~ Visit the official JAMsj website ~
AAPI & Japanese American Museum of San Jose
Digital Archive

Victoria "Vickie" Taketa - Part 2

Date: April 13, 2023
 Interviewer: Yvonne Kwan and Ellina Yin
 Interviewee: Vickie Taketa (1947 - )

Transcript of Vickie Taketa

Click on any section of the transcript to jump directly to that segment of the video. This feature lets you quickly access the content you're interested in without the need to manually search through the entire video. You can also click on the tick below each transcript to expand the text and read the full content without playing that segment of the video.

Narrative & Identity Timeframe 00:00 >> 08:26

Okay. My father came from Hiroshima, Japan, and migrated. He came here to to visit brothers, older brothers who had come here. And he first time he came, I believe he was, I want to say 13. And then he came again when he was 16 and stayed permanently. But the first time he came, he was young and he came. He accompanied his father because the father wanted to see why the the older sons had come. And what was this place called America. And so he accompanied his father. And so when he came back the second time, then he entered school so he couldn't learn English. So he's sixteen years old and he's in elementary school trying to learn English and then found he was able to find a more or less like a evening class that taught older adults English. But originally he told me stories about being in the first grade or second grade, trying to learn some basic English and helping the teacher with the kids in the class.

So those stories would kind of make us all chuckle because they would call him Mr. George, You know, Mr. George, could you help me with my coat? So this probably did help him introduce him to English. So he came to to learn English because he wanted to, to go to the university. So he landed up in Los Angeles. He came here because his older brothers were in Sacramento, but he found his way to L.A. and he worked as what was called in those days school boy, something like a houseboy. So they would if you look in the paper in those days, you could see that they were advertising for school boys. And a lot of the immigrants, the Chinese immigrants or the Japanese immigrants would then take these jobs to get room and board or to get a job so that they could do other things. So my dad became a schoolboy and he would take jobs cleaning for other people or doing whatever he needed to do so he could go to school.

My mom, on the other hand. …

(Interviewer) Oh. Why did your dad's brothers decide to come? Did your grandfather ever stay?

He did not. He couldn't understand. He couldn't understand why someone would want to live here. Because you've got to understand, when he came this, the West California was still very, very rural. And so he didn't see it as a step up, meaning, you know, economically a step, a step up. And so he went back. And so my dad, on the other hand, was really encouraged in terms of education. So he wasn't looking at what what the physical place might have looked like. He was thinking, I want to go to college. I want to I want an education. So when he came, he saw it differently through a different lens. So when my dad came, he eventually learned English and he was able to enter college. So he he stayed very focus in that way.

And I remember as a young person going through family albums and always quizzing him, you know, who is this? What are you doing? Where are you? Because my my exposure to pictures at that time of Los Angeles was a little bit more modern. And I'm looking at photos that that have sunset. Sunset Street is a rural street with no there's no suburban development, urban development. It's a crossroads. And that's not my that wasn't my current understanding of Los Angeles. So I was always saying, What are you doing and where is this place and who are you with? And did you like playing baseball? Because, you know, he.

(Interviewer) What was the time period?

I'm going to say the first time he came; it was probably around, I want to say 1913. So it was that time period till he entered college, maybe in the twenties. The early. Yeah, early to mid-twenties. But when he went to college, he went back east. So my dad is in L.A., probably 1913, 14, 15, 16, 17. Like this 18 maybe I would have to go back and really look at his photos because they're dated. So he would tell stories about his experience in terms of if he had friends and they went to the movies, all the Caucasian people would go to the movies and sit in the orchestra downstairs and all the people of color went upstairs. So he would talk about how things were segregated in that way. So I had a picture as I began to ask the questions, I could begin to understand the environment in which he was living as a young person. So then he goes off to college in the Midwest.

