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Wes Mukoyama

Date: November 30, 2022
 Interviewer: Yvonne Kwan and Ellina Yin
 Interviewee: Wes Mukoyama (1942 - )

Growing up as one of the only Japanese Americans in his childhood hometown in Chicago, Wes would go on to serve as a social worker assocated with the Peace Corp, VA, local jails, senior centers, and numerous boards and commissions to advocate for veteran's rights, mental health access, senior wellness, and inmate wellness.

Transcript of Wes Mukoyama

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Systems & Power Timeframe 00:00 >> 9:20

Okay. Actually, my first name is Kazuo, K-A-Z-U-O, on my birth certificate. And Wesley is my middle name. And Mukoyama is my family name. And I was born on October 26th, 1942, in the Jane Addams Housing Project, the first housing project in the United States in Chicago, Illinois.

I have two older brothers who were in Japan during the war. The term kibei, kibeis, and they were there during the…I was an accident because my by two older brothers were sent to Japan in 1940. My brother Howard was a, he was less than a year old when he went there. And my aunt took him, my and my brother Marshall, who was three years old and they, they went to… they went to Japan so they could because there was so much discrimination against Japanese, they felt that perhaps they could be raised in Japan and get a Japanese education. And my mother was going to University of Chicago for a master's degree in social service administration, and she wanted to get her Ph.D. And she was one of the maybe handful of nisei that went to graduate school during that time. So in 1940, they they were sent to Japan with my aunt who took them there while my mother was still going to school. And then the war broke out. And so they were trapped in Japan. They couldn't come, come back. And they were staying with my, my father's sister. And they…he was one of six children. So and then I was born accidentally in 1942, October, about ten months after Pearl Harbor.

And we didn't go to camp because we were in Chicago. They only took the West Coast Japanese. But my father owned the gift shop and it's called the Oriental Oriental Gift Shop, which is still a company. It is called the Oriental Trading Company now, and it was based in Omaha. And there are about six or eight gift shops in the Midwest. My father owned one and in my uncle one and there were two others in Chicago and there were several spread out through... Iowa in Des Moines, Toledo in Ohio, different places. So they were doing very well before the war. But after the war broke out there was… we had a lot of problems.

And then the day Pearl Harbor was attacked, my mother was coming out of the store, and and my father went around the back to get the card to pick her up in front. And somebody threw a steel ball bearing and missed her head by an inch. Now she says that it made a perfect hole in the glass door. But I don't… you know, that's what she said. But anyways, it was very close to her. And then and they yelled out "Jap," you know, and she was really traumatized by that. And, you know, the racism continued and it made my my father's store very difficult to run.

And then I was, you know, I was born... we, as I grew up, I felt the discrimination. There was one point when I was growing up, I was about four years old. And we, in our neighborhood, we had groups of people, of boys playing, and a group from another neighborhood, came to our to our neighborhood. And were they they wanted to fight because they heard that I was a Jap. And so they asked they asked one of… "What are you doing with a Jap here in this? You know, what are you playing with a Jap for?" One of the guys stood up for me. His name was Eugene Coakley, and he said, "Leave him alone. He can't help it. He was born that way." So I felt…I remember that vividly because I felt like a freak, you know? And so it just stuck with me for the longest time. And we... and we were, we were always called names, but they would never they would stop calling us Jap because we would always fight for it.

I remember meeting my brothers when in 1948, when they came back from Japan, and I met them in San Francisco. And my father was a... he was an issei, first generation. And my mother was a nisei from Hawaii. And she was she brought us to pick pick me, my father and my brothers, who came off the boat from Japan, and he was a… he was very prominent in the sense that the Japanese newspapers sent him to Japan to find out what was happening to my brothers and a lot of kibei in Japanese and-- in Japan, Japanese Americans, in Japan. And he had through some of his contacts, he had an interview with the Emperor of Japan and the Emperor of Japan. If you-- you go and see him, he's about 30 feet away. You can't get very close to the emperor. And my father had a... he had a cold and he couldn't talk well, so when he was standing in front in his tuxedo and bowing the the Emperor was very interested in what was happening to the Japanese in America. And so he says, "I can't," you know, he said, "I can't hear you." "Well, I have a bad cold." So he says, "Come up closer." And he came up closer and he was still on like I'm the first or second step. And he was talking and said, "I can't hear you." So he actually took my father and took him into his room on the side and they sat and talked for a record hour and 45 minutes, I believe, which was the most any commoner had ever spoken to an emperor in history.

And so he was was written in the new Japanese newspapers. That connected him with Douglas MacArthur, who was supreme commander of Japan, and Douglas MacArthur wanted to have an audience with him, with my, with my father. And so my father came and talked to him and said, you know, like we are sitting. And he said, he said, "I wanted to talk to you about what we're doing in Japan." And my father's stood up, slapped him on the leg and said, "You ought to be able to tell all of the people what plans of reconstruction are in Japan." And so he says, "Well, I'm going to have you do that." So my father humbly accepted that position, and he went on radio and he traveled all over Japan to talk about what MacArthur's plans were. And it was an integral part of what MacArthur's plans for Reconstruction were.

Narrative & Identity Timeframe 9:20 >> 16:36

So he came back and he went to pick up my two brothers, who were living in a small village in, near Mount Fuji called Kobe. And the village itself is called Mukomura. It means distant village or village at the hill of the of the of Mt. Fuji. And my brothers were... they knew that they were Americans. You know, the village knew that they were Americans. And so I wrote more about that in my memoir. But anyways, my my oldest brother was, they would ask my brother, "What was America like?" He said, "Streets were made of gold. Everybody owned a car and and everybody had a house like the Empire State Building." They said, "whoa," you know, and then they didn't believe it for a while. But what happened was my, my my father went to pick them up in an American Jeep with a soldier driving, and they were so impressed. And my brother, my brother Howard was so impressed because my father was telling this white guy what to do, you know, and this American soldier and they they drove out. They picked my brothers out. They drove out of the village. And the whole village has followed them to the end of the road. And it was... it was well documented in the Japanese newspapers… So when he came, when he came back with my brothers, they were celebrities as well. And so the newspapers in San Francisco, in Chicago interviewed him, interviewed him and it was me that met them and they didn't speak any English. And what was interesting is I had to show them around. And here I'm the youngest. And I had this kind of sailor suit. They met him. I must have looked like Little Lord Fauntleroy, you know, meeting them. And I took them around, just around the block in San Francisco. They didn't know what to do. And then... it's just the cultural difference between us two. And then when we finally went to Chicago, they had difficult… they had footprints and the toilet seat because they didn't know how to use Western toilets, things like that.

