09:12 They, um, I don't know if-if it was at the time, but I know that, um, my memory of the, of the farm was grapes and it, so it may have been grapes at that time too.Um... AT: 09:26 When you say your memory of it, have you visited? JM: 09:31 Oh yeah. It's so the, the, the um, that farm stayed in my family. My uncle Benny actually ran the farm. Um, and uh, because his sons didn't want to take over the farm. Um, they ended up selling it, I think sometime in the 90s, maybe late nineties, that they sold, that they ended up selling the farm, or early two thousands. AT: 09:55 So this is the same farm that your, your dad's family had before the war? JM: 10:01 Yeah. AT: 10:02 And how were they able to...do that? JM: 10:05 Right. So, um, what, what happened. Again, I've, I've tried to kind of get a straight answer on this and it's still a little uncertain, but my understanding is that the, that the, um, the farm was initially in the name of, um, I don't know if it was my uncle or, cause he was, cause he was, he's Nisei, so he's born here. Or if it was a f-, uh, another Japanese American family that was, um, that actually had married into, into, um, their family. So, um, uh, being unclear on that, but, but they did own the farm. And when they had left, um, they're a, uh, local packing fruit packing company. Um, had agreed to work the land and to, you know, split the profits and to keep the farm going. Um, and then when they returned, everything was, they had a place to return to. So when they returned, um, a family friend came first, made-prepped the farm, make sure everything was fine. Um, and then, uh, my dad's family was able to just return to their home. Um, the neighbors watched it, the neighbors and, and this fruit packing company took care of the farm, watched the farm. Um, just kept everything running. And so they were able to keep it. I don't, I don't know if at that point they had owned the farm outright. That is, were they making still, you know, payments on land. I think they might have actually just owned the farm outright, that they didn't have to make any payments or anything like that. AT: 11:50 And do you know when, um, they must, they must've returned after the, the war? JM: 11:57 So, so they, um, my dad's family, they were at Gila river for the entirety, from, so from August, 1942 to January, 1945. So when the exclusion orders ended on January 2nd, 1945, that's, that's when they left. And so they had heard in December that the camps are closing. You can, you know, exclusion from California is lifted and you can either can leave the camp or you can, you know, you can return to California. And so, um, they immediately returned to California and then he, he was in high school still, so he actually enrolled that semester in high school. So it was just like going straight from camp and then just going back to your old life. Um, and I asked my dad, you know, what was the, what was the attitude towards Japanese Americans in that community? And I think because they have lived there so long and that there were a number of different immigrant families and all farmers and in the small community, that the anti-Japanese sentiment, at least in that area of Sanger, where the farm was, was not that great. JM: 13:16 And, and when he went back to um, high school, you know, he, the kids all welcomed him back. He didn't really face any discrimination from any of the Caucasian students or any, anything like that. Um, I think there were, I think the people in that community were s-somewhat sympathetic too, but I think a lot of that has to do with that it-that the, um, that sense of competition in terms of farming, which was great in California, wasn't as strong in that community. And so, they were, all-that sense of community was stronger than the competition, you know, that feel, that sense of competition amongst the different farms, so... AT: 14:00 And how about your, what, you know of your mom's family were...? JM: 14:06 So they, they were at Jerome, and so when Jerome closed, I believe it closed in June of 1944, um, they, instead of leaving camp, they had nowhere to go. So they didn't own land, when they were in Los Angeles, they didn't own land, um, uh, you know, they were tenant farmers and they were broke. They had no, there was nothing to go back to. And so, um, so even though Jerome closed and there was an opportunity to leave, they had nowhere to go. And at that point, exclusion hadn't been lifted, so they couldn't go back to California anyways. You'd have to find somewhere else to go. And so they went, they ended up going to Gila River. So they went to another camp. And so my, my mom's family and my dad's family overlapped at the same camp, um, for a time. So they stayed, trying to remember when they went to, um, she worked farms, but it was after the exclusion orders were lifted, so they didn't leave in January. It must've been, um, sometime later in 1945, it might've been when Gila River closed and I'm not, it's escaping me exactly when that was in 1945. Um, but