Encoded for the Experiencing War web site for the Veterans History Project.
The recording of the interview with Isao Fujimoto was digitized.
This transcription was encoded with minimal changes to the original text in an effort to preserve original content and idiosyncrasies of the person interviewed. Period language and terminology are also retained. Encoding is literal with regard to the transcriptionist's capitalization, punctuation, and spelling. Spelling errors are indicated with [sic]; however, recurring errors in spelling within a single document have been marked the first time and not subsequently.
What is your name and age?
My name is Isao Fujimoto. I am going to be 70 this year. And I was born on the Owakma Indian Reservation in Eastern Washington. It's a town of Whapito. It's a Reservation town. And the reason why we were on the Indian reservation was because of the Alien land laws.
Alien land laws were really directed towards Asian people. And was mainly directed towards anybody who could not become a US citizen. And no Asian could become a citizen until 1952. That means the Chinese, Koreans, there were no Southeast Asians at the time.
And so most of the law was against the Emperors of Japan because the Japanese Americans were mainly farmers and there was a lot of kind of economic jealously and fear. So they didn't want the competition farm, the Japanese farming. So the law was passed in 17 western states.
They said that people who could not qualify for citizenship couldn't buy or lease land. And so what happened was the immigrants to Washington who came from Japan and wanted to farm they word (sic) about the Owakma Indians who said no we'll rent land to you. So there were 125 Japanese immigrant families that were on this Indian reservation. And that's where I grew up.
So what camp were you in? In the book it said that you were in 2 different camps.
Yeah, here's how the camps worked. Umm. When the Second World War started you know all this type of suspicion again towards the Japanese and very similar to what's going on with the Middle Easterners now.
They would declare certain areas as dangerous areas for potential areas of sabotage. And they declared anything within 200 miles of the Pacific Coast as a war zone. And most of the Japanese were living within that area, so they kind of marked them off. And there were 208 of these war zones.
Now you're here, here's Fresno you are one area and here's the Bay Area and San Francisco or Berkeley as another area. The Indian Reservation was its own. So depending on where you were, you were sent to different camps. So people living on the Indian reservations got sent to the livestock yards in Portland, Oregon. People from San Francisco got sent to a racetrack in Tanforan. Right now, Tanforan is a shopping center and before it was a racetrack ok. And the people who were living in Fresno were sent to either there was a Fresno county fairground that was a camp or there was another in Pinedale just north of Fresno.
So these were temporary camps and the reason why they were temporary was because for permanent camps they needed time to build them and they are building these camps in more interior. Pretty much in isolated places near Indian Territory actually and the one's from um. The people from the Owakma valley got sent to.
They were first sent to the Portland Assembly Center then they got sent to a place in Wyoming called Heart Mountain. So Heart Mountain was 1 of the 10 camps and there were 14 of these assembly centers. So umm, the journey that I took was from the Owakma valley to Portland, Oregon then to Heart Mountain, Wyoming.
Then we got sent to Tule Lake, California. And Tule Lake was a very separate camp. It was set up to after a loyalty. They gave a loyalty oath to the people at these camps asking if they would serve in the US military or if they are going to preannounce their citizenship. And those people who answered no to both of those questions were sent to Tule Lake. So my father could not become a citizen and was sent to another camp already. So we didn't want to be separated again and he said no to both of them and was sent to that camp.
So you basically said no to both questions to keep your family together?
Oh yeah, yeah. People had many reasons of answering "no." A lot of young people answered "no." And when I say young, I am talking about college-aged students. They were pretty angry because they knew their rights now. You see you are going to college and then wonder how come you are in jail and we didn't even have a trail and they can't even prove anything so why are we in camp.
And so they protested, and said, "I'm not going to serve in the army." So they said no to those questions. Most said "no" but some said "yes." But they stuck with their family because their parents were immigrants from Japan and they had no citizenship. So if they said, "yes" to that that means they would have to preannounce their Japanese citizenship. And yet they couldn't have American citizenship and therefore they would have no country at all.
