I guess my mother was sort of protective. Like many Chinese parents, she felt that all the boys should really put their nose to the grindstone and study and be good students particularly become quite proficient in English. But she felt strongly that we need to learn our Chinese culture and language. So the brothers and myself, we had to attend Chinese school, which was quite common among the kids in Chinatown. We would go to American school, we call it from 8 to 3, and then taking the bus or streetcar would get back to Chinatown about 3:30 and then go to Chinese school, which would run until 6 p.m., and that would be five days a week. And on Saturday we would have to go 9 to 12. So we were luckily well off enough, so the brothers and myself, we had a pretty good and didn't have to work and that was sort of the taking up most of the time during weekdays. Of course, there was a lot of playtime in the local school we live close to…well, everybody in Chinatown was close to the grammar school. Chinatown wasn't that big.

My first regular, a frequent travel beyond Broadway Street into Italian town into North Beach, was in junior high school. The seventh, eighth and ninth grade. On day hours of school, there was a waiver for Chinese kids to go beyond Broadway Street on weekends and after 330 or four on weekdays, the barrier, invisible barrier would come up on Broadway Street. And if Chinese kids were to move beyond Broadway Street and inevitably they would get beat up or into a fight. During my years, things had calmed down a bit, but with my brothers it was much more intense. So I enjoyed with many of my contemporaries walking from Chinatown over to Francisco Junior High School in North Beach. And I spent the seventh, eighth and ninth grade there. It was approximately 60 what I could remember 60% Chinese origin, 40% Italian or some other ethnic group. There was no overt discriminatory behavior or racism happening there. We got on pretty well, in fact. Well, during my three years there, somehow I got interested in, I guess, group work. I participated in school government and subsequently became the school treasurer and then the student body president.

So my school years and junior high was a warm one, were really not too much trauma. And the introduction to large softball field, which still was there and from there then there was a waiver period originally it was to last only a few years in which kids were no longer forced to go to their neighborhood school, the neighborhood high school for Chinese was essentially Galileo High, but for a few years it opened up so that Chinese in Chinatown would be able to choose any school or outside outside their neighborhood. My older brother, who was very good in athletics, was in a team that consistently won city championships in basketball. And George Washington High School at that time had a championship team for quite a few years, and the coach from George Washington High School came down to Francisco and recruited the whole first team from Francisco junior high. And so my brother went out into the distant past the 36th Avenue. And then when I was ready to go to high school, I just followed where he went outside of Lowell High School, which at that time and still do now have a high academic achievement record. Washington had a very good academic record, and so many of five of us went out to the Avenues essentially out at Washington High School was my beginning of having some trepidation in terms of how I would be in a high school, essentially the majority being white.

I recall and I don't have any statistics but to the best of my memory, there were about 5% Chinese out in George Washington high at that time and most of the graduates of Presidio High, which was just adjacent to Washington High, went to Washington High School. But my first year and then Washington High was the easy adjustment because I think for boys it was easier. The adjustment if one good at sports. And so I joined the basketball team and my chief rival in the team on the same position was the famous Johnny Mathis, who later became a great singer; well he was a great athlete. The only reason I beat him out was that the coach didn't like the fact that he liked to shoot the basket. He wanted a team player, so I had edged him out. But he was a much better jumper and overall better player than myself. So that first year I played sports and got accepted by the student body easily, somehow along there. Then I got into student affairs also and I enjoyed leading homeroom classes. I picked up Robert's Rules of Order pretty well from a mission station called Cameron House, and I used the Robert's Rules of Order and the kids were very impressed. So subsequent I became the Junior High's junior high class president, and from there became the student body vice president. And I moved on to my last year to be the student body president. So the year so my high school was was a real growth experience for me.

Well I have to give credit to Cameron House, a Presbyterian mission station which is still there on Sacramento Street and Waverly, very close to the Chinese American Museum in Chinatown, San Francisco. I was there, the minister felt that I somehow had the technique of working with people and with kids. So in my ninth grade, he chose me to become the director of the mission stations, first junior high school department. And that was a great responsibility, placing me heading over 100 junior high school kids every Friday night, Saturday and Sunday for Sunday school. And and there was a lot of leadership training. And because I had to do some training of counselors for 13 clubs and that really made me feel comfortable about leadership. I guess that translated into school affairs.