My my mother at that time, her family migrates to Hawaii. And so she's being raised on the sugar plantations and eventually her father makes a decision to send her and her brothers back to Japan to be raised by grandparents because they don't want the influence of of the missionary schools. Right. So that my mother would have a particular status being from a territory of the U.S., whereas my dad as as as he migrates, he comes in after the Chinese Exclusion Act. So his status is going to be determined by all the cases that go before the Supreme Court by Japanese immigrants trying to seek citizenship. And they're their cases are being looked upon through the lens of the Chinese Exclusion Act. So my father's status becomes clear that his status is an alien ineligible for citizenship. So from the time he comes, this is going to be stamped and he will not get citizenship until the Walter McCarran Act. So that's his journey.

So my my mother's family would come to work in the sugar in the sugar plantations, and they're part of a migration for economics because of the the the economics of Japan at that time. And the there's a movement with our government to open those doors to bring in labor into the islands. And so my mother's father would work as a railroad conductor on the sugar plantation. And and so my my mother and her brother would not would be born in Hawaii, but sent back very early. So my mother's being sent back at age seven to be raised by grandparents. So her her experience would now be an experience as what they call a kibei, a second generation sent back to Japan to be raised and then return.

Systems & Power Timeframe 08:26 >> 13:13

(Interviewer) So if you fast forward a little bit, what was your family's experience during Executive order? 9066.

My parents at that time, my father would go to would go to college and there is a population of Issei first generation immigrants from Japan who who would take advantage and work for education in the in our universities. My father's degree was in engineering. And his friends would be, you know, at the universities everywhere and major in various majors, everything from engineering to business to accounting and find themselves locked out of employment, you know, because of the the the laws again, coming down from the Chinese Exclusion Acts, once you become an alien and eligible for citizenship, then there are jobs that the doors are closed to you because you don't have citizenship. And so these kinds of employment policies and legislations would cause some of the individuals like my dad to have to go back to home countries to find work or you find work here and then you you go into areas that are available and open to the immigrants at that time. So my father became a farmer. And if you look at a lot of individuals like him with degrees, they were gardeners, they were farmers or they joined other professions that were available. So he's farming and he's farming grapes in Florin California, which is in between Sacramento and Lodi, if you if you're going along the freeway, you'll see that there's a city called Florin.

My mother was pregnant at that time. So when it was time for them to be for, you know, forcibly removed, my mother was pregnant, so they held her back and held my family back. And so they went to the assembly center in Fresno. And my brother was born in in the in the assembly center and assembly center in most places were were racetracks. They were the the stalls where they boarded horses. So my my mother, my brother was held in Fresno in these horse stalls. And I remember my mother telling us about having to to pack and to store items that they had. And so and she also told me some stories about her concern because she was she was pregnant with my brother and she she her concerns had to do with the safety of her children, you know, because there was a lot of rumors going around about what they were going to do to the Japanese Americans who were put into these places, everything from dropping a bomb or starving you to death or and so there was always this kind of maternal fear about what am I going to do? How am I going to feed my children? How am I going to take care of a new baby? And she communicated some of that to me later, much, much later on. And this was not told me as a young person. This was told to me as much in my in my adult years.

So they went to the Fresno Assembly Center and from there they went to Jerome, Arkansas, because by the time they held my mother back and my my family back, my dad, my mom, all the camps were full. And so they were sent to a Jerome, Arkansas. And then my mother also told me about what it was like to to be the last person in. Yeah. And and coming to a place that was totally foreign. The weather was foreign, the environment was foreign, the whole removal and and the placement was foreign. And she communicated some of that to me.

Systems & Power Timeframe 13:13 >> 17:41

You know, as kids, because I was born after the war, as kids, whenever parents talk and they start talking in these kind of hushed voices or friends of theirs would come over and normally they would talk and laugh and just like like probably we do when we invite guests over to the house or friends over. But whenever they would get into these hushed tones, you kind of knew that maybe you weren't supposed to be privy to the conversation and just a little bit later, we would begin to understand that that those conversations they were having with friends or with one another when letters would come from Japan, that it had to do with the bombing.