And, and then as we, as we grew up together, they they kind of were in one camp, and I was in the other camp because they thought I was spoiled and because they had a real tough time... they were bombed in by the American airplanes when when they flew over our village. And they had to take all of the animals and kill the zoo animals so they wouldn't, you know, escape. And, and they were they were running all night. It was kind of like Ukraine is happening right now. And I here is me, you know, worried about my my, my sailor suit. And they were they were running for their lives when they were in Japan. So it was so great for them to come back. But when they came back, they ran into a wall because all of the Italians would would pick on them and laugh at them because they couldn't speak the language and they would chase them, my two brothers, back to our house. And so we would get rakes and we would we would bring the rakes out and fight them with our rakes. And I don't remember it that well, but they do. They remember doing that. And so it just kept on going, the discrimination against us.

I was once, on Pearl Harbor Day, three Italian guys threw me into a city wastebasket and I had to sit there for a while. So they were laughing and they still remember that. I went back last spring and one of the guys remember doing that to me and he laughed and I said-- why, I laughed too, because they were good friends after a while, you know! But anyways, that's the kind of environment we grew up in in during those times. So that's pretty much a lot of what happened. It just happened all of the time. The discrimination was and the prejudice was there. I was I was even questioned during the Chicago Fair. When I went to the Chicago Fair, theat was before my brothers came and they wouldn't… they questioned whether I should go in to see the Chicago Fair because I was a Jap, so. So I just remember that vividly, pretty much during my childhood, and also my parents were, well, never good, never got along. They were always quarreling. And like... I have to say this, my father had an affair with a woman at the store. She eventually lived here in San Jose. I did talk to her once on the phone, but he was... he was pretty cruel to my mother. And and one time he put me into a into the basement, into a woodshed and locked me in the woodshed. And I had rats going back and forth, looking at me and a ledge. So that's another traumatic [laughs] situation I had when I was a kid.

So my childhood was was you know, broken home. My brothers picked on me quite a bit. And I had to, I had to survive during my teenage years. And that's about how much I wrote on my on my memoirs. I got a lot more to say, but I finally went to college and then college kind of was my breakthrough. And I, I was, I had to learn my identity as a Japanese American and I studied some of the history of Japanese and wrote a term paper. And it gave me, it gave me a lot of strength to go on.

And then I finally went into the Peace Corps.

Timeframe 16:36 >> 21:11

(Interviewer) What year did your brothers come back here to the states? 1948.

(Interviewer) And then what year was that Chicago Fair?

Oh, must have been 1943, 44, I can remember, 44, 45. And so it was in their time I was I think I was only four or five years old.

(Interviewer) And then can you state your father's name, and place and date of birth?

I'm not sure what his date of [birth is] because in Asia, all of Asia, when you're born, you're a year old, right. So so he was born in August of 1903. I believe that's when he was born because they really didn't have birth dates at that time. And he was born in a region of Kofu, Japan. And they came here when he was 14 years old, 1917, just around World War 1 ending. And he, and he came before my uncle was two years older than him, but he had less than eighth grade education when he came. And my my grandfather, who was already here, he was a foreman bringing Japanese from that area to to Denver building the railroad. And so he was stationed in Denver, and my father went to meet him, and I really don't know what would happened. My grandfather, he owned the hotel at one time. And there was gambling in the hotel. He lost it all. I, my… my cousin knows more about that history than I do, but he lost it all and returned home as a pauper. He didn't really have much money when he returned, and that's a similar kind of thing, my father was like, he, he knew a lot of people. He he could have owned a lot of land in Tokyo. We would we would be rich beyond means, you know. But he never took advantage of that and was right after the war. He got to know all the people and the Diet and all that. So he was, he and my my uncle were, they did a lot of things. They were hoboes on the railroad. They worked in the Imperial Valley in California. They did a lot of traveling like that. They, and finally had gone to Chicago and set up their, their businesses. He worked for he worked for a lot of Japanese companies called, the largest company in the world was, can't remember it now... But uh, Mitsubishi I think or uh... and, and so he, because he was bilingual and my uncle was bilingual they they prospered with that and, and then led him to open that gift shop. So that's how it evolved. But he gained more favor in the Japanese community, Japanese American community, because they were the founders in Chicago. The, the issei were the founders in Chicago. And they were well respected. So he did well but not financially [laughs]. A lot of people knew him and he was able to use his influence. But financially we we became bankrupt in 1948, I believe.

Timeframe 21:11 >> 31:49

My mother is is Kyoko Takehara, and she gained the name of Helen after people couldn't pronounce her name in Hawaii. And she was born in Maui, in Pa’ia Maui. And she was the oldest of, I think we five children. But her mother this is a mystery to me. Her mother… my mother told me her mother died when she was born. But I had heard other my my my auntie told me this is my she's not related. She's she's not my blood. But she told me the my my grandmother, her mother was a picture bride. And after she had my mother, after my mother was born and she she flew the coop, so to speak. And I don't know what happened to her. So I'm thinking of giving my DNA for history and find out what the mystery was. But anyways. And then he married another woman shortly thereafter and had a she had two boys, three boys and a girl and including my mother.

So my mother had to take care of them when they were born. And prior to the fact that he to the point where he married, remarried and, you know, got this second wife, he had put my mother in an orphanage. So she she had a really sad, sad life in her young years. But she pursued and when they were in when the just before the war, my it was the custom of a lot of Japanese families to send the children to Japan for a more strict education because they didn't like the they thought the education here was poor and perhaps it was discriminating as well. I don't know that. But so my mother and, uh, the oldest brother and the youngest daughter, the only other girl in there were taken to Japan and they, my grandfather would was probably going to leave them there, but my mother said, no, I'm not I'm not going to stay in Japan. She refused. She was about 16 years old at that time. So she came he and he he said, okay. And he brought her back. But he left me, the oldest brother, and my aunt there, and she didn't see them until the 1960s. And my of the that brother he, lived in Hiroshima and so was my aunt. And he lost his son in the atomic bomb. And he was very angry with my grandfather.

And so even when I went there in 1982 with my family and I called him, he hung up on me. He didn't want to talk to me. And of course, my Japanese was very good. My head couldn't speak that Japanese that well, so but my aunt welcomed me. Welcomed our family. And we got to see the children. They were grown up and subsequently later my mother went to see her. So that was in 1982. What was that now? So going back, my mother, she, she struggled and but she did well. Very well. If you read the book Hawai'i by Michener, it is a family depicted in there very much. My father, my grandfather was a barber and he was well known in that area. And he and my stepmother, who's who, who, by the way, passed away when she was only 28 years old, she died. And I still go to the cemetery in Maui. It's right at the shrine on the beach off of Pa’ia and her picture. She was a beautiful woman. Her picture is still vividly clear there. And but they, they both cut hair and well, he also worked in the cannery and and they collected a lot of money. He owned the first Model T on the island of Maui. And so he was doing quite well until she passed away. And and I visited him when I was a kid, like four years old, four or five years old. And it was really a quaint town at that time. But now it's just the this the first town before you go to Hana, which is I don't know if you've been to Maui, but it's, there's a winding road to Hana and it was supposed to be is beautiful and, but it's difficult road but anyways it's the first, the last town before you go to Hana.

