My name is Thomas Daniel Izu. Let's see my place of birth is Seattle, Washington, March 29th, 1958.

(Interviewer) your father's name and place of birth.

His name is Yamato Douglas Izu. And we assume I don't know what's listed on his birth certificate, but we assume it's Los Altos Hills. And the date is. I just forgot. I can look it up for you. But it was. It was a 1924 or I think.

(Interviewer) And what was your father's education and occupation?

My father went to San Jose State and transferred to Stanford, and he became a chemical engineer, and he was an aerospace engineer. That was his occupation at Boeing and then at Lockheed.

So my grandparents, both sides, my mom and my dad, were immigrated from Japan in the early 1900s. On my father's side, they have an interesting story in that the understanding is my grandfather Izu, came over from Japan to help build a Japanese garden and help run an orchard in a place that's now called Foothill College. It's the grounds of the Foothill Community College, but it used to be an estate owned by a wealthy family called the Griffins, Griffin family. And so he was hired to apparently, to help build this teahouse and garden, but also to kind of supervise the Japanese laborers, because at the time, the orchards they had were mostly Japanese workers that they were using. So we believe that's probably where my father was born because he definitely grew up on the on the ranch there.

But he died when my father was only three. So that kind of cut off this whole part of the family there. And a lot of the knowledge we have is gone. We have very few photos. And my understanding from relatives is that they burned them all after Pearl Harbor happened because they were very worried about the connection to Japan. Then my mom's side, also early 1910's, when her father and mother came over from Japan, they--my mom's father, my grandfather was a was a farmer, and he did sharecropping. I think, they called it tenant farming in the Berryessa area of San Jose, at that time was closer to Milpitas probably. And that's where my mom grew up in the farming area of North San Jose. Well so for my father's father in the Izu side and that's the story is that they were looking for people who could do certain kinds of work and including construction. It does make sense because there was a real interest among wealthy people, especially up the peninsula, to have Japanese gardens at that time that became this big craze, so to speak. So that's most likely. It makes sense. That's probably how he did come over. Somehow the word got out. So for my my mom's side of the family, I don't really know other than I think there were a lot of conflict and issues going on in her family back in Japan, her or her parents' family and it had things to do that people really don't either they don't know or they don't want to talk about. And so I never learned about, gambling debts and conflicts with the younger siblings cause he was the eldest, which is kind of unusual. So-- but he came over probably along with a lot of other Japanese immigrants at the time that were this is a way to get away from a lot of this turmoil and possibly start over again because of all the changes going on in Japan. So that's about all I know about that side.

(Interviewer) What languages did you speak at home?

You know, pretty much just English. My parents, they knew some Japanese, although they said, oh, we don't really know how to speak very well, but my grandmother on my father's side lived with us for a while. I was really young after we moved back from Seattle, where I was born, we moved back to this area, and we lived in Sunnyvale and our grandmother lived with us for a while because one of my uncles very suddenly passed away, and he was kind of looking after my grandma and his family. And my father was really worried about them as well as her mom. So he worked for Boeing up in Seattle and then moved back here to work for Lockheed because he had gotten a job as an aerospace engineer in Boeing. So he transferred to Lockheed. And so my you know, my Grandma Izu didn't speak much English at all, so they definitely could speak Japanese. But to us at home, it was mostly just English. And that's kind of where we were brought up, although we did know some phrases. Unfortunately, they never taught us any of the words I wanted to learn later, like different swear words. I had to learn that after I got to college, I had to ask friends like how do you say, what is that word? mean and they look at me really incredulous. That's that's baby talk for poop. Don't you know that? You know I don't. We never we never talk about that, so.

(Interviewer) Did not learning the language impact you in any way in your relationship to Japanese culture. Did you have any reflections on that?

Yeah, well, well. I'll tell you this story. And this took years later to understand this. So on my mom's side. My grandmother, grandfather, they were still alive when I was a little kid. And they after the war, they had moved to a house in Japantown. So we would always go visit them pretty regularly, and we would come over for big events and everything. So my grandfather would just sit in this easy chair, what do you call it, those reclining chairs. And he didn't talk much. He was very quiet. He had this very funny, kind of crooked smile on his face. And I was just a little kid. So I just thought, Well, that's just the way old people are. They just don't talk much, especially to little kids. He would. The only time he would talk is if my aunties exchanged some kind of exchange about some something needing something or some comment he would make and they would respond in Japanese. So first of all, I learned that, oh, my parents probably know more Japanese than they're letting on because that's all they talked. But I just thought that he didn't know, he didn't know English. And that's just the way grandparents were.