I met this young lady at Christmas caroling, over there [points to Mary in the room], and we shared a Christmas Carol and a book, and suddenly she claims that all her friends abandoned her. So she was left with me and I had to walk her home. And I was very nice guy. And from there, by the time summer came, I didn't want to leave the Bay Area. And so I decided to enter UC Berkeley instead. But that began the turning away from somewhat the religion. But I still felt my life early dream of having a career of working with Chinese immigrants in San Francisco Chinatown still stood. As a minister, I had planned to work in Chinatown, and those during that time my Cantonese was a lot better. I forgot all the vocabulary now.

Well, my major was zoology and honestly, I enjoy every subject except one organic chemistry. I like school and never gave a much thought and had support from my brother and his friends. They showed me around the campus of UC Berkeley, which was huge and had a rather non traumatic time, a fun time, and then suddenly one of his friends, which I think you know, Nathan Tom, whose father was head of the YMCA for many years. Nathan for some reason came over in my botany class and said, Allan, you've got good grades. You ought to think about going to medicine. I never thought about medicine, and at that point most of the courses I took was sort of pre-med anyway, but it was a liberal arts and from that point, making a decision maybe go to medical school with the thought of maybe being and being a medical missionary. And I was thinking Hong Kong or San Francisco, Chinatown with the immigrants still. And so that was the beginning, veering away from a religious career.

There was one other traumatic event for me in high school. Because of my leadership status in the local Presbyterian Church, I was delegated to meet with the delegates from other Presbyterian Church in San Francisco. This committee was an important one. They essentially were the ones that dole out money to poverty churches. And so I was glad to represent Presbyterian Church in Chinatown, but it was a traumatic event for me because that was the first time I encounter, quote, religious people, Christian people, in a situation where I saw a collaboration between the whites and blacks, essentially in corralling the money and really squash the Latinos, the Native Americans, and the Chinese. From there, I said to myself, my goodness, if this is a symbol of the peace in Christianity, I'd rather do my fighting outside the church. So that had an influence for me, kind of stepping away from the clergy part of the religion, although I do, Mary still feels the spiritual life is very important.

So from there you say you should go to UC Berkeley and at that time UC Berkeley was feasible because tuition was low, government loan was very low, interest rate I think was below 3%. And you didn't have to pay it back right away. You had no. Transportation was easy. So I enjoyed the time in UC. I enjoyed the science of medicine and from that point on, school was not as much fun because the stereotype as, hey, you've got to get good grades, although should not get in medical school. So I applied myself to my studies for the first time to ensure I would have good grades so school became less fun at that point and one of my disappointments in life was that I always wanted to stay in the Bay Area. And so at the end end of my junior year, I had a third year at Berkeley. I was accepted in UC medical school in San Francisco. And to this day, I don't know why. After acceptance there, I decided to experience a campus outside of the Bay Area. I enrolled in UCLA. A new experience and for no reason, my health broke down pretty severely in Los Angeles didn't know why, but for an unknown reason, I'm coming back to visit on holiday. My illness would go away and two days. It would get bad coming back to San Francisco and then on flying back. It would clear up in two days. And then that happened two or three times. Scare the dickens out of me. And I said, I'm not going to make it in medical school in San Francisco if I get sick like that. And no doctor could explain to me what was the problem. So I got ill and had to drop two courses at UCLA and kept the other two despite doing well with A's and the other two courses at the medical school, said that I should wait for the following year and apply again, which I did, and was not refused. But they kept me on the waiting list into April, I think it was April, most medical school, if you're going to get in for sure, you get the notice in April and I asked them, they said, you probably will get in, but we can't guarantee it.

So I had applied to only two other medical school because I wanted the school that had big hospitals of clients where interns would get to practice. I knew I wasn't that interested in research. I wanted to work with people, so I applied to USC medical school. They had the big Los Angeles County Hospital and the other school I applied to was Northwestern in Chicago. They had the big county Cook County Hospital and both accepted me. But Mary was here, and the West Coast and I got to I joined USC and enjoyed Los Angeles and then many good folks down there, a good Chinese Americans and others. But it's surely culturally very different city. And so throughout the medical school, I enjoyed it. I particularly still enjoyed the science of medical school. And then after graduating in my days there, after getting your medical degree, you had to do a year of internship. They call it residency now. And so again, I applied to two hospitals that I knew had the same population Cook County in Chicago and Valley Medical Center in San Jose. I was fortunate, I was accepted that San Jose and came back up to the area and had great experience. But the environment had changed. Insurance companies began to take over medicine and doctors had to begin to deal with insurance companies. They many of them began dictating how many visits clients should have and then made it very difficult for many clients to get care.