And and I, I remember my mother told me because I asked her later, much later on as I became an adult, and I began to understand the forced removal and and the incarceration into the American concentration camps, I whenever my mother would bring something up where I felt comfortable enough to ask her, I asked her about that and she said yes. She said, did you know that? I said, No. I didn't know that. I knew that you and Dad and you were talking about something very important that made you sad. And she said, yes, we went to go talk to other people at the church. So, yes, it did affect my family because I had family that lived and I had family members that passed during the bombing. So my yeah, later on when I would go to Japan, I would visit a cousin who lost a sister and he explained the whole story about that. And it was my brother, myself, my sister-in-law and my sister and my my second cousin explained it. And yeah, it was it's devastating. You're kind of like it's almost like a double trauma for me, you know, for my family and for us, because we're we're connected to it. We're connected to it through family and through relatives. Yeah. So, yeah, when I think about my parents and I think about how how the trauma of war is, you know… there was a saying during, during our ah, invasion of Iraq, they called it surgical strikes, almost as if to remove any, any connection to human humanness or human beings or humanity. A surgical strike made me really aware that act of war really needs to be removed from our policy because there is no surgical strike or surgical. It it it's a trauma that it's created for generations. And then then there's an effort to correct that. But it's going to take a generation because there's a generational trauma very much like forced removal of Japanese Americans, American concentration camps, and then the trauma that generational trauma that has to be looked at and actively, actively. How do I see that actively finding solutions to to make sure that that trauma isn't passed on to the next generation? Yeah.

Narrative & Identity Timeframe 17:41 >> 22:42

When you're when you're young, at least my personal experience was with my younger siblings because we're kind of like…my sisters right in front of me, my younger brother's right behind me. Very rarely when I was young was I alone to experience it by myself. So if I'm experiencing, I'm experiencing it with my younger brother or my sister. And the first things I remember when you're young is how people would kind of pull their eyes and then say these racial slurs. And at first you're you're you're kind of you have this kind of reaction of what are they doing and why are they saying that? And and we were raised not to harm another person, not to hit them, not to to behave like them. And so maybe the first time it happens, you kind of think to yourself, okay, I'm not I'm not to respond in any way. I'm not to harm them in any way.

But one day, my brother and I, we just kind of looked at each other and we we must have telepath to each other that we were not going to let this act go. And it was a young man on his bicycle, and we were going to the market and we waited for him to come around the corner and we both pushed him off his bike. And this was a young man that was in my neighborhood and eventually we went through grade school with him, but he never again did that. And he always had a smile and said hello. But we realized that that we had done something we were not supposed to do. But we also realized that it stopped. Yeah, because he would taunt us, but. And he could get away with it because he was on a bike and we would have to chase him or something. But we just decided we were just going to stop it.

I remember the first time that someone singled me or it felt like they singled me out as a Japanese American. The other one was kind of like singled, singling you out as an Asian American by pulling their eyes and things like that. And but when I was in elementary school, I remember being in class and the teacher was singling out a student and she said to the student, I have never had a Japanese student as bad as you. And I remembered that the impact and how it resonated with me, it felt bad and she could have said, I've never met a student who is as bad as you, and I think it wouldn't have had that impact. But it impacted me. And I remember looking over at my friend in the class and kind of doing like, you know, like, what is she saying? Because she singled out his ethnicity. Right. And it was the first time that I made me aware that other people were also aware. And it felt like shaming. It felt like quieting. It felt like it's the first time I felt like somebody was trying to say to to me, even though she was saying it to him, you, you, you fit in this box. And I'm aware of you as a Japanese American. And so it made me sensitive to to how people would identify you. Yeah. And so I think I talked about how my father would tell us when I was young that people were not going to like us because we were Japanese Americans. We were Americans of Japanese ancestry. And I remember saying to him, how could they not like us? They don't know us. And he said, that's that's how some people are. And so that when he told me that story, I put this one together with that.