My oldest brother, though, who had been sentient longer than I had had been kind of observing things. And years later he told me, you know, don't you know that he spoke English really well, her grandfather. And he just didn't want to talk to us. And so my oldest brother had a theory of why he didn't talk to us. And it was not that he didn't like little kids. It's just that well, my, my, my brother said that I think he was had emotional problems after especially after the war. He was a farmer. And after camp, he was you know, he was into his fifties, at least. And he could no longer be the provider for the family. His, my uncle's older, my, my mom's older brothers kind of took over and actually earned a lot of money and helped them figure out how to survive. And so he did some gardening. A lot of Japanese Americans did that after the war. And he the way my brother thinks, he was kind of a broken man. So I just didn't understand. I just I only actually said what we all people are. And so it's connected to the language thing because I just started realizing how oblivious I was and perhaps not learning Japanese was a way to keep me from learning this kind of history because maybe it was something that was just difficult to figure out to talk about because that linger later, I wondered like, how come my aunties and uncles didn't tell us about my grandfather? I mean, if my grandfather really was-- knew how to speak and speak English, why didn't they think it was weird that he wasn't talking to us? You know, it seems like they would have said something, but they never did. It was just so that's just the way it is. So don't worry about it. And I started realizing this is true on my father's side, too. There are these stories I hear, these rumors about nobody would tell us. And because I couldn't speak Japanese, I probably wouldn't be able to find out anyway, you know. So maybe I don't know that as a fact because my parents insisted, ah, we don't really know how to speak Japanese very well. I believe that they probably didn't know how to talk about complicated things involving emotions and stuff like that. So I did understand that. But I guess that's just kind of a background to how I think not knowing the language affected me.

Yeah. So my father got a job at Lockheed. This is during the context is this is during the big boom, this military industrial complex development after World War II. And Lockheed set up shop in the Santa Clara Valley, San Jose area, not not just up in Sunnyvale in particular, to start building weapons for the U.S. government. And so Lockheed missiles and space technology, that was the division my father was in and he was a materials engineer. So they were designing nose cones for missiles and probably aircraft. And this is the height of the Cold War. And so that's the context is that this big buildup was happening. It had gone from orchard agricultural to now military industrial kinds of industry in the area.

And so some of my first memories are I was only three, four is my father, okay, we're going to live in Sunnyvale because there's new housing developments. This is south Sunnyvale. And at the time it was almost all orchards. So one of my early memories is my father took me, took me him, took me with him to get some free firewood. And he and he got a chainsaw. He rented it out from a friend, and he was just sawing up the stumps and this was an orchard. Later I figured out this is an orchard that had been chopped down because they were going to put in some pod mall of some kind there near where we were going to live. And so this is my introduction to some of the transition that I didn't understand how much later and that this is what was happening. And so we lived in a brand new development in South Sunnyvale, brand new houses and ranch style suburban homes and this whole neighborhood was pretty much mostly all white because that was kind of the new developments were mostly white, they were further separated from the old Sunnyvale parts, which probably had more Latino people and there others there. This was kind of something that's described really well in this book by this guy named David Beers or Dave Beers called Blue Sky Dreams. And he kind of like a peer my brother's peer. He grew up in West San Jose, which is really similar to this, but he describes it to this South Sunnyvale area and Cupertino area and brand new subdivisions.

You know, this idea that you're all part of this new kind of community that we're developing, this is kind of this community of educated people who are professional engineers, people who are going to be part of this technological development, brand new clean houses, brand new schools, things that are really clean. And this is the future of America. So that's kind of made sense to me that this is also this I remember sitting on a yellow Naga Hide sofa to watch Apollo 11 land on the moon, and David Beers describes the same thing in another part of the city. That's what he was doing sitting on this yellow Naga sofa. So the point is, this whole culture seemed very similar, so but at the same time, we weren't white. And that was kind of this contradiction that I became aware of, but not very. I didn't understand why what was happening, but I was aware of this problem, this difference, because at that time, in that part of Sunnyvale, I grew up with, I grew up in, I went to Sarah Elementary School, which does not exist anymore it's Sarah Park and also Cupertino Junior High, which is in Cupertino and then Homestead High School.