But by that time in my internship, I guess I enjoyed emergency medicine, pediatrics, obstetrics. I really liked. I never forgot. I deliver 105 babies in one month, very busy hospital and internal medicine, I like. But then at the end of the year and I was going to continue internal medicine, but Mary sensed that I wasn't too happy, and we had a long talk and I told her, Something's not right in medicine. I don't get to talk to people. I was forced to pass out pills and see them in 15 minutes and get them out the door. I said, That's not the kind of medicine wanted. Mary was very wise and saved me for medicine and said I take a year off in psychiatry and that she said I ought to know that by that time in medicine, a lot of the physical illnesses was psychosomatic. So she convinced me to take a year off and psychiatry. And I was lucky enough to get into Stanford Psychiatry Department and spent three good years here in Palo Alto, Stanford. And that was in 1962, I believe, three years. I finished psychiatry in 66 and we came to Palo Alto in 1962, and that was just the beginning of migration of many Chinese Americans from Chinatown. Many were going over to the East Bay, out to Walnut Creek and that area, Castro Valley, others had gone to Marin County in San Francisco. Many had gone out to the Richmond area. Sunset. Yeah, I went into the avenues and others had come south into San Mateo and San Jose, Palo Alto was still small but had good Chinese here. They had a few more Chinese restaurants here than we do now. And so we had a pleasant time Mary was able to get a job over at Stanford Campus within walking distance of downtown San Francisco. And that's how we got into this territory.

Sure. Where Mary and I first met, I guess after I graduated from high school, the Mary had been…her father passed on when she was in the ninth grade in Stockton. Her family had one of her father was a great cook, got dim sum and all the. I did benefit from it; he passed away. And Mary’s mother, who was born in San Francisco in 1903, came back to hometown in San Francisco. So the whole family, Mary's Mary was sort of afterthought her in the family, her brothers, two brothers and sister all were about 15 years older. So Mary came to San Francisco in entering the 10th grade and on coming to San Francisco. She was looking forward to being with a lot of other Chinese kids. Unbeknownst to her, she took a test, and they sent her out to Lowell High School and she remembers her first day and going out to Lowell High School, getting on the bus full of Chinese kids. And the Chinese kids would get off the bus for Commerce High School or I forgot what other school. And she was left alone in this bus, and she had to ask the driver "Where's Lowell?" and she was the only one left and the driver tell her that's Lowell and that that was her coming to San Francisco.

How she got to the Chinese Presbyterian Church was her life and Stockton. And prior to that she was born in Walnut Grove, very close to Stockton, where her family attended church. But on the first church she attended was the Presbyterian Church there. And they told the family, and, Mary, you ought to go to your own church, meaning you ought to go to a Chinese church and the Chinese church was a Methodist one. So she and her family went to Methodist Church there. And when she came out to San Francisco, her mother would allow her to go to Methodist Church or Presbyterian, and she chose the Presbyterian. And so she also was very active in counseling and Sunday school teacher by attending Presbyterian Church and then also being a counselor. She became a high school counselor of high school boys and girls at Cameron House.

But I didn't meet her until really later on because I was too busy with junior high school kids, and she was too busy with high school kids. But I did meet her on Christmas caroling, and that's how we started and and began to go together. What I liked about Mary from the beginning was her philosophy of life. It was a very liberal Christian one and that we were compatible. We courted some years, and she and I got married on my second year in medical school. Mary and I then after a quick wedding left for Los Angeles to find housing. And from there we set up our life. We were very fortunate that at USC, she got a great job with the vice president of the college. And it was a stone's throw from a very protected area on the campus itself. One block from the main library on the campus where she worked, she would come home, put on dinner by the time I got back to dinner, chat over it. So that's we began our life there.