So as a result, they said no to both questions. But there are a lot of different reasons why people said "no" or chose to answer the way they did. So Tule Lake was a segregation center and became the biggest camp probably by the middle of war.
What were you able to bring with you to camp or forced to leave behind?
Yeah the thing. People were very limited. People could only take what they could carry and they were given a trunk. I mean, people had a trunk that they could take and so you were given a family number. It was like a prison and you would put the family number on the suitcase or trunk and that was about it. They also didn't allow a lot of things not to take in.
Like you couldn't take in cameras or anything like that radios for example. When you start thinking about yeah what could I take in with the trunk automatically that meant no appliances, and so very simple.
I know that in the book it mentions that your father was arrested before the war?
Yeah that's right. The way that operated was that the government tried to take away the community leadership. And the way they defined community leadership was people who really were strong winded to their culture. People who were teaching language for example. People teaching martial arts. The Buddhist priests and business people, who were running Japanese stores or things like this. They were the ones taken away. My father actually didn't do any of that. He was a farmer, but the one thing he did was that he was trained to carpenter and so when this community of Japanese immigrants on the Indian reservation grew bigger and bigger they wanted to build an auditorium to conduct activities for the kids. Like basketball and they would have a place to cook community meals. They even had a stage for shows and plays and movies and so on.
So he was in charge of building the whole thing and he trained all the farmers. So he was in some type of leadership position. So because of that he was taken away. He got taken to the county jail and then got taken to a detention center in Montana. And that's where they took a lot of aliens.
They had Italians and Germans there too. So there are several of their detention centers that were different from the internment camps. The 10 of these internment camps, but then they had the one's run by the Department of Justice. There was one in Montana and another one in Bismarck, North Dakota and others in Santa Fe and one more Texas. And a lot of Japanese immigrants and immigrants from South America were sent to these camps. The Caribbean government for example was the one that sent the most. The idea was that they used them as prisoners of war for exchange.
So there are a lot of things about the war that most people don't know about. And I think that it's very important to relate this kind of experience with what is going on right now because the same kind of techniques are being suggested. And for those people they think it's great but we don't know what the majority reaction is yet.
So there is a big movement now among minorities especially Asian Americans to this idea that for anybody who looks or acts like a Muslim and take them in is a really big mistake. So this issue is even going on right now. It is very current.
What was your most memorable experience in the camp?
I think the most memorable experience um (pause). I am thinking in terms of some very special gifts that I got. I was and it really shaped my outlook on what I am doing now.
The first Christmas which was 1942, we were over at Heart Mountain camp and Wyoming is very cold and all this. There were no trees and very deserted. At this time I was about 9-years-old and there were 5 of us kids and my mom and grandfather were all in this one room and there was a knock on the door and this little girl came and gave us presents. I looked out and they were passing out presents to everyone else. So I asked where was this present from. And they said that they were from Apathies. And it turned out to be people who were pretty close in West Nebraska.
They were people who heard about these camps most of them were from churches that want to send some stuff to the prisoners. They had names on the boxes. It was the name of the small town that they were from. And the one that I recall was said American Frans Service Community. They are a Quaker organization were really the only organization that came into the camps and really not only help people out but they also tried to get people of college-aged because they were stuck in the camp and they are wasting their time.
So they started identifying those whom they thought should get out of there. They tried to find schools that will accept them. Most of them had to leave Berkeley or Washington, so they found little community colleges like Charleston in Minnesota. And they would write letters to the town and to university. They were able to take 5,000 students out of the camp so that they could continue their education. Instead of wasting 3-4 years, they were able to finish school and it was a big difference because by the time the war was over you know you had an educated group of people. So it made a big difference.
So for me, I didn't know about the AFSC until I went to Berkeley. I was impressed by that group so when I came back from my military service in Korea, I went to the AFSC in Japantown in San Francisco. This was the one that worked on trying to relocate all of the college-aged Japanese Americans to get them out of the camp. So I walked in there and thanked them for what they did you know because that really helped us out. And I remembered because of the presents and so I said that I am ready to reciprocate, so I started working for them.