So at that time, all of those places were almost all white as far as I can remember. And I remember being called names all the time. Yeah, Jap, gook, chink, because at this time you had the context is the war in the U.S. war in Vietnam is going on so is very popular to call people all sorts of names and I didn't know why people were calling me these names. My parents didn't know how to talk about it. And I was just a little kid, so I didn't know how to talk about it either. I just felt I just there was just something wrong with me. And years later, I realized that I was also very introverted and very shy and I don't think this helped, too, because it was really hard for me to make friends. So given this environment that I saw as being very hostile, I was pretty much a loner for a while I was growing up there and I'll share the story to try to describe this a little better. When I was a little kid in our neighborhood, there's a lot of other kids walking around. We would walk to the elementary school. I remember one day I was walking around with this guy. I mean, he wasn't exactly my friend, but I knew him, and he was nice to me and he's white. And we were just walking along and this other kid comes along, he's white and he goes, Why are you hanging out with Jap face? And so the guy who was next to was kind of my friend said, oh, you shouldn't say that. And then he said, That's not right. And then he said something like, “Don't you know the Chinks invented gunpowder?” because we were talking about firecrackers. So so I didn't understand any of this. I just felt bad. But, you know, but I still remember it. And I was like, I don't know, seven or so at the time, but my friend was trying to defend me by, you know, you know, citing that, well, the Chinese invented firecrackers and we like firecrackers, don't we? So there was this kind of weird dynamic, you know, where it's not like people are just really racist and they hate me and then people aren't racist and they like me and we're friends. It's this kind of very strange position to be put in, whereas these people are saying they like me by saying this thing, which I have no connection to, and I don't understand what they're talking to, and it doesn't seem very nice either.

So I just realized this really confused me. I think growing up in that environment. So I was just trying to describe the environment of as a child. So I had people, I had friends and I played with who were white. In fact, the kid who said, who wants to play with Jap face later? Because he lived in the neighborhood, we would do things together later. We would ride our stingray bikes around the neighborhood and go to the local drugstore. The suburbs, I thought as I got older, and it was very strange because it was like the book I described describing this kind of new lifestyle. It was supposed to be clean and modern, but to me it seemed really sterile, and everything was the same and there was no nature there. And at the time I couldn't describe it that way. This is just over the years. It's just growing up there, just thinking this is such a strange place. It's very alienating, not only because of the racial issue, but just environment. It seems if this is the modern world then I don't think I really want to be in the modern world anymore.

There were a few [Asian kids in my neighborhood]. and then I remember from elementary school on, there were a few other Asians, Chinese, some Japanese, not very many. And the thing my recollection is that we avoided each other. It's not like we didn't like each other or call each other names. We just kind of because we kind of held back from each other. Because if you are seen, you know, 2 to 3 Asians together, that was, you know, considered weird and people would comment on it or if it was the opposite gender, like in my case, a girl, they would say, oh, I bet you're going to get married. Isn't that what they usually do? You're probably going to get married or is that your sister anyway? Just being a little kid is just very uncomfortable. I don't know how to deal with this. And given that you have no and I had no understanding of what was the dynamics of this, I just felt really uncomfortable. So there weren't very many.

Another story I'll share, though, is that we became really good friends, my father, my mother and myself, with a neighbor just across the street from us who is white, really kind man. And he later told us all these stories about the other neighbors, and he told us in particular about another neighbor around the corner who was just really upset with all these, you know, non-white people moving into the neighborhood or ruining the neighborhood because it just turned out that the person next to us was a Kibei Nisei. And you say you didn't have any kids, but you know, he had a pretty heavy Japanese accent. That was just a coincidence. I don't my parents didn't take him as a neighbor, and somebody later moved in next to him and she was Asian from Hawaii. And I'm not sure what kind of Asian she was, but she definitely was Asian, and we weren't really close to her. But, you know, you know, we we saw her regularly. So I think this was just really disturbing to this other white neighbor that her friendly neighbor told us about. He was starting to freak out about. And then he saw my middle brother, Mark, who had short hair, very short hair like a buzzcut. And in the summer, he gets really dark and apparently this was just really a oh my God, they're moving in Blacks. So that's what he thought. I think he probably called them the N-word. That's probably what he said. He didn't know it was my brother that I don't know if that would help you any way. And then what happened is apparently a Mexican American family moved in next to them. They moved so so our friendly neighbor kind of laughed and said, well, I guess he's gone now. So he later told this, all these stories like this that we didn't know that as far as I knew. I don't know if my parents had a clue, but but they didn't like us there. Some people.

(Interviewer) How long did you stay in that area?

Oh, let's see. We were there from when we moved down to Sunnyvale in ‘62, right after the house was built in this new development. And my parents were there until they passed away. So the whole time.

(Interviewer) So you had, if I caught this correctly, Sarah Elementary School, Cupertino Junior high school, and Homestead High School.