they, yeah, so they, they stayed there for however many months between, uh, you know, probably wasn't more than a year, the river, but my, my mom's family was in the, so Gila River's broken up into two camps, two parts of it. One is Butte, and one is Canal, and my dad was in Canal Camp and my, um, my mom's family was a Butte Camp, so they never met or knew each other in camp but, but they were at in the same camp, at the same time, yeah. AT: 15:53 And then so Seabrook Farms is the first destination for your mom's family? JM: 15:58 Yeah. So, um, you know, within the camps, um, a number of companies were, were recruiting, you know, hiring Japanese Americans for various forms of work. And so Seabrook farms was looking for people for their agricultural, you know, um, uh, work. And so they lived, they lived in the housing at Seabrook farms too, which was another kind of camp, you know, they had this company housing and these, and these bungalows and stuff like that. So they lived there. And so she went to school in New Jersey because she was still in high school. Um, and um, but they were there, so they must've been there from 1945 to around 1949 or 1950. Cause my, her, her father, my grandfather, died in 1945 and he was, um, Issei, and he was an older Issei, so he was, at that time, he was already in his seventies. Um, so I think he was probably in his fifties when he, he had her. She was, um, you know, in her late teens at that point. Um- AT: 17:12 What did he do when he came to the U.S, do you know? JM: 17:16 Oh, he was a farmer. AT: 17:17 Oh he was a farmer? New Speaker: 17:17 Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was in agriculture as well. My mom tells a story though that, um, that at some point he was very wealthy before the Great Depression, and the Great Depression, bankrupted, like, you know, um, but she was born in 1930 so she wouldn't know of any, you know, she wouldn't have ever had experienced that life at all. Um, but even, even her story of is a little bit vague. She, this, she's just saying, I was told, you know, cause she wasn't born yet. Um, and so, you know, the, the, so the whole family moved there, but then my grandfather died. And then, um, at some point my, I'm trying to, I don't know exactly when my uncle, I, he, um, moved to Chicago and he was the first one. And I actually found a photo of him, um, of one of the war relocation resettlement photographers took his photograph here in Chicago. And, um, it's in, it's in the, um, uh, JARDA, uh, database, the Calisphere. So it's, it's, uh, the University of California. Um, they have like this archive of imagery and documents from, from the war. And, um, so I've typed his name, I just typed her last name cause I was just searching if there was any family members and found, um, a photo of him here. And, and so there was some sort of housing here where there was a Japanese American couple who, um, had boarders, Japanese American boarders. And so he was, he was living in, so there was-there's a photo of them standing outside of the building. Um, him and another man with the couple that, that were boarders. AT: 19:04 Did you happen to know the family's name or the location of the house? JM: 19:08 I don't remember the name. The name is in the documentation for the photograph. The, the location is not, cause I actually thought about that before coming here to Chicago to see if could I find, um, so I don't know exactly, but I do know my mom, um, lived in Lakeview, is that correct? Lakeview area, which was, um, had a significant Japanese American population at one time, I'm not too familiar with the Chicago, um, the history of Japanese Americans in Chicago, but um, and so she, she lived there I think for a year or two or something like that before she left. But, so she must have been here from 19, maybe 1950 or early 1950s to the mid to late 1950s. Cause then she moved to California and lived in Los Angeles. And then that's when she met my father. So my sister was born in 1960 so you know, they were married, um, like 1959. And this is horrible. I don't even know exactly the exact year my parents were married. I think 1959 they were married, 1958. Um, and so, you know, by that time she was already, she had to have been there. So, um, it was, yeah, it was probably like late... AT: 20:31 Would you happen to know, so your uncle Ike moved first, to Chicago... New Speaker: 20:35 Right. AT: 20:35 And then, was it just your sister that followed or were there... New Speaker: 20:35 Oh, you mean my mom? Uh... AT: 20:41 Uh yeah. New Speaker: 20:42 Um, I don't know. I think the whole family just moved, well, he was sort of here. He was kind of like the pioneer. And then, um, once my grandfather had passed away, I think that that's when, when, uh, pretty much all of them, so my, my grandmother moved here and then the rest of the family. AT: 21:04 How many siblings did they have? New Speaker: 21:05 Oh, um, and I'm trying to, and it's, I'm trying to also think of like who was where at that time, cause I'm not sure