And that was 1958. So about more than 40 years now I've been working with them. And so that was a big impact you know when you are a kid you get something and then you start thinking, "Wow, here's a group actually trying to help you out."
And the other thing I remember is that my father came back from Montana and he brought some presents with him. He bought a book called Aesops Fables. These are stories about animals and each one has a moral to it. Its actually written by Greek slaves a couple of thousand years when they had slaves of the Romans. And umm he was good at telling stories and able to bring meaning to them. But the stories are guides in terms of how you look at life. And so as a 10-year-old kid I read those and it had a big impact.
And the third thing I remember was when we got to Tule Lake camp my father got me another present. And umm I have started collecting stamps alright. And he looked through a catalog and he ordered me the biggest stamp album which cost 5 dollars and that was a lot of money at the time because people at the camps are getting paid if you are a doctor or whatever. So if you were a professional you got $19 a month. And if you were semi-skilled you would get $15. And if you were doing labor work you were given 12 dollars.
But he was making 16 dollars and he spent $5 to buy my album for me. So that album really.... so I could look at all these pictures and could get an idea of what was going on in the world. So even though we are confined in a prison ok, you do something like collecting stamps the mind is free to go all over the world. So that is a very powerful experience.
So those are the things that I think are very valuable and kind of shaped your outlook on life. You learn about good people. You learn about certain guides of how to look at things and you learn how to free no matter how bad the situation might be its all the matter of how you are thinking. So I would say that those were very special gifts.
Can you kind of describe like typical daily life in the camp?
Okay I am talking in the point of view from a kid. And so I could see maybe if I could give you the point of view from the adults like my parents. But umm one of the things that the camp did to reconstruct all the kinds of institutions you would find in the community. Mainly get the schools going, get the churches going. Umm so you can have some sense of community life where people are working together.
The recreational program was very critical in any type of prison. If you don't have it people go crazy. Fighting and all that. So they started setting up baseball leagues and all this. So for the 8 kids, school was pretty central you know. You go to school, but then schools out so what do you have to do so they started things like Brownies, Girl Scouts, and Boy Scouts and those kind of things. And I got involved with Cub Scouts. It wasn't everyday. But you live in a block and everybody's together and you have different type of churches. So you got all these choices you know but most of the time you kind of have to just like any other kid you have kinda have to figure out want to do with your time.
And so that was for a kid's point of view. For the adults, these people are used to working every single day but now they're stuck. I mean, they are here doing nothing and it can get pretty boring. And so umm again it's the same kind of routine. Like I would watch my mom she had to do a lot of laundry where there was this one common laundry kind of like a toilet bathroom. And so you got these daily routines and um the routines are kind of like living in the dormitory because you all eat together and you don't cook your own food.
So it's a matter of taking care yourself but also taking care of your family and then if you have some time then you start dealing with the neighbors and take on some of the common activities. And so I think there are interesting results coming out of time situation. I think many people, many older people for the first time had umm enough time to indulge in arts and crafts. There were a lot of creative things done in the camps.
People like in Tule Lake camp, where Tule Lake used to be a lake bottom and all around you would see all of these shells everywhere. So people would collect all these shells and would start dying them. So you would get red dye, blue dye and all that and you will paint it on the shells and put in the shape of birds or animals and all that. So that kind of art classes got going and umm course a lot of attention was towards the sports.
Again you almost have to look in terms of prison life where you confined. When you are confined, what do you do with your time? I mean there are certain routines that you have together, like have to eat together and you can't wander off so you are stuck here. So you say to yourself how to make use of my time. See the high school kids they started bands and all that. They would umm have the regular high school activities like sports and different types of social clubs. And I think a lot of people tried to maintain connect with their friends from the outside.
So what got you through the war? Was there some type of support system that you were involved in that helped you get through the war? In the book it says that you were Buddhist, so did that help you through the war?