Yes, that's right.

(Interviewer) So in and we're focusing on education now so in your K-12 education, do you have any memorable experiences in the classroom or was there a teacher that mentored you or you have teachers remember or what was your experience like coming up in the K-12?

Oh yeah. Well, I felt pretty alienated and throughout that whole time, looking back on it, I don't I can't say I have fond memories of school at all. Grammar school, you know, when you're a little kid, even if there are kids that aren't very friendly, there are kids are still kids, and there are teachers that are very nice. I remember one teacher saying very complimentary things about me. I don't think she understood. If you compliment a kid too much, that's not necessarily good for you because other kids will get, you know, try to beat you up or something. But she just not because I was so quiet that I was very disciplined, and it probably was a stereotype. She was white, too, in that she probably just thought, oh, wow, these these culturally, these kids are just so well-behaved.

And in fourth grade in California, most kids usually I think they do this thing where they build missions. You know, I think they might even still do that. My kids had to do something like that, but at one time they switched it, and we learned about Japan. I think a lot of fourth graders were learning about Japan. Years later, I figured this was probably part of an effort to hold up Japan. This is a former enemy of this country and now we're friends. And they were a strange culture, but now we can be friends. Because I think the way I look at it years later, as they were trying to build up this idea, see, these are the good Asians, where the communist Chinese are the dangerous one. So, you know, they were they you know, they were probably very good-natured intentions involved. They're trying to early multiculturalism before that became a term. But but I was but we did a a play based on a Japanese folktale and so they had to have somebody be the emcee. So guess who they picked. And I'm very shy, but I did it and I asked my mom, do we have anything I can wear? So my mom had to rummage through stuff to wear something Japanese and stuff like that. So that's my memories of elementary school.

Junior high, they're just terrible because that's, I think for a lot of kids. I later learned that's terrible for most kids because you get thrown to the wolves almost. And these people are all kind of trying to beat you up and call you names and stuff like that. And I don't really have any fond memories of anybody there. All the teachers seemed really mean and they were trying to make us fit into a certain mold. You know, high school. The stories I have there are interesting in that there was a math teacher who was really friendly to me. He had he was white, Russian background, I think. But he had grown up in China. So he had he would always talk about what deep respect he has for Asia. And I think he really meant it. And he had some knowledge, but he kind of singled me out in the way I described. That's not necessarily good for you. Goes, Oh, Tom, he's just so smart. He's so smart.

I was really bad at math. And that was an embarrassment because another story I'll tell you really quickly right after this. But he he it was a geometry class. And he kept praising me that my grades actually went up. So this is what I learned later, that this is how powerful a teacher can be in helping you, you know, saying, well, I guess I better do really well because he's he's telling everybody I'm really good at this. So all these people in Asia somewhere counting on me to do it. So I did it. I had a counselor in high school, very unusual. He was a Japanese American, a Nisei like my parents. And he we took the SAT tests back then, and he was shocked at how low my math score was. And my writing English score was very, really high. And so he said, this is all wrong. It should be that way around. He said, you better take more math. You got to do better in math, otherwise you're not going to have a chance. And so I didn't understand what he was talking about. It just seemed really weird. I did feel bad that I wasn't really good at math, although years later I realized what they were talking about is my ranking at the time. They could show you a ranking among all the U.C. applicants at the time. You know what your score is, and it's pretty far down. It didn't matter. It didn't mean I was terrible at math. It just wasn't very high. So that was a strange experience in high school is not getting these really mixed messages that you're not supposed to be good in reading, writing in English, you're supposed to be good in math. Why is that? You know, don't…no idea. At the time.

(Interviewer) Did you did your parents care at all about like how you did with math?

Well, they were interesting in that years later, I had peers in college, especially you just told me these horror stories about their parents, the pressure they put on them. My parents didn't do that, but they had a different kind of pressure. It was basically, oh, you know, you'll just do really well. We know you're smart. We just know you'll do whatever you want to do you can do, and you'll just be the best. And then I also had added pressure that my oldest brother did really well in school and he was in sports. He did wrestling. So he was actually there were high school teachers that remembered him and they said, oh, you're Dave's little brother. Oh, no pressure on you. But he was the student ever had in my whole history teaching here at home, that kind of stuff like that. It's like, well, I mean, I didn't resent that. I was really proud of my older brothers, but it did make me uncomfortable. Then my middle brother was a rock star. He loved music. And so his introduction was, This is the year age of the garage bands, and he learned how to play electric guitar. So he was really cool and he had long hair and everybody thought he was so cool. So people thought either I was the greatest student or I was just really cool like my other brother. So this was kind of the pressure that was coming from them. Then my parents were saying, Don't worry, you can just do anything you want. So it's really, you know, I didn't really know how to deal with it very well.