Anyways she, she pursued and she and she was one one of the first Japanese Americans to be to go to college on the mainland. And she went to Simpson College, in Indianola, Iowa and excelled there. She was a... is equivalent of Phi Beta Kappa. She did very well there. And then she, and she went on to the University of Chicago, which was at that time and still is a prestigious university and was planning to get her Ph.D. But that was stopped short and she became a social worker and she worked for…she worked for the county of Cook County, and she worked there for Salvation Army and Jewish family services for the elderly, and she did very well. She supported us because at…when I was 14, my mother divorced my father at the recommendation of my grandfather because he had a child in Japan. And that was my stepbrother. His name is Teriyoshi, and he lives in Japan. And um, she…she knew about it, but my grandfather recommended that she divorce him. And then he went back to Japan, and he lived there the rest of his life. It was all of the family. And my brothers they liked my father, but we never saw him because he went back and forth to Japan, so he was kind of an absentee father. Uh, but I lived with him when I went to Japan after the Peace Corps, so, for a short time. And then I moved to, I lived in Kyoto. That's another story, but that's another story [inaudible]. But that's pretty much my mother. She died in 1996, and my brother took care of her during that time. She started a senior, Japanese senior apartments in, in Chicago called Heiwa Terrace. She was on the, on the founding board, and she finally lived there the rest of her life. And died there.

(Interviewer) How did your parents meet?

Oh, my mother was going to Simpson College in Iowa, which I also went through. I also attended, um, and she, she-- there was this Japanese family in Des Moines that she would go stay with during the vacation and she also took, she also babysat for Roger Williams, you know, who the famous pianist, piano player. And she, she did a lot of things like that. And my father was working for this large Japanese company. And I think I have to remember the name of it is something like Mitsubishi, but not. It's rivals with Mitsubishi and, uh, uh, he, he stopped to see them because they had a gift shop there. So he stopped to see them and he met my mother there, and he was so impressed because she was going to college that he, you know, he, you know, he had met many Japanese women or... and there weren't that many, but they were the first to go to Chicago.

Timeframe 31:49 >> 35:00

So I met so I after after was in the Peace Corps in Tanzania, I traveled through India, Nepal, down to Malaysia. Uh, Singapore, Philippines, and finally went to Japan and, and the, and then I got a job as a, an English teacher and was in Kyoto. I lived in Kyoto in an apartment there and with was two other Japanese American guys. Then I played around with and we were, we were at this, we were learning how to do tea ceremony and we got a call that this group of Japanese youth, well, they were older, were traveling through Japan on a tour and would would we like to host them, take them around Kyoto? And it was nine o'clock in night, you know.

So, and among that group was my future wife and she was from Palo Alto and she was working in Palo Alto. And I had convinced her to to stay for a month with the with another friend of ours who who told us about them coming because she had a connection. So she stayed with with her in her six-tatami room and I, I chose to take her around and it was a whirlwind romance. We, she stayed for a month and then I was I asked her to marry me and this beautiful; it's called Kiyomizu. It's a beautiful on a hill, a Buddhist or Japanese shrine there. And so when I finally went back to the States a year later, we, we were we would, she, we got married. I was living in Chicago and brought her back. And then I knew she wanted to come back. So after five years, we moved to the Bay Area because she was missing her parents and it's a beautiful place. So I so we drove back and shipped all our stuff and lived in Mountain View for a few months then and then moved here in 1974. So that's how I came back.

Systems & Power Timeframe 35:00 >> 40:09

(Interviewer) So you mentioned you mostly grew up in Chicago, Illinois. Can you describe like the characteristics of your hometown? And were there a lot of other Japanese families and was what was the characteristics and what did you do around them?

Okay. Uh, it was on the west side of Chicago, the extreme Westside border and Austin Boulevard, and, you know, Roosevelt and the Congress Expressway, which is now called the Eisenhower Expressway. And it was a kind of like an island, because on one side was Oak Park, Illinois. The other part, side, was Cicero. And then we, we saw, the eastern side of the area was factories. And and so it was and then, and then it was, the northern side was the railroad. So we were we were bounded on four different sides in all. Most all of the people were Italian, few Poles, Polish, and Jewish, and Irish. They were, so it was mixed ethnic. But we were the only Japanese that lived there then, and that was before the war ended, the many Japanese from camps came to Chicago to live and my mother was the head of the Resettlers Committee, but they moved to the North Side, and the South Side.

So I never saw I never met the Japanese except my brothers until I was 17 or 18 years old. So we were-- we were very much isolated from the immigrant families that came from the camps, and they were very poor, and, well, we had the store, and-- but we were, we lived in a middle class neighborhood that was a middle class neighborhood, but we were the poorest in that neighborhood. And anyways, that's the kind of environment that I lived in. And they were and Italians, the very… they're very warm people. I wanted to say that I got to mix with them, but they were very prejudiced as well. And if, you know, Chicago, it was the most segregated city in America at one time just hated Blacks or African Americans moving in. So they kept moving that way, and they [the Italians] were very threatened by it. And, and it's at that point, my—the church I went to was a Christian church, Evangelical United Brethren, and the the minister, who I respected very much, he says, "I'm in favor of what the neighborhood says, so keep, keep the n****s out." So I broke off from Christianity after that. I just, I just couldn't stay with it because I, my own experiences.

And and I went to college. I went to when my mother went Simpson College in Indianola. I was I think I was liberated from that experience... to look at the philosophies like existentialism. And and I was very impressed with some of the Buddhist readings that I had. And it was it was at that time I was thinking about atheism and, you know, just leaving that. Yeah. And it was in Japan when I was in Japan I, I did a lot of zazen then and there was a, uh, a reverend from Chicago whose name was Reverend Kobose is very famous in our, in our sect. And I would go with him and his wife and, and eventually his daughter on weekends to do zazen or things like that. We we did a lot together like that. And I, I grew converted to Buddhism, but not... and then when I came in with my wife, she is a Jodo-Shinshu Buddhist and I could, I could never, I eventually converted to Jodo-Shinshu Buddhist so I think that those were significant changes transformations in my life.