So I started the residency in psychiatry at Stanford in 63, and it was a very enlightening experience. It was a time in which psychiatry was in its infancy, and they were focused on the teaching of Freud and Jung and a few others. It was an important point in my life because I came to know through experience of training that what they were doing was equipping, equipping, need to be able to serve Western clients well and gave me the confidence that I was would be able to earn a living in private practice. But in concert with that realization, I began to recognize by the second-year resident residency that the techniques and undergirding philosophy did not fit for Asian clients or clients from Asia. Almost of most Asian groups, the feeling became stronger and seemed to be confirmed by my final year of training in psychiatry. I was very fortunate at that point to have one of the supervisors assigned to me who was a Zen master and his technique of guiding me, supervising me and how to treat patients was different and no less effective. And so I had a growing awareness that there was some deficit in the training at Stanford Psychiatry Department, and it so this third year confirmed my feelings even on the first year of training, because at that point I felt that there were other techniques that would be helpful in treating Western clients, much less Asian clients. And that was the beginning of family therapy.

Here in Palo Alto, we are very fortunate. We have a small psychiatric center still there called the Mental Research Institute, a few blocks from here, who had outstanding therapists. One of the outstanding therapists was the famous now Virginia Satir in family therapy. And I asked for permission to get trained and family therapy on my own time. In the evening, I was refused through that request because they felt that family therapy was heresy. And so, okay, that was their thinking. I went anyway in my own time and learned a lot. Then another opportunity came up, which was pioneered by a mental research institute. It was short term therapy in my day of training. It was primarily full therapy, 50-minute, hour. And I just felt it just didn't feel right for all clients. The short-term therapies seem valuable to me. I asked again. They again felt that it was heresy. I went anyway and learned a lot about family therapy and group therapy and short term therapy. So by the third year, it was a breath of fresh air to have Dr. Carl Peters, who was in partnership with two other psychiatrists on a clinic in San Jose. He supervised me for a year and opened my eyes to the fact that many of the teaching of Zen Buddhism was useful. And he provided me an opportunity and it was pivotal in the sense that he provided me an opportunity to earn a few dollars. By that time, my first daughter had come. Money became an issue, and so on. My last year of psychiatry, I moonlighted by going down to San Jose to do private practice. And the clinic there, private practice clinic. By the time I graduated in June, I had almost a full half time practice there and I was a good source of income and I had to decide. My plan with Mary was to go back to San Francisco, to Chinatown, to work with the Chinese immigrants and I decided to compromise.

It didn't work out 100%. I had Mary and my first baby go up to live in San Francisco while I stayed down here two or three evenings a week. And I would go back to San Francisco and volunteer. It worked out for a while, but it was quite physically exhausting and so didn't quite work. And so Mary and my daughter came back to Palo Alto; that was in 66-67, I guess in that amount of time being in Palo Alto. There were fine groups there. There was the Stanford Area Chinese Club that was quite active, and there was the group, the Cantonese speaking at our Mid-Peninsula Chinese Center, who was primarily Roberta Yee that that and had a fine social group. And I could see that their function was really important. It there was a sense of loneliness and isolation down here in Palo Alto. This coming together by both of the groups enabled them to feel a sense of belonging and participating and familiar cultural happenings and but I saw what was missing was that they were mostly social, socially oriented and and that served the function.

So we're in the year 1980-81, when we got the refugee $225,000 grant to work with the Vietnamese refugee. We lost that grant at the end of 81 and then from 81 onward, we were in desperate financial need. And however, at that point, the county, particularly the county of Santa Clara, under the help of Dr. Ken Meinhardt and then the city of San Jose, some also knew that we were the only game in town working with refugees began to siphon different federal and smaller grants to us to do different work. And so that's how we began to expand programs as the need for substance abuse arose. Then we would get a small grant for substance abuse or drug abuse, and then patch in augment with some mental health staff. When we had the Admiration Project, we would have to train mental health staff to be specialists and they were small grants for that. I might mention the domestic violence program very difficult to get money for women. All the good talk about corporations helping women; they're kind of stingy on the money for women. Very sad. And then so ACCI by 1985, 86 had expanded through these small grants, little grants from United Way also, and was able to patch patch in staff, retrain mental health staff and hire new mental health staff to to staff to specialty project. There were by 1985, 86 brought 25 different programs. And that was when we finally got a decent facility, moved from the big, sprawling ancient schoolhouse on Martha Street next to Spartan Stadium, to a nice looking building, the United Way building on Alameda Street. And that was the first real nice looking. But we outgrew that and then went to the facility just previous to Moorpark, and that was also in downtown San Jose on Gish Road. That was a nice facility where we were finally able to build out a big hall for our seniors. Was a senior program with really always popular from the beginning.