So I'll start by explaining. Both my older brothers had a big influence on me, even though we used to get into fights and there was, you know, like they would tease me constantly. Fortunately, they didn't gang up on me because sometimes they would be fighting among themselves, but they would now and then take turns teasing me, you know, was my my mom did say she was proud of me, though, because one time she just said, yeah, let them have it, Tom, because they were teasing me. And then I and I just started saying, You can't do that to me. I was just a little kid. But the point is, even though I had these tensions with my older siblings after they went to college, they were a big influence on me. My oldest brother told me he went to UC Santa Cruz and at that time there was kind of a very alternative school to go to, was really small, didn't have grades, had what they called the art of evaluation.

And he didn't tell me I should go there, but he just said, “Well, if you want to go there, you know, I'll show you around,” which he ended up doing. And also he said you should check out the Asian American Student Alliance and become involved in that. I think that'll really help you. And then my middle brother, Mark, who went into music, he went to San Francisco State and one time when he was, you know, on a break, he came back, and he took me to an Asian American writing writers' conference. You know, that was just the beginning of this Asian American identity thing. And there was a group of writers, Lawson, Inada, Frank Chin and a couple of other people who are featured there. So he took me to this, you know, I'm just his little brother. So it seems usually the older brother, I get lost, you know, but he thought I should go. And so they really influenced me in what I what to look for when I went to college. So my oldest brother showed me around UC Santa Cruz because I really loved the nature there because at that time it was a very small college and as I said, I grew up in the suburbs and that seemed really strange and artificial, so I really liked it. And I like camping and going in the woods and hiking. So. So I said, okay, I'm going to go here.

And I checked out the Asian American Student Alliance, like you said, and there were people who remembered him. But it wasn't bad. Oh, he was the greatest. You know, it wasn't that kind of pressure. These are people who are older students who looked after the younger students. And that was something that was really really helpful to me. It was it was like I was this totally new environment, and I was pretty shy. But they really helped the younger students because they there weren't that many Asian students at UC Santa Cruz at that time or any students of color. And so having that support meant a lot to me, and they really were encouraging, like so,I became a leader in the Asian American Student Alliance and at that, you know, which I would never have done before, but it was because of their coaching and their mentoring. And that's one of my strongest memories is that kind of support, because they didn't have programs back then of any kind to to support Asian students or any students of color.

(interviewer) And what major did you choose? Were you undeclared a while or what did you decide?

I was undeclared, and I think this is part of the pressure. I felt that I was supposed to become a professional of some kind, any kind of professional. And as my parents said, I would do whatever I did. I'm sure I would just be great and they'd be really proud of me. And so I had desperately to find something to do. So I was undeclared cause I didn't know what to do. I was very interested in philosophy, very interested in that kind of thinking and understanding. And I started to become really interested in East Asian philosophy because that was popular in the time this is in the 19, you know, the and I when I went to college, it was I graduated from high school in 1976. So the way I like to describe it is I was kind of the later end of like my brother's period where in the sixties and seventies there was the very beginning of a lot of Asian American movement. So I was kind of the trail end of that, but I was interested in all these different, different ways of thinking that I was being exposed to the past. So I wasn't sure what to major and I was cured of being a philosophy major because one of my first early dorm mates was this transfer student, white, basically kind of a fascist, and he really like Nietzsche. Nietzsche is a German philosopher, and I don't think it's fair to say he was necessarily a fascist, but people use him like that. So he was not-- just the way he acted and talked. I thought, okay, I don't think I can survive in philosophy.

And so I became a pre-med because I said, okay, I guess I better become a doctor because I liked science and that would make my parents proud. But I realized just recently more reflecting on this, that a lot of my peers at the time, because I was involved in Asian American Student Alliance, I started hanging out mostly with Asian students. A lot of them, felt a lot of pressure, too. And it was different now because I think mostly like my kids and a little bit before my kids, the intense pressure to get these incredible GPAs, which I didn't know was possible above a 4.0, stuff like that. And these incredible test scores. So I thought back in my day we had it easy, but we were at it at that part of the baby boom generation where they were. The numbers had just gone way up. There's a lot of kids trying to go to college, and they were not there. That big debate was, are we going to expand the infrastructure to have more openings in colleges like UCSC? And UCs, CSU, state colleges or not. And that was a big battle. And this was also during affirmative action that Bakke decision I think had just come out. I can't remember. But that was that was a big battle, too. So there was a first wave of some students, Asian students of color, who were able to go to it into colleges, possibly had better chance. But by the time we're coming along, there's a lot. And the competition to go to professional schools like medical school, law school was just cutthroat.