Well, you know umm. I think umm there are a lot of umm-different ways people evolved support systems or networks. First of all you have your relatives to come together. You have those coming from the same town like in Heart Mountain camp everybody from one block pretty much came from the same place, the Owakma Indian. So you kind of have a lot of people knowing each other.
But then you have umm the interest groups forming like the boys scout troops that we had was mainly made up of those from the same Owakma valley. Other parts you see in the Waco valley were from San Jose or Los Angeles and so the Los Angeles people had their own Boy Scout troop. You know, and the same way with the San Jose people.
And then there would be other things like every block would have some kind of team. It could be a softball team or something and they would play each other. So each one of these became a network. And of course you had your activities especially like the church you have different kind of Christian dominations. You have the Buddhist church you know.
So you around the church structure people also formed their own networks. Now that's inside. Now from the outside, see that's critical you know. People in jail need to be in touch with people outside because if not you are completely isolated and so I think those people within the community this were critical. Just to be able to write to your friends from the outside but if you didn't whom would you write to?
I mean especially for the older people who only knew Japanese and didn't do too well in English and they didn't really write letters to other Japanese because their letters would be censored. So umm, the kind of outside support network really came from people like the Quakers because they were about the only ones who tried to keep in touch.
And there are some people who are very fortunate to having friends outside like umm you would hear stories about ministers of churches who made it their job to keep on taking umm truck loads of clothing and candy to their friends at different camps. You have to remember at the wartime situation especially if you are being accused of being like the enemy you know and with the government doing everything to keep you isolated.
During the war were you ever involved in any relationships?
Could you elaborate on that?
Like any romantic relationships. Were you ever involved in any romantic relationships during the war?
Well I am a kid you know. So I didn't get mixed up with stuff like that. But umm I could think about sure there was a lot of opportunities because you know you got all this time and so umm I have to kind of think now what were people doing when they were school or high school.
Well, what do you do in high school? You have these classes but there is lots of time to get socially engaged. Some kids would put on dances and they would have bands and so on. And the older people would have their own kind of cultural thing going on.
So just think in terms of the Asian community and the kind of drama and music they have. So these are the kinds of things that bought people together. So yeah, in terms of building relationships yeah it was just like any place else. You got all men and women, I mean you have families living there so naturally you are going to have marriage, birth, and death you know that whole cycle.
So how long did you stay at the camp?
Well I was there for about 3 and a half years. Yeah because I went in the summer of 1942 and then I came out in the winter of 1945.
When you were in the camp, were you ever informed about the things going on outside of the camp about the war and stuff? Like what was going on in Japan?
Well first of all each camp had their own newspaper. And the newspaper again was like a weekly or monthly which reported on the everyday camp activities like what was going on every block. And you would also have directors also coming down with what people should know about like maybe they were supposed to get monthly allotment of shoes or get vaccinations. But they also kind of reported on things going on in the outside. People were going out to college. People who were being put into the military so some people didn't get released so they settled in Chicago or New York or other places in the east coast. So there would be news like that.
I knew that there was a Japanese language paper that was published in Salt Lake and people subscribed to that. And umm as far as radios I suppose people in the war. I could tell you more about what was going in Tule Lake camp. In Tule Lake camp because it was much more segregated it was much more pro Japan and the people were much more interested about what was going on the war. And the older people had short wave radios and they would listen to the propaganda broadcast and they would everyday people like my father would gather outside and would listen to the news about what was going on.
But the question is how did they get these radios? No radios or cameras were allowed in Tule Lake. Well, I mentioned that my father got stamp collection so he was able to get a catalog. So if he could get a catalog so other people could get radio tubes to make their own radios. So that's how they were able to listen about what was going on.
Tule Lake is right near the Oregon border and I don't know what kind of newspapers people had but I am sure that the older people were tuned into what was going with the war news and what was going on in their country. But from a perspective of a kid, you don't really pay attention to those stuff. I mean that's not you main of interest. You are mainly interested in you know playing around and going to class. You know staying with you peers.