all of them were, necessarily came out. Um, I think she had eight, sib-eight siblings at the time. So the oldest brother actually went back to Japan. So he had married a woman whose family went back to Japan during the war. And so he went with them and then eventually came back to the United States. But I never, I never even met him. I didn't know him at all. Um, and um, so she was one of two, uh, daughters, sisters, um, and the family. And then the rest, the rest were four sons, you know, boys. Um, yeah so, you know, she went out, my uncle Ike and I would imagine that she had two younger siblings who, who, brothers who went in-out of-god, cause they were still like probably in high school at that time. Um, and I think some of the older siblings went as well, except-with the exception of, um, the, her eldest brother and Naburu who went to, um, went to Japan. AT: 22:25 Would you happen to know, um, what everyone was doing in Chicago? So what Ike was doing for work, and was she's still school-aged or... JM: 22:36 I don't remember what my uncle Ike is doing, but he eventually became a, um, like an engineer. And so I think he's probably doing that by the time he left Chicago, but I don't know, um, like as far as schooling or what he did, what he did here or any of that. Um, she, she went to, um, fashion design school. I can't remember if she went, if she did that here or in New York, but eventually maybe she did some of it in New York and then was here. But I know that she went to the, um, Art Institute for a little bit and she has a story that she dated, uh, I'm forgetting this artist's name now. Oh. Um, it'll come to me, but he's, he's a somewhat well known artist, but it's just sort of an interesting story because she was, I think she was, he was the teacher and she was in his class and she's dating the teacher I think, but uh you might have to cut this part out. [laughter] I don't know if she wants this in the roster. But um, but he was a, he was a, um, well known painter and it's escaped my, his name is escaping me right now. Um, but um, so she, but she took some classes at the Art Institute. Um, and so I think our earliest work was, she was in, um, fashion design and design in general. And, and, um, and I think that work brought her to California. So some-I think part of her, part of her, uh, her education and training was here, um... AT: 24:17 So do you have a sense of how long, um, her family was in Chicago? JM: 24:26 I'm trying to think of- AT: 24:27 -was it all various...? New Speaker: 24:28 when she might've been, she been one of the first, first ones to move to Los Angeles. Um...my uncle Henry went into the army at some point, and so he may have left as w- you know as well, early, earlier on, um, and then, I know another uncle served in Korea, so obviously he would, you know, by the early 1950s, he was, he was away too. Um, but I don't think the rest of the family, like, like my grandmother, I think she may have stayed with my uncle Ike until the late 1960s. And so he moved to Los Angeles area in late 1960s and I think that's when she moved because my earliest memories of her, so I was in 1971. She died in I think 74? It seems kind of early, but I think that's about right. So I do have memories of her, but just very faint memories of her in Los Angeles, you know, so that's, and so I know that, you know, by the early seventies, they were already living in L.A. And I, so I, I suspect that they came out in about, in the late sixties when... AT: 25:49 And um, and where, where did your parents meet? How did they connect? Speaker 2: 25:54 I think they were set up by, by, um, someone, but again, I don't know all the details [laughs] with that, but I think a mutual friend set- set them up and that's, that's how they got together. And also just sort of a, as an aside, um, their, um, I found their wedding portrait, like their, it's um not at their wedding, but just sort of before sitting at Toyo Miyatake's studio, um, took the pho- I don't know that, at that point if he was still photographing, or was it his son? I think Archie may have taken it- taken over at that point. Um, but the stu- but the studio, um, had done that. And so that, there's just sort of that interesting thing of I looked at the thing and it had the stamp of Toyo Miyatake's studio. And, so... AT: 26:49 And, so, can you tell me about, um, your experiences growing up? I mean, were, were your parents open and talking to you about, um- JM: 27:03 -Right- AT: 27:03 -this particular part of their stories or, or w-where is this, this knowledge coming from? JM: 27:08 Right. So, um, when I grew up, I don't even remember when I first learned about the camps. I just know that I knew about them. Um, my parents never talked about it. Um, but I now only re-recently, so I'm 46. So in the past few years, I only recently started talking to my parents about their- asking questions, you know, finding out the details of, of their experience of incarceration. Um, and you know, for them, I kind of asked them, so will you