So even at UCSC, which is kind of everybody made fun of how low key and hippie like it was that was still happening there too. So a lot of my peers, I realized the stories they were telling me, they were under a lot of pressure. They were desperately trying to figure out, just like me, I have to become a professional, some kind and like one person I knew told me this very honest guy, just very down to earth, not very sophisticated. He said, yeah, my dad his dad was a dentist, and I have to be a doctor. I just have to. And he said, Yeah, he came up to me and he held these car keys and dangled me in front of me. This these are keys to a Datsun 240Z that those are the cool sports cars at the time. He said, you can have it if you get into medical school. And, you know, my my friend, he was just really, you know, really down to earth kind of guy, not sophisticated. And he just said, yeah, I just sure, I'd like a sports car. I just want my dad to be proud of me. And so I'm going to try. But we were struggling and chemistry, chemistry and physics is just really hard said. He said, I don't think I can hack it.

And in years later I realize how bad I felt because I couldn't help him, because I was trying to deal with this too. But I couldn't talk like he could. He was just telling me this is how I feel. And I couldn't even say that, oh no, I'm going to do it somehow or, you know, act like I knew what I was doing, and I didn't know what I was doing. And then I had other friends too who were desperately struggling. One wanted to was a pre-med. Then he changed to pre-law. Then later he decided, Now I'm going to become a Reverend, a Priest. And and that seemed to solve problems. So, okay, I can I can get into seminary or something. And then his parents, even though he's not going to be rich necessarily, it's a respectable thing to be. So I just realized that there's a lot of pressure on us. So what happened to me is I decided I can't do this pre-med thing.

You know, I like science, but I just can't do it. So I became a sociology major because, you know, I just happened to be randomly taking classes and a lot of them were under sociology. So I just said, okay, I guess that's my major. So I did it. And so my main influence though, I'll put this in here, is that UC Santa Cruz did not have an ethnic studies program. One of the provosts of Oakes College, an African American man, one day saw us doing an Asian American, an awesome Asian American Student Alliance event in the brand new buildings they had built. And we had food in it, you know, this new auditorium theater they built. And he, and the provosts at Santa Cruz, they live on each of the separate little colleges. And so he comes out there and he looks at us, goes, no, no, no, no, because there's this beautiful carpet and all this Asian food. It's going to get all over the place so that, oh, man, we're in trouble. He said tell you what? Just used my house. My wife and I are going out, so my little daughter's here. But don't worry. She can show you where things are, he said. We were like, what? So he did. So we had our little party. Then we really cleaned up really well. And then later he approached us and say, “You know, I think you should have some Asian American studies classes here. You guys don't have anything. So I found some funds. So I want your group to get a committee together and you can hire some people for me. I'll take care of all the paperwork,” which is just weird. Like, what is he talking about?

But he set up this whole thing with soft funding to hire people to teach Asian American studies classes, and they did not have to have advanced degrees. It was anybody, wasn't permanent, you know, so it was just temporary. But so we selected, with the help of the older students, we picked people like Pat Sumi to come teach. And she was a real activist at the time, and she was very famous. She went on the delegations to North Vietnam during the war, to People's Republic of China when people didn't do stuff like that. So people like that. And then Michael Omi, who later became the head of Asian American studies at UC Berkeley, he was a graduate student in sociology at UC Santa Cruz at the time. So we got him to teach classes, whole bunch of people, and that had a really big impact on me. So then at that time I learned that I don't have to be a professional and I can just learn all these things that I wanted to learn. And so these classes, some of them weren't taught that well, I have to admit. But nonetheless, they were talking about things that nobody else talked about and people like Pat Sumi, she would invite us up to her house and we would hang out with all these other people are doing things in the community. And another instructor just did walking tours. And like the Filipino community in San Francisco, which I can't remember what they used to call it back then saying things like that. And we got to see these people who are doing work in Asian communities like in Oakland. We went to the Oakland Asian Health Center to help people and help their community. So that had a big influence. I mean, you could do this. That's basically what they're saying. And then people would come to try to recruit students. If you're interested in going to law school, you should do it so you can go back and fight for your community. You know, all of these kind of influences through those classes, even though those classes, it wasn't a program and like I said, it wasn't a very coherent educational experience in some ways, but it was just something that I wouldn't get anywhere else.