You said that you stayed in the camp for 3 and a half years, how did you feel on being released from the camp?
You mean when I got out? Yeah, wow. I was in for a lot of surprises because when umm see we didn't go back to the reservation, we came to California. And so, in fact I came back not too far from here. It's off of 680 there's all these town like Dublin, I don't know if you ever heard of these towns or go by that route much but I settled in Pleasanton. You see Pleasanton was a very small town and was about 3,000 people. But today Pleasanton is huge more like 50,000 people. I know that Livermore is about 50,000, but the thing with Pleasanton, had three navy bases. So we have all these people coming back from the Pacific war. And what were they doing? They were fighting the Japanese.
So if you look like Japanese...boy it's pretty scary. Besides we were the only family that settled in that town. My experience is quite mixed. There's a lot of hostility. At the same time for me, it's like coming to a foreign country. What do you know what's going on in American town? See cause I grew up on an Indian reservation. And I didn't have much of an idea of what normal kids do. You see these movies and like a gang, and you see these are interesting world. When I got out it was the exact same thing I saw. Teenagers drinking milkshakes and these soda fountains and all that. It was all new to me. So now it was all interesting because it was what I saw in the movies. That's how I looked at my life in Pleasanton.
So that was the kind of impression I got. So it was a lot of newness for me. And right away, you know I got involved in trying to help the family out. If you live in a small town, we're not farming anymore.
My father was working on the railroad and he was working for Southern pacific and had to get on these handcart trucks. You know, we were in this very tiny house as big as this room and just about the size of the Section houses and there was about eight of us at the time. I try to spend time away from the house and try to make money for the family by selling newspapers. I started selling these bay area newspapers like there was the Oakland Tribune and another one called the San Francisco Call Bulletin, which doesn't exist anymore. And you started shining shoes for the sailors and all that. So those were the things that I did.
How long did it take you to you to settle down to normal life?
Well it took some time and I tell you why. Uhhhh...For Pleasanton, Uhhhhh.... because we were the only Japanese there. I think it gave me a head start in trying to relate to in what I call the outside normal world. You know....I grew up pretty much in an ethnic ghetto. You grew up only among your ethnic group. You don't really understand all of things of American society. So it is true for anybody that grew up among Jews, blacks in the south or whatever. So my first eight years on the Indian reservation, there were only 14 Japanese and Indians. Then I spend almost four years in the concentration camp with all these Japanese.
Now I come out and for the first time and I realized that I was this other country called America. And even in America, I didn't notice until I came out and meet all these different people. So uhhhh for the first year, we lived in Pleasanton for only about a year but to me that was a pretty fascinating experience. It was brand new. It's amazing. But again, we move to a share farm operation. We have to figure out, we couldn't stay forever in this little tiny place.
My father had to figure that we have to go back to farming. So there were these advertisements and these Japanese ethnic papers about share farming. It was a company called Driscos. They hired mainly Japanese farmers to go fifty-fifty with them. So when I went to move from Pleasanton to a town called Midraw, only had maybe 300 people. And then the biggest town was Morgan Hill. Morgan hill was a town that only had same as Pleasanton about 3,000. So we're on this farm but the farm had 25 barracks just like the camps. All Japanese and I thought I was back in camp again.
As I lived through...that all through my high school. So I would say for the first 18 years, 17 years I was pretty much confined. And so I would say that was a period of adjustment. And I would say that most people took about 4-5 years. And the toughest thing for anybody, see people hear about war and war is pretty dramatic experience. People don't really understand or appreciate is what it takes to get resettled again. What does it take for refugees to get settled?
So I worked with all these Southeast Asians now. My god! They're here 5, 10 years and they're learning language and their kids are learning in English and they're speaking their own language which a lot of internal fights in all. And then you have to get back and try to find your own place. I would say it take a good 5 years or so, at least. For me, going and leaving the high school and going off to Berkeley was another major move like a I mean I didn't know how to get around Berkeley.