So along with increased budget, allotted each year, small immigrants were able to rent different properties. But along that way, by prior to Moorpark, we had a, oh, a satellite facility on the east side, which was quite large to deal with the Southeast Asian and to Chui Chow [Teochew] Chinese on the east side. And then we had a youth center on senter road for for a big drug abuse grant and youth work, afterschool, youth work. And then we were in nine different school districts using the counseling space. So for we were spending a whole lot of money on rent. And it doesn't take long for someone to know that all that money could go into programs instead of being siphoned off to new owners. But I guess I learned from my I don't know, maybe all the Chinese were like that. Chinese culture felt that land was always important property. I mean, that's that's really key. And so somehow I picked up from my grandfather, from his building of this building on Clay and Stockton, that was really important to own your own building and to be able to determine your own programs there. And similarly, my father subsequently to feel the same way for our small Seid association, which is on Washington and Powell Street in San Francisco.

And I always picked up that that security for at least for my family was related to property. I always felt that AACI needed to have it's own property. But after the trauma of losing that mental health program to a quarter million dollar, I was convinced that ACCI had to have its own facility, cut down the program expenses, put it into building, and Moorpark became the building. Again here were fortunate helpers. This powerful guy, Bob Ceylan, was head of the Valley Medical Center, the hospital, but he was head of all the health program in Santa Clara County and as you know, Moorpark property is right next Valley Medical Center. He wanted the Moorpark property. He had more clout than AACI, and I couldn't beat him. And but he never, never spoke to me directly. But he came with me and said, Allan, you go ahead with the building. If you guys get it, that's fine. I'll lease our lease. All those empty offices that you have and put our clinics over there. So it was kind of no loss or a win win situation. But, you know, we were always short of money and thank God to Raymundo Espinoza, a family gardener clinic. He had bought a new building using state loan grant for Gardener Clinic, a big building. And I knew about it and I asked him what he helped me to inform our board of directors of AACI that it can be done because we never I knew that there were some solid business men on the board by that time who were pretty conservative on money don't take risks. And he came over, did a tremendous job with the board, not only offered his specialty, but he said that he will bring the key consultant, the new Sacramento, how to get the money. And this guy was from Fresno. I think he has cancer now, but both of them came over on Saturday morning. We had a good explanation of him that it could be done.

And then the board met and a lot of concerns were raised. But many, many positive. And there was a time, a recession, 1990. People don't remember. It was a recession. And there were properties laying around. The price had dropped and more per property had been there for quite a while. So the price was low. And then finally, with the guarantee from Bob Ceylan that he would do that rent offices, I felt more secure and that by that time most of us in the business knew that whenever recession come and they will come every ten years, minority groups get defunded first or they get chopped first. In that case, the minority group and we'll get chopped. So this was the beginning of a hedge against being cut suddenly financially. But number two, it allowed AACI to expand. And because we were all over the place in the San Jose inefficient that takes time to travel.

So this was in the mid 1980s. You have good memory, and I might say the other trauma we had in 1990 was the emergence of unions. You got the unions for the licensed clinical social workers. You got the licensing for the marriage family counselors, you got the union of psychologists, and then you have the psychiatric association. Each of them were pirating off the other, everyone trying to make money. The license marriage family counselor would expand the practice into the territory of the licensed clinical social worker and carve out territory. The licensed clinical social worker were saying we're as good as any Ph.D. psychologist began cutting out the psychologists money. The psychologists got powerful and they were began cutting out money from psychiatry. And they were successful in many states by saying, with them taking a few courses in medicine, they could be just as good as any psychiatry. They start carving out psychiatrists. There was a threat of time and it was at that time that the political politicians listened to them and influence our county and influence other unions that they said you got to get rid of paraprofessional. All those Cambodians Vietnameses, Lao, Mein, Hmong that you train, get rid of them. They're not licensed, they're not trained. And they weren't listening to if we even supervise them for clinical licensed people. So we were in fighting a losing battle and the supervisors couldn't do anything because the state mental health bureaucracy, the county bureaucracy throughout the state were in favor of the union at that possible.