Timeframe 40:09 >> 42:16

My biggest-- my number one hero was Abraham Lincoln. On TV, Roy Rogers, you know, Gene Autry... wasn't TV, was just, I don't know. I remember when TV just came in. So I don't think you guys remember that. But it just came in and it was was until 1950 that we had a TV. So I liked Bing Crosby things. Elvis came later. I didn't like him that much [laughs], but I soon got to like him later on in my life. But, it was the music people. Frankie Avalon... Frank Sinatra, of course. And Mel Torme and and women singer singers like that I got to Barbra Streisand is my same age. And when I went to when I was in training in Peace Corps in New York, I wrote a letter to to the Broadway Theater. I says, "I'm a Peace Corps volunteer. Ready to go to to Africa. And I would love to see Barbra Streisand in “Funny Girl." She was playing “Funny Girl” that time. And they, they sent me, I had to pay for the tickets. They sent me a letter, "Go to the box office and you can you get four tickets." So I took some of my Peace Corps people with me to to see the show and were very impressed with it. I wanted to go backstage to say hello to her and they wouldn't let me do that, but to just thank her for for allowing me to do that. It's one of the things I just remember, that I recalled, and were in my memory.

Timeframe 42:16 >> 49:00

My elementary school is Clark, named after George Rogers Clark, a branch of Key. A key school, Francis Scott Key School. And it was, uh, it was a small school on the island, only had less than a hundred people from kindergarten all the way up to eighth grade. And in my class, there were only five of us. And I-- one person I think passed away and don't know what happened to the other four. But I still remember them. But I grew up with a lot of other one of my friends from kindergarten, and he came half a year after I did. I still friends with... and then one of my classmates in my class from third grade and he's still my kid he's my best friend, and I still communicate with his name is Nicky Moseley and we still talk once a month, at least once a month on the phone. And I went to Austin High School, at one time, was the largest school, largest high school in Chicago. And then it became second to Lane High School in Chicago. And but now it's no longer exists. It was torn down. So and it, about 7000 people at one time in that school. And then I went to, uh, Wright junior college, a two-year college, community college in, in Chicago, where Kim Novak attended. And, oh and my high school, Hugh Hefner attended it. The owner of Playboy, and the drummer, I forget his name. A lot of people were famous. People had gone there before I was… I went there. [After] junior college, I went to Simpson College and graduated from there. And then after I came back from the Peace Corps, I went to, uh, School of Social Work. They called George Williams College in, in Downers Grove and then transferred to the University of Chicago and graduated from there.

(Interviewer) What draws one to Simpson in Iowa?

Well, one thing. My grades weren't very good in high school [laughs]... in and I so I went to right junior college, just the cost was only $5 per semester, you know. So I did my two years in there, and I got average grades, C average and then finally wanted to go to a four-year college. And my mother suggested and I did want to get away from Chicago anyway. So my mother, she just so I think she had some influence there. She graduated cum laude, you know, there. And so I went there and... actually I left there for a semester because I didn't like it. And then I decided to return after, after, a recess of a hell of a semester and went back there later because I was in a dormitory where they they would try-- they were very authoritarian. They they said I had to stay in my room. And I said, "I don't want to live in like that." So finally I went to an independent housing and I went there, and I graduated so…I don't know what [my mother] majored in. I can't remember what she majored in. But I liked history and political science, and that's what moved me. And we had very good teachers in that. And really that helped me think about the Civil Rights Movement was going on at that time. I did. I also went to summer at Roosevelt and DePaul Universities to to supplement my classes at Simpson.

But I also did-- when I was in Simpson, we went, we we did a lot of things with the South. We were going to go down south to Mississippi, but I wasn't able to go. But we went to Chicago and we worked, did volunteer work for core Congress and racial equality, with, his name was Foreman. Can't remember his first name but he was the head of it. And we we we were in a storefront and I remember one of the one of the people, who was she? She was African American. I became very friendly with. She says, "I'm going to sit at a white man's table someday." She was a she had a great voice. "I am going to sit at a white man's table someday." Those kinds of things. And living and working in the inner city of Chicago just, uh, transformed me into this is where I need to seek my path, you know, in terms of advocacy and understanding how the racism that was against me and the liberation that that the Civil Rights Movement was going towards influenced me so much in what I wanted to pursue.

Transformation & Change Timeframe 49:00 >> 57:39

After I graduated from University of Chicago, I did a lot well, I did a lot during my, my two years. One of the most influential programs I worked for was called the Citizens Action Program, which was run by the name of the guy Saul Alinsky. “Rules for Radicals”, he wrote. He is the one that, uh, consulted with, Chavez here. He was going around and in the he was eating some Mexican food and he says, "Ah, this is terrible."[Laughs]. And, and Chavez was really impressed with his honesty about the food. Anyways, but he trained Chavez. He has a school roof. He has his school-- The book was Rules for Radicals, but he had a school which costs $150,000 to go to. I guess he gave Chavez a free ride, but I have people went there, and I did my fieldwork with an agency called Citizen's Action Program, which we we fought for against, they wanted to put a an airport in the middle of Lake Michigan. We fought that. And they wanted to do a crosstown expressway. We found that, we we we stopped that there was a-- and there was a book written about what we did. And and we were fighting against Mayor Daley, who was at that time the ruler king of Chicago.

I don't know if you know about him, but he was there. He was there during the, the protests, remember? I don't know. In '68, there was a big protest in Chicago, and the police had beaten a lot of them up. And it became world news about police beatings and started the whole, this whole process of it. And he was... he was he was called the Boss. Boss Daley.

And I worked for the city after I came back. But that's another story. But anyways, during that time, I was I was overseas when when all of that happened. But and then I was overseas when Martin Luther King, I was in Japan when Martin Luther King was killed. But the city was in total turmoil during that time. My brother was on the, on the passenger side, and they... they reached in and almost toward this woman, the driver who was driving, her arm off because they were so angry during that time that the Martin Luther King was killed. And so and in '68, with so many things happening, uh, uh, Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, he was killed in June. Uh, Martin Luther King was killed in March. And Malcolm X was killed in February. That was a terrible time for me. And I was... I had been out of the Peace Corps in '67 and '68. I was just reeling from what was happening in in my country and I refused to go to be drafted during the draft time and... at that time I was staying with my father and eventually moved to Kyoto. But at that time I was going to the American friends to see if I can be could become a conscientious objector, and they said you had in order to be become a conscientious objector, you needed to believe in a supreme being. And that's what stopped me, because I, I had disavowed myself from Christianity. And so I couldn't go in as a conscientious… I had to go in as a draft resister. And that would mean that if I, I openly resisted the draft, I would go to jail.