I took a duffle bag and a Gray Hound bus and I got off a San Pablo Ave. San Pablo Ave is a mile and a half away from the Berkeley campus. I had to carry that duffle bag up the hill. I didn't know how to use the buses or anything. So we were really isolated. And I remember taking fieldtrips from high school to San Francisco and somehow the teacher got us into a kind of a new experience, took us to Cliff House and for eating a lunch and the first time I ever saw well, uhhh....8 different forks and knives. What do you need this for? I mean we're use to using one fork and one knife. You go to a fancy restaurant and you get all this stuff.
None of us knew how to use the stuff and I remember this one Mexican kid was with us and he was cutting the meat and he was cutting so damn hard. The meat fell off and hit someone in the next table. So you have this kind of major adjustment to make in terms of to figure out how you get by in this society. So talk about adjustment, it depends on who you are talking to and where are people coming from. So uhhh...In terms of coming out of camp, you're very confined.
And for someone like myself, who were confined to begin with. It was pretty much all ethnic and coming out of camp. I'm back to an ethnic community. So you know, you have to break out of that.
What made you choose Berkeley?
Well Berkeley's not too far away and uhhh.. if you do well in high school you apply for these scholarships and you have these choices you know of what's near by. You can go Stanford, Berkeley, or San Jose State. For Stanford, man that costs a lot of money. You don't think about. See when I went to Berkeley, you know how much for one semester, 35 dollars. What do you pay now? $2,000, $5,000 okay it costs $35. Stanford costs 16 $600. $600 that's only for rich people. Alright, so you see.. .of course Stanford costs went way up too. I don't know how much it costs to go to Stanford but it musts about $20,000 or so. So you go to a UC system you are coming out with about $5,000 a year just for fees and services.
How was your experience then?
Well, to me again it was like a new country. I mean, you go to CHEM 1A, and there's 350 people in the class. The high school I went to Morgan Hill High had a total enrollment of 300 and 1/3 were Japanese on the camps. We had moved to Coyote. Coyote had 150 people. And by that time I was older than 13 kids and your family had about 10% of the town's population. So I go to Berkeley and my one class bigger than my whole town.
Were there lot of Japanese students there when you were there at Berkeley?
Well, uhhh...I don't know about a lot but they are noticeable because that's where I first met from meeting the Chinese students because they were commuting from San Francisco and there's a lot of prejudice at Berkeley. I mean it's difficult for Asian kids to find housing.
You had this kind of Asian housing. The Japanese had some place called Yoko Hall and another one called Northgate. The Berkeley Buddhist church had a dormitory too because uhh...
I can tell you about a story about the first Asian American who was a regent of the University of California. His name was Yuri Wandum. And Yuri Wandum was the director of the YMCA. That was when he was working as a Social Worker. He got nominated for the regents of the University of California. He grew up in a town of Hamford in central valley. And when he was growing up in Hamford, he couldn't use the swimming pool. The swimming pool was off limits. The movie house had this special section for the Japanese and Mexicans. Went to Berkeley, the first day of in Berkeley you have to look for a place and nobody would rent to him. He found an empty building and he had some newspapers and he put the newspapers on the floor and he slept on that.
I don't think any other regents started in the UC system that way. So now I don't know how much Asian American kids know about it was different years ago. This is part of Asian American studies because you could of realized that you had a long ways to go. Look at the administration, and how many Asian Americans do you see them on top? When I got there, there's none of them in chair departments here. Now we have quite a few.
What was your major while you were at Berkeley?
Well I was pre-med. I went to one year of med school also. I realized that's...I got sent to Indonesia and I got a big project. I got, talk about adjustments, I use to spend almost every week trying to go to a different building to see what was in it. It was like a museum to me. I went to Hearst Mining building and see all the exhibits. And go to Zole and look around. And you know things were just fascinating. That building was bigger than my whole town right so I traveled around.
I lived in the Co-op was really the place where they were non-discriminating. They let all the people in. In most women had no money at all. And you have people of all ages and backgrounds coming from different countries in all. And the one I lived in had 250 people living in it. So you meet all these people and that became a real education. Just meeting people and finding out what they do.