(Interviewer) Last question. Did you do any other activities while you're in college? You participate in sports or anything or like you had mentioned, the clubs?

Hmm. No, I didn't really do any other than AASA. So that was the main thing. Asian American Student Alliance. We did a lot of activities. Like that's where I learned, you know, the infamous teriyaki chicken thing where you had to learn how to cook these gigantic batches. But it was fun because I learned from, especially the older students, how to cook. I mean, I didn't really learn a lot about cooking, but I did. The only other thing I was involved in was that there was something called the TWANAS, which was a newspaper. TWANAS stands for Third World, Third World American, no, TWANAS, Third World, Asian Native American Studies [Third World and Native American Studies] or something like that. So what it was then it's acronym came about because earlier there was a struggle to get there, what they used to call Third World Studies, or an Ethnic Studies established at Santa Cruz. And so that they did an acronym was TWANAS, and they weren't successful. So we discovered, one of my friends discovered that the campus newspaper was called City on the Hill, got some money from the college to do a special series about students of color, you know, and they were supposed to do something involving Asian, Native American, Latino, Black students. And as far as we knew, they were doing nothing. And so my friend went around exposing this fact.

And so some people went to the newspaper and said, So what are you guys going to do? You know, we're going to cause you a lot of trouble if you don't do something. I said, okay, okay, okay. It was all white people there running the newspaper. The students, they said, okay, okay, you guys do it and will help you. So that's how this TWANAS newspaper came about. Okay, you guys just do it. Just. Just tell us. Tell people good things about us that we're we're helping you, see, we're good guys. So they, they picked people from the AASA, the Black Student Union, MeChA. And I'm not sure if the Indigenous, Native Americans. I think it was the Native American Students Association was, yeah, was there, and representatives to help figure out how to do this newspaper because none of us had ever done a newspaper. Some of the staff of the City on the Hill though, who are supportive, they showed us how to use it. They use a typesetting machine in those days and how to how to put a newspaper together. So that's what we did. So we I can't remember how many issues we did, but we cranked it out. And, you know, I remember staying up all night laying it out. And those days you actually had to cut the stuff and glue it on this board and make it align. So we did get to work with a lot of different kinds of people of color then too, and it was really fun, but that was a real experience and also developed my identity as being part of this bigger movement.

(Interviewer) Do you have any copies or is it digitized?—

I'm not sure if it's digitized. It still exists today, but it's become more of like a an art literature magazine because some of us actually met with the students producing it because they know the origin. So they wanted to talk to old people about it. So I have a friend who I know has some copies. So my somebody might, I could find out because he has the original first edition, which I used to have. I don't know what I did with it, but I'm sure there's somebody who has copies of it.

Well, what I have to tell you is that I was involved in different left groups and these left groups were multinational. That's what we used to call it, multinational unity. So they really did believe in social change. And this came this these groups came out of the 1960s. They saw themselves as being revolutionary. But some of them were pretty much dominated by white activists. And there were chauvinism going on because of that. But there were others that really were trying to reach kind of what they saw, the potential of people of color movements for bringing social change. And they really believed in it. So the network I had or people who were like that, who were in what was called at that time, the Chicano movement, or also known as the Black Liberation Movement for African Americans. Those two groups in particular. And then there are people involved in labor that I knew. So that helped me a lot in bridging these separations because I knew people who are involved in these things. So they introduced me, and they welcomed me because they knew that they trusted me. So for example, I got to know some Chicano families in San Jose pretty well, and these people were civil rights activist types. And I got to hang out with them and learn what their lives were like and then some cannery workers the same thing. I got to learn what their lives were like, and for example, they invited me to a tamale fundraising event. Big family thing, where I had no idea what was going on. They had these gigantic container pots, and they were cooking all these different ingredients, and they were assembling it and they taught me how to do it and it was really fun.

So things like that taught me that that's how you get to know people and then, you know, you find out what their lives are like. And to me it wasn't just like, oh, now I know how to talk to them better. It was very moving to me to find out what their families were like and to realize this elder, who I saw as an elder was taking time to talk to me about this and wanted to know my own experience and that really stuck with me. So that's kind of what I look for when I'm talking to people from other communities. It's not like just being in quotes an ally unquote. It's actually seeing them as people just like yourself. And coming from an immigrant background myself, I could relate to their experiences. Coming from a group that had the laws used against them, I can relate to some of the things they were talking about.