I learned that this one guy who was from Australia who was also there, he says, and there was a time at that time in China, I mean, in Vietnam, a Buddhist priest burned himself. And at that time I was so wrought with emotion that he said, "Let's, let's go and burn ourselves tomorrow." And I said, I just said, "Okay, I'll meet you tomorrow at 7:00 or at 8:00, and we'll we'll focus in ourselves and burn ourselves." Needless to say, I never showed up. [Chuckles] Well, I just thought about it. Was it? Well, in my doing stupid, you know. So I never showed up. He never showed up. So that'll be something. But I finally had this thought that when I went into the Peace Corps, the doctor who was a VA doctor said I had flat feet and I had asthma, and that it kept me out of going into the legally kept me out of going. Becoming a was a, 1A to 2A, I guess something like that and my draft card. So I, I was exempt from going into the service and he wrote a letter for me. His name was Dr. Friedman, as I remember, and he wrote a letter for me that I'm exempt from the draft. So phew! Otherwise I was going to go to Canada or something like that. So but those were, those were turning points in my life. And at that same time I met my wife Jan, and that was the best thing that ever happened to me. So I've been married now 53 years, almost so. And and she has slowly come my way of thinking. [Laughter]. I I met her at the same time, around the same time.

(Interviewer) So you were in Kyoto now. And then you came back and it was draft time?

Well, here's how I learned about I could be drafted. I didn't let my mother send me the draft letter. I says, "You're not supposed to know where I'm supposed to be. I'm overseas." And she actually sent me the draft letter. So that's what hit me. You know, I'm not going to go. And so I wrote to the, during the time I wrote to the to the draft doctor, Dr. Friedman, because he says, "If you get drafted, just contact me." So he did that.

Systems & Power Timeframe 57:39 >> 1:01:33

(Interviewer) Did you feel discriminated in the workplace? Did you have any instances where you felt that you were discriminated against?

Yes, I did. When I was working for the V.A., I've been working there for maybe 10 or 15 years. I applied for a promotion, and this guy who's who came in, he was only there for two years, and he was selected over me. And I said, "That's discrimination." And I, I went to the... I did a thing called EEO that I went to and I happened to know one of the investors because I worked with him on a survey looking at Japanese Americans and their alcohol habits. And we did surveys about that and learned that we we lack an enzyme in the brain that—somewhere, not the brain that cannot take alcohol. It's very and I think it applies I think it applies to other Asians. But for for that survey, it affected us in, you know, Japanese in Japan get very drunk. They can't take their liquor in here, too. And a lot of people do not drink because… I don't drink because of it. I can't take alcohol at all. So anyways, I met him and then he he he kind of said, "Yeah, you're going to go, you are going to—you can make a complaint."

And I was ready to go up the ladder. It was against me. It's against the chief of social work. And. And he was reviewed at that time and so it was just about to go beyond it and complain against him. And then he called me into his office, and he said, you know, "You, you going to complain?" And I said, "Yes, I am." And I was very adamant about it. And he says, "Well, I'm going to offer you-- something will come your way, but I wish you talk to me and I will give you counseling and direct counseling." And that was pretty much of a privilege to to be counseled by him. And so, okay, I said, you know, "I won't take it." I'll I'll leave it here. And then if I still feel I can, I'm going to go, go ahead with my EEO complaint. Equal Employment Opportunity. And, and I was supported by some other higher level social workers. So I felt supported by that. And after that he hired two-- after I met him, he hired two Asian social workers. And at that time, I was the only one, one of two Asian social workers there. And one of the other social workers is were wrote a book about how he was discriminated against. And so, yeah, I did go I did have that, that process, and I eventually got the promotion, but I had to go through that process to get it.

Transformation & Change Timeframe 1:01:33 >> 1:10:23

(Interviewer) What would you say that even anti-Asian racism appears in today's contemporary context?

Well, this is a another thing I want to say is during when the Asian American movement started going up, I was a chair of an Asian organization. We wrote newsletters all over all over the country. It's called the Asian Liberation Organization. It was a small cadre of people in the 1970s. And we I even took my six weeks onto Washington to March against it. And I, I also was in a situation where we, we... I was working for the city, but I knew what was going on. And Reverend Jesse Jackson was in the middle of this park and also Fred Hampton. And Fred Hampton was a dynamic speaker, he says, and then he started, "This is Ho, Ho Chi Minh. Be like him." "Ho, ho, ho, Ho Chi Minh, be like him." He started that year, and he gave a tremendous speech in Garfield Park in Chicago. The next day he was assassinated. And I read about it by District Attorney Terry Hanrahan, who lied about he says those were nail holes, but those were actual bullet holes that killed him, assassinated. So I witnessed all of these things, you know, and having and remembering that we went from Japanese American to Asian American.

And there was two things that sang great songs about "I'm an Asian" and I can't remember their names that I could get it for you. And when we went to when we went to Washington and took my six week old son with him on the way, we, we, we, we, we had this group also met in Detroit and her name was Grace. She she's very famous in the Chinese community. Grace Lee Boggs very famous. And we had a very good relationship with her, very good relationship with her. She was married to the African American, and she was one of the few who said that the first communist in America was Japanese American, the first communist that she bragged about it. She talked about the Cultural Revolution. She really admired the culture, which wasn't so good. But at that time, she, she understand that you had to go from an economic to a cultural. Yeah, I like the idea. But how they did it was different. [Chuckles]. But anyways, that was during that time and so I was witness to all of these kind of historical experience that happened. And so when it comes to Santa Clara, this woman from who worked for ALA [Asian Law Alliance], Jackie Maruhashi; I'm sure you know her. Vickie knows her; they good friends. She worked at ALA; she asked me she had me do several projects with with a little after it was retired. She asked me to be part of this group with which people Bob Rubin wanted to interview about suing the city of Santa Clara because of this at-large voting. And I said, "Why are you asking me?" "Because you're an Asian." I was the only Asian. And there were two other Latino Latinx people on there. And there were four of us. There were four of us at the beginning, and they in 2011 or 2010 and then we had sent, Bob Rubin had sent a letter with our names on it that you have to you were breaking the California Voting Rights Act by having at-large voting. What are you going to do about it? So they put it to committees for a year or two. And I talked to to some of the council. One was named Kennedy and the other one, was she still in politics. I can't remember her name. And they were well, "We'll see what we do," but nothing happened. They put her on committees, and nothing happened. They had committees because... there were all white committees. Yeah. And there were there was no person of color. There was a guy named Martinez, but he was a Spanish American. There were no persons of color since 1951. And even at that time there were that there was no person of color.