Narrative & Identity Timeframe 22:42 >> 24:52

I think one of the things that that helped was that I watched how my parents interacted with with the larger society around us. I watched how they interacted with the Japanese American community, because this is where we went to go buy groceries. This is where we went to church on Sundays. Friends would come over to visit other farm families were Japanese Americans, but we also had individuals who worked with us on the farm who were of Mexican American heritage or Filipino heritage. We had Pacific Islanders work on the farm with us every day, and as children we worked on the farm every day, just like the workers worked. If they worked 6 to 9, we worked 6 to 9. My parents were like, you’re not having any privileges because you you're your parents run the farm, you're a worker, right? So we understood that there was there was this kind of equality of of that was applied. There was a rule that our parents had and it applied to everybody. So we had to work we had to work in a way that would be viewed by everyone else who worked as the same, you know, you you work. So going back to watching how my parents interacted with other people is probably set within ourselves values about how others were treated, how we were treated, what was fair, what was not fair. It yeah, so I felt like as I grew up I was given these values and then at some point in my life I was trusted to be on my own with these set of values to make decisions for myself.

Timeframe 24:52 >> 33:16

I was always amazed that my parents found any time because like I said, when you grow up on a farm, your life is ruled by the environment. About the weather. Is it cold? Is it hot, Is it rainy? When do you plant? When do you pick? When do you get the weeds? When do you spray? When? So it was always this this kind of very active life, meaning from the time you got up in the morning to the time you went to bed at night and then as you grew up, you had school. So you got now insert going to school after school, you go to the farm, you come home, you eat, you cook, you do the household chores, and then you study and then you go to bed and then you start all over again. So when you talk about when you talk about extra time, I used to always at school, you would get that. “What did you do for the summer question in school?” And I would dread that. And I know my siblings dreaded it because we would say, What did we do for the summer? We worked right because that would that is when the farm most needed. Your attention is to take the fruit to the market, right? To pick it, to get it to the market.

So going back to your question about what did we do? Infused in all of that was my parents would always make sure that we had literature, so we always had newspapers that that were read. We had magazines for all the different levels of the individuals in the home. My parents were my mother was a voracious reader, and so was my dad. I always saw my dad reading a newspaper. It could be the the American newspaper, meaning written in English, or my parents read the Hokubei Mainichi and the different Japanese papers that were both in English and in Japanese. So those were in the house. They had books from Japan, so they must have gone into Japantown to buy these books because I always saw them. They played music, we had music. So I was always listening to Japanese music, the radio station that had Japanese music, but they also played on Sundays a station that they read the comic books, you know, they read the funnies every Sunday. And so I remember that we would listen to different things that were always on the radio before because my parents did not have television in our home till I was 11. So somehow we had to occupy ourselves and be creative and read books or play outside. But we didn't have television to to occupy us all day long. So we'd have to go to friends’ houses to see anything they were watching. So if they were talking about Mickey Mouse, we'd have to go to their house to see Mickey Mouse.

So they also and I used to always find this interesting that my parents found or prioritize to find the money to give everybody in the family private music lessons. So everybody learned an instrument. Yes.

Oh, gosh, there's discipline. And then there's my father's way of disciplining. I don't ever think there are kids out there that are wishing that their parents would spank them. But my sister and my younger brother and I at one point decided, you know, why doesn't dad spank us like the neighbor father spanks his kids? You know, because to me, spanking, you get spanked and it's over with right? My dad, his discipline, the way he disciplined us was he would invite us into the kitchen. And so the word the kitchen became a Oh, no, right. Because my mother would say to us, wait till your dad gets home. Right? Because that's that's how discipline happens. Wait till your dad gets home. And so my dad would call us in for whatever we did wrong, or it could be something very small or it could be something very large. But he would say, come into the kitchen and we would be we'd look at each other like, Oh, no, not the kitchen, because my dad would take us into the kitchen and he would tell us stories. And I don't know where he learned this. I don't know if it was because he didn't want to discipline us, but he found a way to engage us. He told us stories, and most of these stories had to do with him and my mother and their life and their life's journey.

And so by the time we left that kitchen, there were three young kids with their heads down, dragging, just going to to their room, sitting on the bed, thinking, and we would say this to one another. We must be really awful. Kids. And then we'd drag around for days like that. And so we later on, as we grew up, we we were asking each other, How did you know to do this? How did he know to tell us these stories? He didn't say, you know, you should have done this and you shouldn't have spoke to your mother this way or other ways to to get us to change our behavior for for correcting a problem. He told us stories. And so these stories, various parts of the stories had various…either it was about the moral of the story or it gave you insights about behavior or about commitment to your word or something. But there was always these hidden messages in. And even now I think about them, and they were loaded with messages. But when you're little, you it's told in such a way that you you get a sense that you did wrong. Something of your behavior was not correct. Yes.