The Black community was much smaller here, but I did get to meet some people through the Jesse Jackson campaign that I met, and so I just learned all these different things. So, for example, you're doing outreach for the Jesse Jackson campaign. I think this was the 88, 1988. Yeah, to the black community. So I learned that there are Black churches like the one right down the street or there's one in Japantown or the one down the street, which is very active with Antioch Baptist Church. So I went to an event there where actually Jesse Jackson came and it was just people were just hanging in the rafters. It was so jammed. But the other thing I learned is doing outreach for the campaign because they said, okay, we have to go to these places to distribute leaflets and get out the vote. And so some guy, African American, said, yeah, we're going to all the barbershops and beauty salons. And I said, oh, you know, he goes, okay, I'll help you with this one. Look, this is really key to our community because and then it dawned on me, I remembered, from students at Santa Cruz or something, they're talking to each other, Black students like, where do you go to get a haircut, where are you going to get a haircut, go, oh, I go to Supercuts because it's cheap and they're looking at me like I was just getting any kind of haircut back then. But but they said, no, no, no, they're telling you this has to be a Black barber, a Black beautician. They know how to cut our hair, you know. And I didn't know anything about this. I didn't grow up in a community like that. So these people were trying to tell me that for the Jackson campaign, this is where you go. That's where they hang out. So we're going to the men's shops and all the men are just sitting there talking. That's when you go in there and you give them and you talk to them. You can come with me, do it, you know. So that's where I learned. There's all these networks that are invisible to me, right? Because, well, there's not a very Big black community in San Jose. So where are they? Okay, the church. I get that there's a tradition that I've heard of in Black churches, but there's all these other places. So what I'm trying to get at is just learning this and learning this, these little stories from people, because some of these were older and they were telling me all these stories that just really stoked my interest in local history, too, because I just realized there's so much to learn by talking to people. But then I also began to see, this is the way you work with people, because then you understand them. Then you don't just go and say, I know how to do this. You should do this, you should do that. You don't have any idea what their lives are like. Something as simple as that. Where do you put the, go pass these fliers out? And this is before social media. Well, you go to the barbershops in the beauty salons, you know, I wouldn't know that.

(Interviewer) That's really beautiful. I mean, I'm having these images of you, like stepping into the barber shop or learning how to make tamales. And it's all very…stuff we don't see represented.

Yeah. And the thing is, with all of that is I had people help me though. It wasn't like, oh, I learn this like some Hollywood movies. You go in there and suddenly you get accepted by that community because you're so great, like the white savior. It wasn't like that. There were just these older people. Okay, Tom, I'll help you. And that's the only own way I that's the only reason I learned any of this. Or I could do anything in any way connected to this is because they help me and that's something I'll always keep with me forever, is that, hey, if I get older, that's what I should do with people too, because it meant so much to me. And it's not just about being a smart individual or being really cool or whatever. It's you got to rely on people, but you have to be open enough to be able to do it too.

It's like our generation because most of my parents’ generation, are gone now. Must of them. We have to do something. So that's kind of the message as an elder to my peers who are also getting old. If they weren't involved in it, maybe you should be. And then for younger people, the main concern I have is I don't think they're given the opportunity like I was. I was trying to explain. I didn't even get into some of the older people in the Japanese American community who really helped me a lot and who were open enough to help me learning their own culture, which I didn't. It was my parents. I should know it, but I didn't know, you know, I didn't understand why they act the way they do. But I think a lot of younger people don't have a chance to interact in a real, meaningful way with older people. Japanese Americans are included, but all other Asian Americans, I mean, everybody I don't think has a chance to do it.

And I think this is a real terrible thing because they're not going to get the benefit like I did. It's not like you can just tell them, you should do this. I'll give you the formula for how to learn how to work with all these people. Or you can take a special workshop and equity training and everything will be fine. You need to get some people to help you who are older from these different communities and they're there. You know, you might have to organize it because it's not going to just automatically happen. But that's what I really worry about is that I feel for our community. Japanese American community is really big chasms between the different generations, and it's because of what happened in the camps, but it's because there's also no social mechanism. Our communities were not repaired. Most of them got wiped out. So there's no way to have the opportunity to make this more natural, you know? So now we're just stuck with, oh, I don't understand young people. They have these weird ideas or why are they like this? Why don't they do this? Or how come they always talking about these feelings? What's wrong with them? You know, that kind of stuff without, you know, now no real authentic discussion. So then you start realizing, well, hey, I remember being young. Yeah, things are different now, but this has to be some kind of continuum and but it's all kind of chopped up, and I feel really bad about that. So that's one thing to try to get my generation to get to work, to at least uphold their end, to make it possible to work with younger people in a meaningful way.