So he and I had met a couple of people who ran. And they says, you can't win in large, you know, they were Asians. So I said, "Okay." And then it kind of faded away then about 2016 and 2017, they asked me to come and this one company asked me to come with Bob Rubin, and but I was the only one. So I said, "What happened to the others?" "Oh, they're gone. They moved." "You're the only one. This still lives here." So I see what can happen to me if we lose. "Do I? Am I my liable?" "No, we'll take care of that." So I felt lucky with that, but I was kind of skeptical. But I said, Yeah, of course, you know, this is a pocket here, you know, so the clear is considered very liberal. But this pocket has at that time 32 or 33% Asians, the largest Asian group, and, you know, sizable number of Latinos. But the Asians are [inaudible]. And then so through Jackie went there the second time round, Bob Rubin just me. And, ALA, ALA was not involved. So I then I said, "Well, why don't you bring bring ALA and, you know, Asian [Law Alliance]?

"Oh, oh, yeah!" You know, they didn't even think about them. They just wanted me. I said, you know, I feel kind of, you alone in that. So here and then they asked Richard [Konda] to come in and he, he, he wanted to come in. And then they changed the, they, they changed the private law firm to this, the one that we went with now and then I went to a meeting at AACI, and it was late to that they talked about what's going on. And so La Donna [Yumori-Kaku] and Mike [Kaku] came on and two other agents came on sometime later. And the reason and of course, the reason that La Donna’s name was on there is because they had me that, there was a glitch in their in their complaint. So they had to rewrite it. And in 2017, they they they rewrote it, set it up, and in 2018, went to court. And we finally spoke in the court, what I felt, and we won. But I do think all of those experiences that led me to that. And then, of course, my experience with working as executive director of Yu Ai Kai because I was very proud. Well, I was proud as a Country director of Peace Corps because I was able to lead something, and I found my leadership skills there.

Narrative & Identity Timeframe 1:10:23 >> 1:14:23

I didn't think I was a leader, but I found my leadership skills there and also with the VA. And then when when they came to looking for a new director at Yu Ai Kai, I, I, I said, "I don’t want to stay at the VA anymore, I want to go there." And I took a lesser pay but and fortunately I was selected, and I did that for six years and I really enjoyed it. It was a culmination of my identity of becoming the Japanese American and-- but being isolated from Japanese Americans. And I had the opportunity to lead my community in a community service, and that was always with JACL, Japanese American Citizens League. But I was always kind of an outsider here. So with the JACL. So but I worked with them when I went to to Yu Ai Kai, I felt their whole leadership, you know, the weight of it coming upon me and I, I took it with a challenge and I was, I wanted to meet their challenge.

And it was very much like a where I worked in the Peace Corps. There were several different islands that I had to and several different groups I had to work with and this one was the culmination of all of that. And I finally can work in my own community rather than work in different communities like, like I did, like I've done before with the VA, with with the Peace Corps. I worked with, you know, I had to be culturally sensitive. But this was my own culture. So I, I felt there was the whole culmination of what I was going to do. And then when I left there, I became, you know, one of the board members asked me to work in the jail as a volunteer chaplain, and use my use my Jodo-Shinshu, you know, and now I'm enjoying teaching, working with inmates and teaching them meditation and teaching Buddhism and also talking 1 to 1 with them.

I met most of them are Vietnamese and Latinos, but and there was one Japanese, two Japanese guys I talked talked with one of them, unfortunately, committed suicide last February. And trying to change that, that they're trying to change the jail response to suicide, then that they never talked to the other inmates and they never talked to the staff there, the guards there. And what happens is that it's there's this gap that needs to be met. So that's my challenge there. And I do and I also do. I've been doing this since 2003, Family Caregivers Group every Tuesday, and we have three groups a year of eight weeks and I enjoyed it very much. And now I'm going to do I did mental health, disaster mental health with the Red Cross. Now I'm moving to disaster spiritual care, which I just started doing. So I had some challenges before me. And these are all volunteer jobs. I don't make any money from that. So and they continue to do so. It keeps me going.

Timeframe 1:14:23 >> 1:19:22

Well, I at the VA I worked with a lot of senior WWII. I did I did some counseling with seniors who... that time they didn't have Viagra. So they wanted, you know, their erections. You know, they were in the sixties or seventies. And and then I also did some, you know, 1 to 1 counseling with the WW2 vets and what they had gone through. And I really didn't realize how much torture they went through in the Pacific Islands. And also in Japan when they were prisoners of war. And I really got to learn how, how cruel the Japanese regime was at that time. And they were hesitant to talk to me about that. But they finally did. And it was they, they, they they suffered a lot from some tortures that they had. And then it seniors in general, I work with the couples and in terms of getting them actually went through the wife thinking you know and I did a lot of couples counseling with WW2 vets and Vietnam vets and you are some early Iraqi vet were the first first the break out under it was under Bush I think and then I left, I left the VA in 2003 so I got an affinity working with with with seniors.

One of the one of the seniors I work with was at Yu Ai Kai, Paul Kuwada and his wife and I did some counseling with him. Very little, not very much. But then they would see him a Yu Ai Kai and then he you know, he connected me with like I did a lot of good, good work for me in terms of being meeting the seniors, and I really got to enjoy with them. I would sit and have lunch with them and talk to them. They would talk to me about camp and they would talk and do some counseling with a lot of seniors who were... one guy, was with the intelligence, intelligent, MIS intelligence, and two or three of them were in there. One's name was... what's the name of it, was-- what's the name of the, the air base? And I, I, we were on welfare. Moffet, he was one of the guys I talk. I worked on real good relationship with him and a couple others during World War 2 and then some Korean War vets. But anyways, it just just just soldiering with them. And other people had had complimented me for mixing with them and not staying up in my office and, and when I started the family to know the caregiving group, I started the caregiving group and other counseling sessions that I had with them. It just made me feel so much an affinity towards Japanese American seniors. They are always so grateful that we had the senior center. Then I got to expand it to the, to the, the with the Boys Club was and and and you have to continue expanding, is kind of like camp was to make it, to make it popular. So it suffered after I left because of the pandemic and things like that but Jennifer, who was part of my caregivers group, she's now the director, executive director and doing a great job, doing a great job.

Narrative & Identity Timeframe 1:19:22 >> 1:24:07

(Interviewer) Regardless of which war they were at, did you see any like common symptoms or like stories that you constantly heard, like afterwards that they struggled with?