reluctant to talk about it to us? And they said no. They said, you guys never asked. And so it's hard for me to tell because I get a sense that if I had asked them 20 years ago or so, maybe they wouldn't have been so interested in talking about it, they would've been like, oh, whatever, you know, it's in the past, but now that they're in their late eighties, um, I feel like they're much more open and wanting to talk about it. JM: 28:11 I think the environment for talking about it too is much more conducive to expressing, you know, this past. Um, and so now they're, don't talk about it all the time, but, but, um, but yeah, I think a lot of it was, I grew up in the San Fernando Valley in a suburb of Los Angeles called Woodland Hills, which was primarily Caucasian. Uh, it's middle class. Uh, so my Japanese American identity wasn't something that, uh...I was basically growing up in a white suburb. I grew up white b- essentially. Um, and I thought of myself as white until other people started reacting to me in a certain way, coming at me, you know, and then I go, well, okay, that, you know, that was that sense of otherness that, that I began to feel, um, because I'm in my own skin, so I'm not seeing myself as, as any different than anybody else really, until other people treat me differently. And so that was that kind of awakening, but still, even throughout my life, regardless of that, um, I didn't really connect with or explore my Japanese American, um, identity or my family's history for- until relatively recently. AT: 29:31 And, and when did that happen? That experience of other people recognizing you as somehow different or not white? JM: 29:40 Oh, that I mean, elementary school is the first, is the first, um...you know, when you're kids you're always talking about things like that. And if you're just-you're kind of figuring out a little bit of who you are and then who other people are and kids are so blunt right so, you know, um. And so it was always, it was always that thing. And so I don't, I don't know that I have any specific memories, but just in a general sense of, of that, um, of that being othered every now and again, you know, being recognized as, as different, and it wasn't all that. And by the time of high school, no one really, I don't think anybody really made a big deal about it. Um, it was more in like elementary school when you're were really young and, and uh, just having that sense that you're, you're different. Yeah. That you're uh... AT: 30:29 When you were, um, you know, school age, did you learn about internment in school? JM: 30:36 No. It's, uh, the, I don't, I didn't learn in grade school. And you know, in K through 12, no, nothing, even- but this is, this might be more a reflection of the courses I took, but even in college, I did not learn about incarceration of Japanese Americans and, um, I don't know. I can't recall where I learned about it, but I, I knew more and more, but, but it wasn't, it really wasn't until the last few years that I began to study it intensively. Um, and then started to go deep and learn a lot about when it happened in the facts and all that. Um, but I don't, I never had any formal education that taught me about this past at all. Never even mentioned it. AT: 31:31 And can you, uh- JM: 31:33 -and that's growing up and, that's growing up in Los Angeles where there's a significant Japanese American, uh, population as well, so... AT: 31:43 Can you tell me more about, um, your education because you're, you're an Asian American Studies professor? JM: 31:50 Well, I, I, I'm not technically a professor. I do teach Asian American studies. So I'll give you, I'll give you a little bit of my background. AT: 31:56 Sure. JM: 31:57 Um, so I, um, studied anthropology. I was actually an archaeologist for several years. And, um, I studied anthropology at UCLA and, where I got my bachelor's, and then I was in the doctorate program at UC Berkeley, in Anthropology. And, um, even then as an anthropologist studying things like identity and culture and, and whatnot, I still didn't really explore or connect with my Japanese American heritage. Um, and so I was always kind of like studying other people and stuff and, and um, I was working on the archaeology work that I was doing was in Europe, actually in Serbia. So it's like something completely [laughs] outside of anything having to do with Asia or Japanese American... Um, uh, but I found that it was, it was at that time that I was wanting more out of what I was doing and I wasn't very satisfied. Um, and so that's when I, I didn't finish my doctorate. I got all the way to the end of, of my education there, the program, the PHD program, to the point of actually writing my dissertation and all of that. But I did not finish my, my doctorate degree because, um, it wasn't, I knew there was something lacking. There was too much else going on at the time. So this was during, you know, the Bush administration, -the second Bush- administration, all the things that was happening with Muslim Americans and