And so when I say it was small or it could be large, the way we were taught was to give you an example, was I remember one time we tried to…this is this is going to sound very terrible. We we figured out that my mother my mother spoke to us in Japanese. She didn't attempt to speak to us in English. And so if we really wanted to do something, we would communicate it really fast to my mother and we'd say, okay, can we go? And she'd kind of be pausing and we go, okay, you said yes. And we'd run out the door because that's what we wanted to do. Well, my mother went and talked to my dad, and so when my dad came home, I remembered that there were times when he didn't do the kitchen stories, but he made it really clear what some of the rules and the housework and the rule between him and my mother was. My mother and father is a team, so you don't do end runs around a member. So we learned that one early, early on is that my mom and dad was a team. You didn't try to put a wedge between the team and say, I'm going to go ask this one and see if I can change this one's mind so I can go, No, this was a team. So there were times the rule was set very clear.

Systems & Power Timeframe 33:16 >> 38:47

I think one of the stories I told you was about one when I was about 12 and 13, and I had had my fall of housework and the roles in the male female roles in the home about who does what. That was the first time I think I had some sense of of not only just my voice, but my ability to to to have someone look at what was fair and what was right and what was just and, and, and test that. I also thought I wasn't going to live to be 13. I thought I was going to die and be disowned at that moment. But I really felt that it the rules were up to that point were becoming unjust and unfair. And so that was I made my case and then my my, my father made a decision that what I was asking was a fair request.

So that made me feel that when some things unjust and unfair and some things not being applied equitably, that you could speak up. But it and it was complicated. So when I was in high school, I hit a situation where I was in a class and we were being told to that the class wasn't large enough for all of us to participate in our routine, that that some of us had to go outside and practice. So my team, four of us went outside to practice and when we were all done practicing, we asked if we could come back in the room and the instructor said, No, I want you to stay outside. It's not time. So we made a decision to to leave. And a few days later I got a notice that that I had to go in to see an administrator because I had gotten a note saying that I had cut class. And when you cut class, there's you go to detention. I don't know if any of you ever went to detention, but you go to the detention room rather than go and serve in detention. I was asked to meet with the administrator about my behavior, and it really turned into more than just my behavior for for breaking a rule.

It was about whom I was with, and it became more about the people that I was with rather than the actual act. So I asked my friends if they too were called in for detention and they weren't. And I asked each one of them, but I didn't say that was I said I just asked if they were or if they were contacted and they said they were not. And so I went I went to my next meeting with the administrator regarding my behavior. And at that time I held a position in in my at the school. I held the position for my class and the resolve the solution was you can hold your position and follow it through for the rest of the year, or you make a decision about discontinuing your friendship with the with the individuals that you committed the offense with. And I felt at that time that what I was being asked to do was to deny a part of myself that I knew that I, I could not I could not live with that decision for someone to make that decision for me and then have me own that decision, I could not do that knowing who these individuals were, knowing how I how I valued the friendship and even the friendship that went beyond them, but to their families. And so when I was asked to do that, I said no. And when I was asked to to stand in the shoes of that person who was making that decision, I was asked what I would. I then continue with that decision or that that way of resolving the problem. And I said basically to this individual that if I was that individual, I would do with that individual was doing. But if if you were going to ask me about how I would handle that with my friends, I would choose differently. And so the decision was made a week later that the position was taken away, but I was able to keep my friends. Yes. And I forgot to say that the three people were Caucasian, and I was Japanese American. So that also said something to me that spoke loudly.