Of course, post-traumatic stress disorder. You know, they, they all had it. And even World War Two, but they called it a different name, you know, so, uh, and I really began to understand it with couples counseling and just individual counseling, what they were going through. And connected to my own traumas that I had as a child. And then when PTSD, it really started with the VA. That it is a serious mental illness, and it didn't transform to the county with disasters, and then with rape and accidents, you know, things like that. Disasters break up your whole, your whole internal system changes. And I got to understand it by looking at my own situation and looking at it how it it can affect anyone who has had some kind of traumatic injury. And it is very internal. And I saw this coming throughout. I even interviewed this guy who was, when they were doing the hydrogen bomb in the Pacific Ocean, you know, that's the time when John Wayne was making these movies and and... and what he was going through because he was just there.

And when they dropped the hydrogen bomb and he saw so much... anything that, you know, like a backfire of a car? This was all PTSD, but just just to just turn his innards out and he he would cry each time you you, he recalled those times and and never got over it. Never got over it. And he even moved to Felton to get away from all that noise. And so I could really empathize with what they're going through. And so part of what my counseling was was my empathy really grew and, and also my empathy grew with people growing old and all, and what they have to go through. I'm beginning to experience some of those things, but... yeah, what I appreciate as a social worker is that my... my learning of their experience and experiencing alongside them has sensitized me and me. I think it's made me more of a human being, more, more of a human being in terms of understanding and then working with AACI and working with a lot of Asian Americans, with particularly the Vietnamese in the Cambodians and, you know, all of them, what they experience. No, I never could interview the refugee directly because they couldn't speak the language. But I, I, I supervised all of those counselors that AACI hired and heard the stories. It just tore me, tore me up of what the Cambodians and the Vietnamese went through as they came here. And even on the boats, you know, I wrote these stories and that was just ripped me apart. So, of course, I arrived with Asian, Asian Americans through those talks. And I don't think many people really understand what refugees go through unless you really hear their stories. And immigrants are different. Refugees are different, very different.

Timeframe 1:24:07 >> 1:26:57

Well, with core going back to core snake-- Jake University wanted to go to Mississippi but missed an opportunity. I finally went through Mississippi on my own in 2010 and went through the in my van, but. But the solidarity I saw with Asians when you March on Washington between, you know, different Asian groups which you know, at that time was, you know, is a new dimension. You know, it's not like we-- what we take for granted with AAPI's now is not was that way back then. And when all the Asian Americans came came together and talked from Maoist to, you know, Japanese Americans and, you know, Grace Lee Boggs, it just... was like a blossoming for me, of understanding my own identity. For me, it was good. And for understanding that, then I'm part of this great community of cooperation. Although that wasn't so true back in Japan when I lived there, you know, they're very nationalistic-- back then very nationalistic, but they were these but now, as an American, as an Asian American. I feel the full brunt of it because I I've seen it evolve in I I've lived with it. I've experienced it, not just observed it, but I've experienced it with different people like Tom Izu and and his wife, and so many others, Michele Lew, I call her the... well, I, when I, when I went to her 10th anniversary, I said that she was, she was very, very Saul Alinsky-like Saul Alinksy follower. I can see all these things I remember, but I can't remember-- the way you you cause a leader, you know. So she she she's very good leader. She's a very good leader. And she calls me her mentor, so I feel good.

Transformation & Change Timeframe 1:26:57 >> 1:32:10

(Interviewer) Did you have any specific mentors that really shaped your your career and in your activism, in your community?

Yeah, a guy named Martinez at Citizens Action Program, one of my teachers at the University of Chicago, uh... Saul Alinsky through his writings, was, was a, I feel was a mentor, although I never met him. I have some Buddhist mentors there that I talked to. I got-- his name was Alfred Blume, Glenn Kameda in the temple. Um, Kenji Akohoshi, like a lot of Buddhist mentors that I adhere to. Glenn Kameda was, he just passed away a couple weeks ago. And, uh, and a good friend of mine, I mean, he wasn't a mentor because I had this, but Hiroshi Habiko. Habiko sensei. He died about a month ago, but I knew him in Japan. We played around for a little bit, so he was kind of like a peer. But I, I remember him fondly and. But mentors were like Kinsey Akohoshi and Dr. Alfred Blume, who passed away about seven or eight years ago.

What would you say is important about sitting on boards and commissions and the work that they do for the community?

Well, there's a lot of boards and commissions that I've been on and I've been very disappointed in. Uh, I sat on the behavioral board for so many, I chaired it once and, and I was pulled off of it last year by Susan Ellenberg. She replaced me, surprisingly, you know, going to wait another the year because I was going to get off the board, but she pulled me off of it. Sometimes they have clout, sometimes they don't. And they and you sit on a board and use, a lot of board members to not really study what's going on, know what's going on. So they just listen to what the powers that be telling them. And they don't do anything. I wouldn't, in my later years, you know, I would follow leadership's, one of my mentors in the mental health board. He passed away. He was the he was the Director of Social Work in the San Jose State. Martinez. And he was a mentor of mine. He took me to all the places, and I followed him and I realized that we we just can't listen to what the staff tells us with-- we've got to challenge it. And I did that when I was working for the Council on Aging. I was in a Board Board for Council on Aging, and I was the only one who initially spoke up. And, and I happened to be one of the ones who was original people who spoke up in the mental health board. And I, I spoke with so many about passion. You've got to have passion. And that's what that's what motivated me as the executive director.

Who am I working for? Who are we? Who are we treating? Who are we dealing with? You have to look at the people. Don't some people get on the board because they just want to, you know, the notoriety of being on a board. But I never said, I never thought that. And I began to speak out more and more.

And what I've learned on these boards, they can only go so far. And so I go back to my own thing is, is I want to I don't want somebody looking over my shoulder, breathing down my neck. I want to be the one breathing down their necks. And that's why I went into social advocacy. And people will tell you that I'm not just a sitter. I am I am one who wants to make things move. I also don't want to be a politician either, [laughs] because other people move you.

Timeframe 1:32:10 >> 1:35:18

(Interviewer) How did you manage, you know, working in emotionally heightened, you know, situations and like your family, and still being active in the community. Like, what keeps you have an inkling might be like, you know, your Buddhism but like what else like kind of keeps you centered and helped you manage work and family life?

My commitment to... well, it really is my commitment to compassion. Compassion is is what drives me. And understanding there's still a lot to be done, you know, and whether I do it or somebody else does it, that doesn't matter to me. As long as I'm in the struggle, the struggle is what moves me. I... that's what they said about what you mean there really struggle there to win. "Ho Chi Minh, be like him, do the struggle there to win." And that's what I continue internally. Well, but whether I win or not, the reality is, you know, I, I advocated for Anthony Packer. I gave I gave more money to his campaign than I have ever given anybody. And we lost. But we also won, three other Asia [inaudible]. And in our eyes, [inaudible] and Karen Hardy won, and those people I also [support] so we won three out of four and I'm happy with that. But I understand reality what it is and then it will continue. It's that we don't live in a perfect world. It will never be perfect. But the struggle is what comes as long as we as a struggle, as long as we struggle for what I think may be right. But I also want to have balance in understanding. That's where my Buddhism comes in understanding balance.