all these kinds of other things. So I'm in Berkeley at this time and it just, you know, I couldn't, the work that I was doing, even though I, I- anthropology deals with culture and identity and other, many other things, I wasn't able to, I'd sort of pigeonholed myself. I put myself or painted myself into a corner where the kind of work I was doing was, I was never going to be able to express or to deal with what was going on in contemporary society. And so I left that and, and, um, started to do art and became an artist. So I went to art school and I went to the Minneapolis College of Art Design, um, after I moved to Minneapolis. And so it was there that all of this started to, to come out. And so what had happened was that I, in doing some work, I was interested in exploring the life of my mom's stepfather, which was the only grandfather that I knew. He's not my biological grandfather. His name was [Sachajo Tanabe?] and, but he was, he was, I always just knew him as Grandpa, you know, I didn't know the difference. It was only later that I knew he was, he was my mom's stepfather and he wa- he lived in Little Tokyo. We're talking about Japanangeles. He lived in Little Tokyo and he was murdered there in 1982 and that devastated me. It, it just had a, such a profound impact on me. And I always thought about him no matter what, you know, not connecting with my Japanese American identity or my family's history, but I, I would frequently think about him and just, it just, you know, that incident haunted me and it still does. Um, but anyways, so when I was becoming an artist, I was thinking about him in, in, you know, making work about him in some ways. And, and part of what, what I was thinking about was my family didn't really talk about him much anymore. You know, he died in 1982, and this is, this is already, you know, the two thousands or, and after. Um, and it was just a sense of him being forgotten and thinking about, you know, what's that memory of him going to be as time goes on. And, you know, and, you know, it really bothered me. So it was the sense of forgetting. And so, um, I started exploring his history and found out that he was incarcerated at Manzanar, um, and then I started thinking about all the people that were there and who they were and them being forgotten. And so instead of doing a project about him, I became interested in, um, the Japanese American incarceration and the people. And so it started with Manzanar, and actually went there and photographed the remains and the remnants of that. And that expanded into a larger project to where I went to all 10 of the war relocation authority, concentration camps, and photographed the remains, a lot of, you know, the physical remains that are still there. But it was really, you know, through him that I, I, I started to explore this history and then there was that. And then along with, um, my, my parents advanced age, so wanting to connect with them more and understand what their lives were like, what they had gone through, brought me back to this incarceration history. And so that started it. And then obviously I was, as I had mentioned, I was already searching for a way to, to engage with and talk about things that are going on in the present. JM: 37:43 And so that, you know, obviously, there's parallels between the Japanese American incarceration and other forms of exclusion or incarceration of, of many different populations, um, within the United States presently, but also within, within the very recent past or, or paralleling that, you know, what had happened to Japanese Americans. And so it was a way for me to engage in those conversations where I wasn't co-opting someone else's history, that it, I, it gave me a voice or a-and allows me to do that. So, you know, now I work with the Japanese American Citizens League and in the Twin Cities and we've begun working with the, uh, Counsel on American Islamic Relations Care, their chapter in Minnesota. Um, but really, you know, it-it-that, so that connection, that connection through history, that and like my, so like my community's involvement with incarceration allows me to then, and my family's history of that, allows me to then engage in with where I see those connections in other communities. But I am very sensitive about, you know, speak, try- you know, not wanting to speak for another community, like having a right to kind of engage in those discussions or reason to engage in those discussions, um, without inserting myself. You know what I mean? It's this kind of thing of, cause that happens sometimes people, people, um, they, their intentions are good that they do have empathy for what people are going through, but they kind of come in and without knowing or having any sort of connection to any of the experiences of whatever's uh, community 's going through. Um, you know, kind of ended up sort of speaking for, taking over, or trying to control the narrative or something like that. And I was always very cautious of that. But I think that this, this, uh, this