Narrative & Identity Timeframe 38:47 >> 44:19

I was a sociology major at San Jose State, and I was trying to get an understanding of who I was as a as a person, a person of Japanese ancestry, as a person who who experienced a lived experience that that wasn't being explained or I could understand through my education at college. And so I was looking for different classes that would that would help me understand that. So I would go over to psychology, I would go over to anthropology, I would I would go to history. And I even tried the administration of justice at a few classes about community and subcultures. And I realized that subculture was a real dangerous place to go because the message was not always was not a positive one. And it always made parts of of my lived experience as a Japanese American, what I saw as strengths was being discussed and explained is not weaknesses, but was never put in light of independence versus interdependence. That concept of of individuation, individual and individual's individualism. And so whenever I would go to write papers, I always felt that something I didn't have information to support my premise. So that's why I went searching. And so I took an African American studies class and that opened my eyes to what was not included in in my education to that time, what was admitted, how it was admitted.

And then I began to look for Asian American studies, and it just started to come up on campus. So I took my first Asian American studies class because when I finished with that African American history class, I was pretty angry and pretty how I viewed the institution had changed because now I began to see erasure, omission, the silencing. I began to look at the national narrative in. I think it was a really sad day because I had a particular understanding of the institution, the educational institution, and I revered it and I held it in high esteem. And so now I it became clear that in order for me to to get that information, I was going to have to actively participate in my own education. If I was to get an understanding of of who I am as a Japanese American in America and not just a Japanese American, an Asian American, a person of color, I was going to have to actively pursue that.

And so what started out, I'm going to go to college, I'm going to get a degree, I'm going to participate in the world of work, took on a whole different meaning. And so when I hit Asian American Studies, it became clear to me that this part of education was something that I was going to work actively at that to to to actively stop the omission, the erasure, the and also the interpretation to have other people interpret history, our history, to see it through their lens and to to dispel myths that were created like the model minority myth and to bring to light all the contributions. It became clear to me at that point that it was going to be an active process, and that would be it could be little small acts of process, but it was going to be active and it was going to be much later. I would understand that it had to be vigilant because it couldn't just be active. It had to be vigilant. Yeah, Yeah. I think what I was going to quickly say is I think I talked about I think I was asked the question about how I felt when I was asked to teach, and I kind of got a little emotional. It was I did not know up until that time that I would be a vehicle, that I would be an active person who would begin to disseminate that information. That was withheld for me. Yeah. So when they asked me, I was just like taken aback, like, I'm going to be a part of the the the, the, the process that would help to begin to change that national narrative. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Transformation & Change Timeframe 44:19 >> 48:58

I think when I was coming out of of San Jose State and starting to get involved in the community and doing community work and especially working with AACI, Asian for Community Involvement, at that time and beginning to understand that in order to impact policy and impact the narrative, as a Japanese American, we were a small percentage. We could still find voice, but it was it would be a smaller movement. And there was this larger, greater movement called the Asian American movement. Especially when you started to teach the history of Asians in America, you began to see that many of the the policies were directed at the various Asian countries and that's that the the way this that the the country dealt with immigration issues and issues of racism, labor, politics, education, it could be social mental health was seen through the lens of the the the yellow peril.

And so in order to join forces AACI brought together Asian Americans to combat it. And it it it seemed like a larger and more organized group to to look at the issues that affected our respective communities. And so for me, to identify as Asian American was an easy one, because I understood that that we had to build allies ship. We had to build solidarity in order to combat racism. And so I would even when I when I was employed at Foothill College as the Asian American coordinator there for the multicultural department, and the department had a Chicano coordinator, an African American coordinator, a Filipino, Vietnamese coordinator. Through that networking, we the the allyship started to build a multicultural kind of a multicultural diversity approach to combating racism, institutional racism at my place of work and throughout the district.

And so we even worked across my sister college with this concept called the Multicultural. We were called the Minority Staff Association. So we combat racist issues that affected our employment and affected our students and in how we taught and how we recruited and how we accepted students onto campus, how we supported or didn't support faculty and administrators of colors. So we came together and formed an organization. So we worked in solidarity so that we were not pitted against one another for dollars, and we were not pitted against one another for positions, for budgeting, for position. We would support one another in each other's pursuit. For me and my values working together in in that in that environment was probably one of the more, how do I say, these satisfying ways to approach systemic racism so that you're not pitted against one another and you don't allow those in power to to pit you against another group? Because to me, that's just a distraction. And so the same goes back to working as a unit for Asian American. That was very easy for me to do again, for very similar reasons. Mm hmm.