(Interviewer) What would you say are the key issues that you see today in our community that you feel needs to be addressed?

Racism, of course, sexism. I’m really studying more about change in transgenders. Beginning to understand some of the struggles that they go through... Just what's happening to Ukraine and all of these things. I mean, we're there's so many things, but we we have to fight to win. Yeah. And I was so pleased about the, the elections, you know, although we lost the House, but we didn't lose as much as I thought we would. I thought we would go into a deep, deep dark space, but be able to emerge a little bit out of that.

Joy & Cultural Resistence Timeframe 1:35:18 >> end

In 2000, year 2000, I was in the Solomon Islands with 82 Peace Corps volunteers, plus a hundred Americans. And I was the the chief American in that country who was a Peace Corps director. But I also was the highest American official there. We had a civil war brewing. In fact, the day my wife left the Solomon Islands about four weeks ahead of time, a bankers head was chucked. And he almost lost his head. And in in front of, and around the corner of my house, one another person was beheaded. And so there was a civil war going on between the Solomon Islanders tribe and another tribe called the Malaitan, and they were like the dominant, dominant tribe in the country. But it was very polyethnic. There are 40 different islands that we had Peace Corps on, and there are about 5000 islands in in the whole country of Solomon Islands. That's what Guadalcanal was. You know, World War Two. It was the Gettysburg of World War Two. Anyways, I had to evacuate 82 Peace Corps volunteers, plus New Zealand volunteers, plus Japanese volunteers out of the country. And it was all on my shoulders and, uh, we had June 1st-2nd to get out. So I had to go to, I had to evacuate the people out of Guadalcanal. And we went to another island, and two or three islands we had to go through. And it was very, very dangerous at the time because the US, the Malaitan tribe was coming in and there was going to be a confrontation there and we just didn't know what happened.

So I said I told the embassy and I told the head of Peace Corps that we had to leave. And this was the first time that Peace Corps evacuated from islands. They evacuated from Africa. They evacuated from, from Europe. Places in Europe, but not from islands. And this was a very difficult logistical task. So this is what my leadership and my my guts moved in because all our lives were at stake. And I had the pull pull two volunteers out of a certain area where they would would definitely have been killed. And, uh, and we, we staged that her mother was dying or a relative, was then we brought her in-- anyways, I evacuated over 100 people from 40 different islands by small aircraft. And, um, and we went to three different islands and we had to be flown out of those three different islands.

And there were times when it was very, very scary, particularly when I evacuated with my staff and all the volunteers to this one island. And and we learned that the plane could never come in because of the the airfield was not level for them. And we had to stay. We had to stay, go back to our to another island, to a hotel to stay of stay in. We also, uh, knew that people from New Guinea were coming and they were, they were going to be involved in, in the war. Uh, so I heard some boat coming in and it happened to be one of these inter-island ships. And so I had to call Washington to get permission to take the that ship and move all of our volunteers, one third of our volunteers, because they were on two other different islands and go to another island. And it was like-- and we were able to do that. We all gathered our money and paid our fare. And then that morning the ship was not moving. There was something going wrong with the engine. And I had to call Washington again, say when that, "We're not able to get out of here." But then the at the last minute, the captain found this this tool that he was able to fix the engine and we were able to go on. And and he made it so they wouldn't have to make different stops to the other other islands to go to this other country that we're-- Vanuatu. And we were able to get on that island and the plane was able to land and and take us there. But we were on this big ship and we had to... Did you ever see the movie Exodus from the where people were leaving to go to Israel? This was the same kind of a thing with Paul Newman was the was the actor in there. He had this rope ladder to get off into these three, three little canoes to get to the shore and in the water, it was you know, it took it's almost to the level of it sink of these canoes sinking. We had, I think, 42 people in three boats, you know, so three of these little canoes type the outboard motors finally made it there. And it was, it was really difficult task oversee and think they're writing a book about it. But um, that was one of the, another major changes that I, I would... that transformed me, because I knew I can do it. I did it! And nobody died. Nobody got, and we, we were able to stay in Vanuatu for a month where people were, went to another countries or went home and I went to Washington.

So, uh, and we had a debriefing of all of that and it was very sad leaving, but we were all relieved. So what I do to teach people about what Buddhism tells me and what I teach people in the, in the jail, is, take nothing for granted. Your life is so precious, you know. So when we meditate, we breathe, you know, we breathe 70,000 times a day, but we don't even think about it. But if we learn to get in touch with our breath, the basic thing of life is the first thing you do when you're born. The last thing you do when you die is to take it and treasure it. And that's about life. And that's what I've learned from from these experiences that I've had, that life is so important and we're so lucky to be breathing, even breathing that, that it, it matters. And and that's what they learned in the jail. And, and what I continue teaching makes me appreciate my 80 years of life, you know. So that's what I wanted to bring in, is that evacuation taught me a lot, that life is very fleeting. It's never to be taken for granted.

[Interviewer] So for young, young students and young adults, like just this election, we're just starting to see the numbers that they really turned out in record numbers and they were turning out since 2018 and the numbers have increased each election cycle. And so what would your, you know, your message be to them as they're kind of coming into adulthood and in this climate and trying to fight for, you know, a better than our life and circumstances for everybody.

Yeah. Again, know that this know that this world is not a perfect world. It will never be. And so that means there's always a crusade or a cause to fight for. And really understanding the cause that you're going into. And if fighting or observing or whatever you're doing with it is a challenge to your life, it will make you feel more alive. I do think that that's the message. I will say the, again, there to struggle, there to win. You know, that's something, you never give up. Never give up.

(Interviewer) there anything else you'd like to share before you wrap up? Do you want to talk about your number one mentor or, you know, share anything else?

Oh, she is my number one mentor because she's the essence of what we call in Jodo Shinshu Buddhism: [inaudible], someone who's who doesn't think of herself; she's selfless, someone who's totally selfless and is always thinking of others and has compassion for others. Although she doesn't show it like I do outwardly, she really exemplifies it in her life. And the only person she shouts at is me. So. And I enjoy that at times because I see she has a human part to her, you know. But she is always calm and I'm always thinking of my grandchildren and others. You know what she does? And when I first met her, she would always go to the person who was sitting in the corner and sit next to him and talk to him or her, because they were they were the ones who were left out. And I just said, my partner, she's always and she does it now, even though the social situations she'll just observe and they go to that person to talk to that person. That's what I admire about her. And she does so much for me. She gets aggravated, but I understand that. But yeah, she's my number one mentor.