history is, and in my sort of understanding of it in my connection to it has allowed me to intervene in a way. So it gave me a pathway to, to engage other communities as well. AT: 40:03 So, um, as far as your, your actual involvement with, um, the Japanese American community, um, did that, did that mostly start or happen for you in Minneapolis? JM: 40:21 Yeah. Yeah. And so I had not been a member of the JACL prior to that, even despite living in California for so long. I think what it was too was that, um, I- living in California, I had only lived in California, well I'd, but-primarily had lived only in California before moving to, to Minnesota. Um, uh, there were short periods elsewhere, but, but despite that, I think what, I think what it was is, I kind of sort of, the presence of Asian Americans, um, around me, I kind of took that for granted. You know, cause I mostly lived in California and that, you know, and so going to UCLA, going to UC Berkeley, I mean both, both student populations are like 40% Asian American. And so when I came to, um, Minnesota in Minneapolis, I noticed that there were far fewer Asians. And so I started, I think that had an effect on me too where I started to really be like, wow, you know, I, I feel really kind of like stand out and I didn't know that much about Minneapolis or the Midwest as well. So there's also these sort of stereotypes of which, you know, I'm guilty of as well of, of the Midwest where, um, you know, it's just mostly Caucasians and it's sort of a Midwestern attitude and so you kind of, you're a little wary. So I was already sort of on edge a little bit, like I'm not sure how I'm going to be received. Um, and so, but I do-but I do think that that, that having that experience of feeling like, well, I stand out even more, um, made me seek out that community while I was also going through all of these transformations in terms of my own sense of identity. And so, um, I think those, those two things kind of come together around the same time. And so that had, you know, the sort of, um, compounded the, the effect on me. AT: 42:29 Um, I am keeping an eye on time and I want to make sure that you have- JM: 42:33 -that's, that's fine [laughs] AT: 42:36 -enough time to go around. JM: 42:36 Oh yeah, there's en...[laughs] AT: 42:46 Um, as we, as we wrap up, um, I'd love to hear from you, some, some of the bigger picture questions, but um... JM: 42:58 Sure. AT: 43:01 I mean...in your opinion, um...like what, what do we need to learn from this history? Like what, what, what is like the crucial thing for people to understand and why is that something that is so important to you? JM: 43:24 Right. Um, I think that, and this is kind of for, for those that, that engage with the history of the, the Japanese American incarceration, um, that there's this question, could it happen again? I think that's com- you know, for us it's, it's common. We kinda hear it a lot. Um, but I do think that it's an important question to pose to the general public, uh, particularly because they're not familiar with thinking about it in those terms. And, and I think that, you know, learning this history really- it, it says that it shows, it demonstrates that this happened and all the reasons why it happened. Um, and understanding that really, in the present context, really does allow you to kind of think through what are all the things that led to the incarceration of Japanese Americans. And are we seeing those things happening today? And I would say we are seeing those things happen today. You know, a, a kind of hysteria of, you know, um, prejudice, you know, uh, particularly based on race and religion. Um, um, and then, uh, another often stated cause is failure of political leadership. That is the, uh, not only, not only the executive branch of the government that is the president or whatnot, um, but also, uh, amongst the judicial, the Supreme Court. And so we see the Supreme Court in, in, uh, in the 1940s deferring to the military and saying, well, we're not gonna question. We don't feel like we're in that position of questioning, uh, the judgment in the military who said that the exclusion was necessary. Um, we see similar kinds of, not complete deference, but some deference in terms of the, uh, Muslim ban, um, right now. And so it's hard to know where the Supreme Court's going to go with that too. So I think that, and then obviously, um, Donald Trump is president and the kinds of things that he has, he has said, and his policies and what he's already done demonstrates this kind of failure of political leadership to, to protect the constitutional rights of, um, American citizens and also American- Americans who may not be citizens, but, but still are residents of the United States. Um, and so it's really important to reflect on this history and to have some underst- understanding of how it unfolded, um, so that it doesn't happen again, even though it is happening now. And so we have to think of ways that, you know, how do we challenge that? How can we