So that's the only time that I think I really played hard-nosed politics, went out to good friends from San Francisco, Willie Brown. He was powerful at that time, told him the situation. He understood. He's very sensitive to minority needs. And he said, what I see what I could do. Then I went up to Roberti, Senator Roberti. He was the head of the Senate. He was quite a liberal, and he became a savior. He had in his power the permission to grant to state mental health director. They had a new nominee coming through. And if that statement of director didn't get the approval of Roberti's committee, he could not be director. So Roberti made a known he wasn't cut off. No. You give the okay to the state mental health director until he abolished this proposed law and so to state mental health director got a guarantee that he would get his permission. His nomination confirm he would take out that requirement? So we were able to continue what the paraprofessionals. We had but a dead problem in every county, not just Santa Clara County. So that was also a traumatic time. That was most of the bureaucracy. I think the line workers and mental health staff understood the problem better than the beauracracy see up there, and they knew they couldn't do it.

Moving into 1990. The AACI had gotten huge. But not only that, it it was the losing of leaders by death loss Ed Kawazoe, we lost Bob Cam. I don't know how many others, but also an outgrowth of AACI, which occurred in 1981, back into the time when AACI lost funding, when Reagan took over, and the success of the curriculum battles that it was one in 1975, those darn big publisher came back in 1980, 81 to destroy all that Jeanette and Eimi and others did. And it was a huge effort to get that done. And in history, Congressman Leo Ryan, the guy who got killed in Jonestown and Jackie Spear who got wounded. Ryan helped Jeanette a lot to get it passed. The legislature and all that was going to be undone by 1980, 81.

The publisher in secret, I was not happy with that, I was angry they colluded. Oh, boy. This is going to be on tape. They worked together in secret with the State Department of Education on a proposal to dismantle which you participated and then many other the legal complaints process, which was to, I guess, screen all textbooks that they were free of sexist and racist material. They they forged the notion that racism and sexism had improved so much in California that the noncompliance or the complaints procedure no longer needed to be 100%, but merely to sample each year proposals so for for for purchase. I was on appointed by Governor Brown to first with the help of Henry and CAA and many San Franciscan put me on the State Board of education. I got hold of this information I think it was in late summer. It shocked me. I didn't hear about it. They kept it from the board members and so I altered the AACI battle worn leaders that we got to fight again and that we had to fight hard and we had to in three months, in November of 81, have to contact get up to Sacramento, in fact, a state board of Education to only discuss the matter but not vote. We were able to stop that. There were folks from all over California who came then. But the big battle came for a vote was in May of 1981. Again, a small group of actually and others across the state, there were 81 or 91 groups that landed in Sacramento on that day, a hearing and the impact at the state board to not adopt it.

And they essentially the state board yielded did not adopt it, didn't refuse it, but table to table and means that you almost got it killed. And so but the state board wanted to be sure they appoint as a state Select Committee with the chair of the committee are local. You may remember Connie, Tony Glenn Tony Vice Superintendent of Palo Alto School District, to head up the committee and the committee was to report back in three months whether from their own investigate and what they found whether the 100% compliance standards needed to be kept the same strengthen or weaken. And so then I guess in and those involved with the AACI literature is called the third textbook battle. And so it had to be fought in the Alum Rock School District hearing and then also down in Burbank, I think a second hearing and through the state and another hearing and July, July. And that battle was finally won. The third textbook battle. But important at that time was that we, all of us who did the battle there, we knew that it was some miracle, real miracle that a county group, AACI could win against these big conglomerates. And we said we were lucky two times three times to win. Next time we won't win because people had gotten more sophisticated in lobbying, more money went into lobbying. And next big battle. And there will be of all kinds dealing with Asian American issues. They'll be well armed, and AACI alone could not win another leading another battle.

So in 1981 in July, right after that victory in the third textbook meeting, I called together in Sacramento, what I called the group 20 group of 20 leaders, primarily out of Northern California, but some from San Diego and now L.A., to create a network located Asian American network with half an office in Sacramento to be a permanent lobbying group for Asian Pacific American. And this group then from the Group of 20 develop into an organization which was then called Asian Pacific American Advocates of California. And and then by August, August of that year, with leaders in Sacramento, San Diego, the Los Angeles, they put out a letter to multiple groups throughout California that those Asian Americans, Asian Pacific Americans who are interested in taking part in forming the statewide group, come to Sacramento for essentially a constitutional convention. About 60 people came up from all parts of the California, and they then formed the Asian Pacific American Pacific, Americans of California. So my time got really drained with the statewide organization and setting it up, getting it funded. Most difficult was to get San Francisco guys, Northern California guys to work with the L.A. guys politically in the political with the Democrats are Republican. They were against each other North and South. And then the Valley Group was a different group, more conservative. So my energy began to be sapped some. Half of my book talks about the ability to form a pan-Asian state group. Again, there were naysayers throughout the state similar in the forming of AACI, that it was foolhardy to even try.