Narrative & Identity Timeframe 48:58 >> 55:26

One of the things, when I think about my involvement or the beginning of of being an activist is you don't start out being an activist. I was just aware as a young person that I think through a young person eye’s, you look at it in terms of fairness and just what is just and are the rules being applied equitably. So I came from that point of view. And then as you as you grow older, you begin to your lived experience. You look around you as to who who is who is benefiting from these roles and then who is excluded from the rules or who is who is being punished for not following the and who is not. And you begin to get a sense of that and you get a sense of that from your friends, how they're being treated. You get a sense of that on how it's being applied to you and. And so for me, I became aware of that and I began to look at the the the the world in which I was living and experiencing life from being on the farm to my little town to my school and my workplace. And so as I began to as I began to experience that in I and in my in how I was, how my higher education also also involved how things were being applied and not applied and what what I thought was fair and just.

And so when I when I think about when I found my voice and how I used my voice and when I would stand up for another person was always when I saw an inequity. And so part of joining the film festival, the film festival, media is one of the most powerful ways to communicate to the mass and how we all get the same information or how we don't get the information. And for Asian Americans, it really is about the media has been always used. Anything in print has always been used in stereotypes, reinforcing stereotypes or as a weapon to maintain a particular view about Asians, A-Asian-Americans. Historically, it was always weaponized. So the newspapers were always talking about the Yellow Peril, the threat, the danger, but never telling our story, never creating three dimensional people, never talking about or rarely talking about contributions and including the positive into the national narrative.

And so when we talk about Asian-American hate, it's because we're not a part of that narrative. We're not part of the visual narrative, the written narrative, the oral narrative. Right. We're not being taught in the classroom. It's omitted. It's erased and omitted or it's stereotyped. So when you look at one of the most powerful film mediums, you and and I'm a person who loves either the written, the the the television, the film, the theater. I'm a person who loves stories, and maybe it was my dad's kitchen stories, but I love stories about the human condition. I love stories about who we are as a people. When it tells that story about who we are as a people and when I say who we are. I'm inclusive of this whole thing called our human story. And it could be from any continent. It could be in any language with subtitles. But if it's communicating who I am as a human, then I want to read it. I want to see it, I want to listen to it.

And so going back to Asian American and participating in a film festival is I want to be a part of something that creates a space so those stories could be told and so that we could see ourselves reflected in those stories as well as others see the humanness of who we are as people. And that possibly in this story you can see your family, yourself, your condition, your situation. But unless we create that space, we won't hear those stories. And again, it goes back to that African American history class. When I first started to become exposed to these stories, I said, why isn't why aren't these stories being shown at our local theaters? Why aren't they? Why are these writers and directors have access to publishers and to these these film houses? And so if they're not going to show the stories and then perhaps we when I say we Asian-Americans, we create that space so that writers and filmmakers come forward and have a space to have their stories shown, have their desires to be filmmakers, to become storytellers for us so we could see ourselves. So again, it all comes from access, creating space and telling our story, which I think is one of the most powerful mediums, is this is this medium? Yeah.

Narrative & Identity Timeframe 55:26 >> 1:04:44

It again, it goes back to teaching that class and Asian American studies and again, one of the things in teaching the class as a teacher, most people who teach understand that what makes your class come alive is the ability to access resources so that you can bring to the classroom. Maybe, if not a film that can augment until you tell the story better than you can lecture, or you can bring a person in who can who can also do the same thing, make that topic more dynamic, more relatable. I used to take students to theater so they they can meet and ask about ask writers and actors. How did your parents accept you wanting to become an actor and not an accountant? Right. But if you if you don't have that space to put the students in front of so that they can they can ask those questions because they themselves might be experiencing the same thing.