challenge? And part of that is education, getting, getting the public to be aware, um, that this is going on. And uh, have an understanding of what had happened to Japanese Americans, but then also what's going on now and to hopefully convince them that it was wrong and that they will stand up because the politicians will eventually follow the public if there's enough of the public who, who, um, uh, stand up against certain policies. Um, during, during the wartime, the, the population in California influenced the politicians there to support the exclusion of Japanese Americans. But if they had been against it, I don't think that the politicians would have been so inflammatory in terms of their rhetoric towards, towards that. They were just sort of following what their constituency was, was, um, was suggesting. And so I think that if enough people stand up to a point where actually does put pressure on politicians, they will, they will follow whatever their, you know, the voters will go. And so I think it's really about educating the, the, um, the general public. Um, I know that there's been engagement with, you know, trying to convince politicians of certain things. And I don't, I, I question if that's effective even when you try to educate the politicians because they're- they can be quite self-serving and wanting to stay in office. And so they kind of, um, aren't so, um, aggressive in terms of promoting certain policies that may or may not be popular amongst their voters. And so they're very careful about how they go about things regardless of what they actually think. And so I, but I think that the, that having the voters, the general public know and be very vocal about this is where it's at. And I think that begins with education, knowing what it is that you're vocal about. And I do think education is important too because I think, um, just sort of your moral values and feeling that something is wrong is not enough. That you're not going to convince people by saying, oh, that's wrong, it's immoral or whatever. I think you really do need to know the facts of the history or the present situation in order to, um, combat those that support, um, you know, immigration bans or support, um, bigoted or, or racist views. Um, because what I would say is don't underestimate those people. That there is a sense that, that those that are more left leaning or support, you know, immigrants and refugees and are against racism, that they, that they tend to portray the, those on the other side as ignorant. And I think that that's a very dangerous way of approaching it because what I'm finding is that you're finding people on the other side who actually are very well argued and well thought out in terms of their, their, um, their stance and why they believe what they believe. And they're not necessarily, you know, dumb people. I think they're misguided. I, I disagree with, with their, with their, uh, but, but I think having a respect for their intelligence is important because, um, you don't want to underestimate them and that, what that means is you have to be educated as well and you have to be well prepared so that if you come into a confrontation to where you're, you know, either debating or whatever, whatever kind of thing with them, that you're well prepared to counter the argument with facts and with evidence and with a logical, you know, thought and information and not just, not just, um, your gut or your heart, you know. That's, that's a good place to start, to have that emotion, but you have to back it up. And so, and so that's kind of my long winded response to, to just saying that education is extremely important and why the facts of this past are very important to understand and to convey to people. AT: 50:31 One last thing I'd like to ask you about is just, um, you, you've touched on, um, working with other communities of color, other communities that are experiencing different kinds of, um, systemic violence or oppression. Um, that the, the Japanese American story can- has potential to um, shine light on certain injustices. Um, but especially in, in this kind of work of, of trying to build those connections and those, um, cross cultural or cross community bridges. Um, one thing I'd love to hear from you is your thoughts about what needs to-what kind of work needs to be done within the Japanese American community in terms of, um, really calling out and confronting certain issues that exist within our own community. So I'm, I'm speaking specifically of some of the pr-prejudice that exists in the, I think Japanese American communities across the country, whether it's anti-blackness or homophobia or transphobia. Um, you know, there is classism, you know, I think there are a lot of these, um, issues that, that, you know, a lot of communities are guilty of themselves. So I guess my question to you is, um, with, what do you think needs to, how can we build true solidarity with other communities and really use this story is kind of a, a platform or a start of the conversation? JM: 