The Asians Americans had tried many times on coalition. Everyone failed and it failed somehow with their own bickering among themselves. But more often when they become somewhat effective, the white groups would smear them and destroy them or weaken them. And so it was hard. But again, good leaders. San Francisco, it was Henry Deer who was really helpful…Uyeda Clifford Uyeda who was national JACL director was tremendous help. Ed was still alive, Ed Kawazoe. In the South, Hirano, who became second wife of Senator Hirano, and then Wakabayashi, who was JACL, national director and another director, and then some folks from the drug appeals leak in the South and then Janelle's territory. There were good people out of the Fresno area, Central Valley. They were quite different. San Diego is different too, so my time was spent creating that group. So looking back, what began to erode was that death, First there was Ed; I missed him a whole lot. Then there was this [inaudible] Galves out of Sacramento who was Filipina real dynamic guy who kept Pan Asians together in the Sacramento area. He died and then out of San Diego, the JACL pan-Asian leader died. So folks began to die or became old and lost synergy so that more and more with the ever expanding.

And I don't know if this was a mistake on my part. I always felt that AACI’s board of directors should not be a small clique. The reason is, I thought that board of directors who come on to AACI’s board of directors would be with new specialties of their own, mostly in the business community, AACI needed business acumen. People in investment and stocks who could help. And many of them were skill and experience in that area. But totally new to Asian American concern. And I wanted to big board for the all board members to begin to raise their consciousness. I remember Michele saying, Allan you're crazy, a board of 45. That's crazy. And and but looking back, there were pluses and minuses. There were good members out of that large group that did get turned on to Asian American advocacy and service, but slowly, AACI, and becoming more and more well-known with new people coming in the board change in that people for the first time, although it began at the beginning, but by the 1980s, mid-eighties, there were more coming in, there were more interest.

And they in one sense I loved it. They were interested in political career becoming a school board member, city council member at that time in the mid 1980s, there weren't a whole lot of folks interested in going up beyond the board of supervisor. Michael [Chang] was one of the first that grew so more and more competent skill experienced people in different area became to have different reasons for being part of AACI, and the unity in focusing on Asian American affairs were somewhat diluted because in any organization you got to be dynamic, you got to keep changing, your vision has to begin to be modified to meet current needs, old needs no longer there. The program ought to be junk, and so most of the board members tended to be active board members, but only attending board meetings and they were not involved with programing, tried to alter that by assigning each board member with one of the managers so that they become knowledgeable and supportive of program. But that that many had the extra time to do so. So the orientation, the velocity about the Active Board had to change, and I could notice that my energy level was also changing and it was time for a new group. You can only be creative up to a point, and I felt both Mary and I needed rest and so by that time I felt that for good or not, it became important to fill the holes by death of leaders in this statewide organization because the battles there on anti-Asian violence emerged.

But the battles from Vincent Chin continuing still had to be fought. I never forgot. 83, 84 AACI’s board I'm sorry, APAC, board photo and it lost by one vote goes to APAC board lost by one vote to make a march from Delano, just like Cesar Chavez to Sacramento in order to get coverage, because media was not covering the anti-Asian stuff. So more and more, my energy was strained by the state organization. And uh, anyway.

I had just come back from a vacation in Canada, and I was confronted with issues of, oh, I forgot what one issue there was. It had to do with budget, I think, uh, which was in very capable hands of Casey Xie. But there was some questioning about the budget, and whether I was attending to AACI as closely on the budget side as I should because there had been tension of different programs needing funding and that the distribution of funds to the different program whether or to how the mental health funds could be divided or channel into domestic violence or to alcohol or drinking driver or to gambling to anti-tobacco.