Coming back, we began to realize that some of us were a part of history of creating or being there and watching history be created by those in front of us. Right. And we started to say, this is not documented. No one knows about this history of how these organizations are formed. How did AACI come about? And now is one of one of our largest providers of mental health for Asian Americans in the Valley. Does anybody know about that history and all the individuals that came together to provide a mental health service that was not there? Does anybody know about the history of other organizations and how individuals came forward to to demand services for their community, other Asian Americans? So we started to have that conversation and we said to each other, this needs to be recorded. And if it's not recorded now, then we're going to lose the ability to tell it in the first person. And the importance of research is always that first person narrative. And so it was, Let's write a grant. And we were lucky enough to have some skilled individuals in that conversation who would say, I will want to write the grant.

And so we said, who else do we need to bring to the table, too, so we can have this sense of solidarity so we could have a bring to the table the voices we need and the expertise to move this grant forward. And that was the beginning. And in because of my participation all the way back as a student at San Jose State and beginning to to take steps in in moving to become a part of that movement, to tell our story, our Asian American story. I became very involved in always first in trying to affect the local politics, the local policies, and to tell this local history. And hopefully it would move out to a larger stage, which would be the state and then the national right. But it's that those first small steps, you never think that this is what you're participating in. You don't say, oh, I'm going to become an advocate and I'm going to know it's these small steps that connect you to other people. You form a group and you, you start to work in concert as a movement and you you start building allies and and then you you move forward to hopefully affect those changes so that the narrative is more inclusive, so that we are championing civil rights issues that are social justice, that that protects and defends and make sure that everybody has the opportunity to exercise their civil their their constitutional rights, their personal rights guaranteed.

And so you give voice to that and you give voice to it in terms of making sure that you empower others through the stories of those of those who are advocating. And you'll get some insight about this project is about giving insight to advocacy starts in so many different ways. There isn't a template, and it's really about the small acts and its actions. So the small acts that are action, it could be as small as writing a postcard, asking a friend to join you at a at a at a demonstration. It could be as large as going before your city council. It could be about the work that you do in advocating from that place and giving voice to and especially combating the stereotypes and combating the institutional racism with others and constantly work and be vigilant that the importance is to work in solidarities with others and not to allow people to use you as an scapegoat, to use you as a pawn, but to keep your eye on the issue and then just move it and don't become a part of the problem. I think it was in Malcolm X's be a part of the solution. And so looking back at this original grant about capturing the oral history, it was really to provide information and create a resource to combat anti-Asian hate. And it's going to happen through education and it's going to happen through empowering others because hopefully this documentation will help to empower someone to see themselves experiencing some of the microaggression and meaning the the comments about the comments that are made to make one feel more like the other or less than. So those comments about where you're from and that possibly you're not an American or possibly that you're not behaving in a way that feels comfortable, comfortable for the person who's telling you that they want you to stay in this box. Because when you stay in this box, they understand your behavior. But if you're going to try to describe yourself, then it creates discomfort. Correct. So it's about it's about keeping those stereotypes and myths out of the narrative and out of the out of out of a process that's trying to define you as an Asian American or you as a a person of color.

That decision is yours and yours alone. And it will. It's the responsibility of those of us who are who are part of trying to change the narrative, working towards the elimination or the we need to rid this country of institutional racism. That's that's non-negotiable. It's it needs to be eliminated because it will it will continue a process where others will feel empowered to define who we are and how we participate. And they will look at they will look at the Bill of Rights through their lands, and then they will interpet what the Bill of Rights says and the Bill of Rights is, is the Bill of Rights. It guarantees all of us our rights and it should not be look through a lens and then interpreted to exclude people of color. And that's our that's how I feel. That's my job is to is to to make sure that things like this oral history is captured and used to educate.

Timeframe 1:04:44 >> end

(Interviewer) Is there anything else you'd like to add?

Oh, gosh. I would like to see more. I would like to see a movement where more of this is captured, more oral history is captured. There is so much history out there that needs to be captured. And and if if we can if we can move a piece of legislation to to fund the capturing of this oral history, whether it's Asian American, African American, LGBTQ, it needs to be captured because this history will, if it's not captured, will be lost. Yeah. And erased. Mm hmm. And the work is really about capturing it. Eliminate the term erasure and and include the word inclusion. Mm hmm. Yeah.