52:38 I think part of it is, has to do with, um, the youth in our community, in the Japanese American community. I do find that there's a generational, and this is sort of normal, but generational differences that is the, that is the college age, younger, younger, um, uh, individuals from the Japanese American community tend to be more open minded. They tend to be not- because they're growing up in an era where, you know, being outwardly racist is wrong, or at least it used to, you know, [laughs] maybe it's, it's- being more, unfortunately, being more accepted than, than, um, obviously then we would like, um, but in an era where there is, there is that sort of, that it's socially unacceptable to, to report certain kinds of views. Um, that wasn't the case in earlier generations where it- we lived in a society that was very, you know, homophobic and not open to LGBTQ and, and, and then also was very racist. And so, um, so I do think that that, it's not that I'm writing off the older generations, but I do think it's, it's, it's as we move forward, it's really about ensuring the youth in our community have an understanding of this history, but also within the context of what's going on with other communities. And so, um, um, like I know here in, in Chicago that there's the Kansha Project, right? And then there's also the Bridging Communities, um, thing. So those, those two, those two projects that, that really bring communities together, but they're bringing the youth together. And so th-th- I think that's really significant in terms of, and it's not just, "Oh, well we're Japanese American, so we're going to learn Japanese American history and then we're just going to say, oh, well we can go talk to, to, you know, Muslim youths" or whatever. Um, it's, it's saying, "No, well, you're going to learn your own history and then you're gonna learn about Muslim American, um, history and identity experience as well". And so we're going to bring these two communities and vice versa with, with, um, Muslim American youth. And so it is this thing of say, bringing communities together, but also while they're young and, and to build this kind of understanding and experience. Because I think a lot of, you know, a lot of bigotry and racism really is rooted in ideas people have about other people that they have no real experience with. That is they don't get to know these other communities that they're bigoted against. Um, that there's just ideas that they have about them. I mean, most, I would be almost certain that most people that are currently have issues with are bigoted against, or racist against, or however you want to phrase it, against Muslim Americans, don't know any Muslim Americans, have never known any Muslim Americans. Um, and I think that, that, that key to sort of breaking down some of those barriers is, is bringing these communities together. And so it is finding ways, finding ways to do that. And I think for us it's that, it's that mutual mutual history. It allows some sort of connection to be made. Um, but, you know, it's, it's hard, like you kind of bringing up that the issues within our own community as far as the racism, but, but again, I think that it's hard, it's, you're going to be hard if, if you, someone who's in their seventies or eighties in our community who has these racist views towards other groups, we're not going to, we're not going to change who they are at this point. I really don't think that that's going to happen, but I do think we can affect, um, the youth, cause they're still being shaped. Their, their perspectives on the world is being sh-shaped. And, and as others say, no one comes into this world learning how to hate other people. You know, they don't, they're not, it's not an innate thing. You, you, you learn, um, hatred towards others. And so, you know, then you learned that very young. And so that's where we have to really hit that. And that goes for all communities. It's not just the Japanese American community, yeah. AT: 57:11 Um, before we wrap up, is there anything that you would like to add or that we might've missed? JM: 57:17 Um, no. [laughs] I think we covered... AT: 57:21 Quite a bit of ground. Well, thank you so much for, for coming in and speaking. JM: 57:25 Thank you, thank you for having me. Copyright held by the Japanese American Service Committee, Chicago, Illinois. video Interviews may only be reproduced with permission from the Japanese American Service Committee Legacy Center. 0 http://digitalcollections.jasc-chicago.org/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=MatsunagaJohn20171007.xml MatsunagaJohn20171007.xml http://digitalcollections.jasc-chicago.org/omeka/collections/show/1 http://digitalcollections.jasc-chicago.org/omeka/find?tags=Series%3A+Then+They+Came+for+Me& ; layout=1
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Matsunaga, John Michael (10/7/2017)
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2017-10-07
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Series: Then They Came for Me