There was that issue. Uh, and then it got ugly in the sense that, oh, there was a, some questioning about drug, oh, it was the program, drug abuse program when we had a big federal funding program and that the youth drug abuse program was on the East Side, and that staff had become sort of solidifying on the east side with less contact with their main staff. So there was a separation there out there became sort of a kingdom of its own. Uh, there was this fellow from Hong Kong. I only found out afterwards, but I hired him so I take responsibility. Uh, he for his own reason, and I'm not quite sure what the motivation…he, if he handled the drug abuse side and the crew over in the East Side felt very close to him and he question the many of the programs that we had and that I wasn't paying attention to the drug abuse program as much as I should. He was instrumental in what essentially the turning of the young people there. He turned the thinking of David Panetta, who was one of the youth manager over there, and then the Vietnamese over there, too. They followed Francis was his name and they just felt that I was out of touch with their needs and the program there.

And then there were, I think, on the main facility, uh, there was more unity there because the main facility was involved with the state organization putting out newsletters and commentaries. So time went into that. I don't, I don't think there was complaint there, and there was the allegation that I was abusing the budget, claiming that I was making so much money. Uh, and that the budget problem was involved with my absconding with money. Oh, and then that brought in, of course, the medical board examination of the budget and everything and everything was proper. And I was clear. I never worried about that. I got it pretty petty. I had bought a use Ford, but it looked new Ford car, and there was complain that I was driving elegant new car. And most of sane people know Ford was not one of the luxury cars. And so that is what I can remember.

Also at that time, there was strain in trying to fight for a qualifying grant to have a medical clinic and AACI because from the beginning you really can't treat mental illness when someone has trouble with language, along with physical problem, you send them to a general practitioner. You would have to send an interpreter. So always I felt that they needed a medical clinic and a pediatric clinic right at AACI, so when they get through and the mental health staff, the mental health staff can walk next door or a different floor to the physical. And there was a fierce fight of getting money for mental health because not Raymundo, but the Board of Family Health Clinic, they had the rights to the territory all the way from what I don't know, North San Jose down into the border of Gilroy and maybe San Benito; there could be only one qualified by federal grant to that territory. Raymundo was very open to AACI getting a slice at that territory because they weren't serving non-English speaking Asian, but their board of directors were not…they were shortsighted. They didn't want someone else to carve into their territory. So there was a fight going on at the federal level and a nasty battle then that involved Latinos involved with the board. Although Raymundo remained good and help AACI to get the bill. So I remember being quite exhausted in the fight there. And so there were many, many things happening in the 1970s [1990s] and we had just gotten not only funding for Moorpark, getting Moorpark, people moved into Moorpark programs going, getting the new shelter for women, starting that and getting money.

(Interviewer) I'm sorry, this was the 1990s you mentioned. Yes, 1990s.

Yeah. So I'm sorry, it's 1992. The problem actually a problem started in 93. There was no problem until 93. Oh I think 93. There was a reporter, also a new reporter there that got involved and gave bad publicity. But, you know, reporters do render service. So it's 93. Oh, that was the time 1980 was going. Okay. So that was 22, 23 years.

Oh, right actually, after the getting the shelter, I felt in getting it on its feet. It was a good time to leave because that would conclude Mary's work in the domestic violence side. And then I felt a need at that point to do what I can with the statewide organization, with the many deaths that occurred. And it seemed like the loss of leaders were very critical in the L.A. area and Sacramento area to vital regions that the state grew. And so felt that that was a time to have new leaders at AACI so I can shore up the statewide group. So that's what I can remember. But after my leaving, it was quite chaotic. There was quite a leadership vacuum, and thanks to Michele [Lew], she came in right at the right time to rescue and I'm very grateful to her. If she didn't come in at that time and had her understanding, I think AACI might not last anymore because the powers that be of AACI’s board and director, they were going to sell off our key to Gardner. But but Michele stopped that nonsense. But that director of that time on the Board, they weren't in touch enough. They were going to lay off the four ethnic team leaders that would have wiped out AACI’s connection. And I that's one of the few times I decided it was important to talk to a new director, talk to Michele. Whatever she does, don't lose those four ethnic team leaders. That one really undo AACI. And Michele told my advice kept those four. And so I'm forever grateful. And Michele from there took on and she with her connection to politicians, she was able to secure good grants for renovating the building to bring in more revenues. So I personally and Mary feel a great debt to her.

Yeah, in fact, I have a old interview. We never got around to it that we did a two-hour interview on Michelle. I’ll give it to you guys. It was a good interview. I, I can remember…I don't think Howard was involved in that one.