I mean, if you live in a Co-op, they represent 5 hours a week. So we all work together. And you know we just meet amazing people. I started Berkeley in '51. So I was meeting all these people coming to school on the GI Bill. So they would be much older 25, 30 years old. 18 And so you are living with very mature people. People around the country come to Berkeley and study also. That was a real valuable education for me.
What is your current occupation?
I've been here since 1962. And so I have seen this place changed a lot. I worked and my field is community development. I worked with a lot of issues related to how people can work together to improve the community. So I worked with a lot of minority groups. I worked with small towns and with different international situations. I just started a program; we actually have a graduate program in Community Development. So I started that. And hush... the Asian American studies is what I started. And so those 2 areas are my interests. I still work with many minorities and it's awful in the central valley right now. You focus on work on how can immigrants; minority people really become active participants in their community. And so the approach the central valley partnerships, the group that I worked with takes is... what are ways that we could help to build a civil society? Active participants in the community, and if you take immigrants you have to start from scratch. Learn the language and become naturalized. Know the history of the country. Once you pass and become a citizen, you can register to vote. Run for office, and if you start running for office, people pay attention to you. So this is happening now. We get Hmong running for the school board. And you get different people doing things so that's the kind of work I do right now.
In what way did our experience influence your occupation now?
The kind of work I do has to do with social justice. So the whole experience is reflecting on the experience of the Japanese American community, which dealt with a lot of discrimination issues. It raises a lot of questions like how does this come about and how do you solve it? You can't just sit back to get people together. There are strategies, the best ones that I have come across is they have to work together and cooperate. Its not easy cuz people have different opinions. Some people don't like each other. You try different ways to get people together.
And uhhh...eventually just like the experience of the gift situation. You look around and you see a lot of bad things going on but you also see good things. So you want to find those good people and bring them together. You have that kind of a social capital, they mobilize that and then they could solve the problems much better. So I would say it's been very connected.
Oh. Yeah you know that would be ummm.. .that would be interesting cuz I went back to the reservations and uhhh....it's a pretty tough place, I mean you've seen a lot of poverty. And a lot of divisions. Not all reservations are Indians anymore. A lot of them come into the reservations have property and all that. But you have these kinds of isolated communities to uhhh...major groups.
You have the Indian populations and the Japanese American population and of course, you have a big European population and you have a big Filipino population too. So ummm.. .I suppose it would be hard to escape wars but uhhh.. .I'm thinking about the people who went back to that town and how their lives have evolved. And I've seen a lot who had similar situations as me. But they also went back and went to University Washington or Washington State and became teachers. Other people started in farming. It's been a pretty rough life.
So you know, there's a number of ways we could have gone and I think knowing how my parents are. My father was doing community.. .I probably could have followed what he was doing. And they were interested and I would. So uhhh.. .my hunch is I would be doing the same kind of thing. Except I would be living in Washington State.
The kind of moves that we made, each move presented its challenges. Uhhh... I guess we were taught and the way that we were raised can either accept the challenges or just do noting about it. I think I grew up in a kind of family that uhhh...keep moving keep moving so how many how tough the situation might be, you really need to try to overcome it.
Other families I see, I see this among all the students in UC Davis, they come out in similar situations. I see the same thing happen because Fresno area was growing strawberries. Laotian families are planting strawberries there. They are struggling and the kids work. Uhhh...it's kind of tough cuz when you go to Fresno, going to Edison or Roosevelt, there's different places, you know you accept these challenges and you see people mobilizing and helping each other out. So, you know uhhh.. .I think in terms of that question, you are going to find people who can rise to the occasion. No matter how tough the situation is, they're going to overcome it. And other people, may not be able to do that. Too many odds to overcome. They get kind of beaten down.
I think this whole thing about evolving support networks. People are really thinking outside of themselves. The more you get into that situation, it's going to be difficult. So for me, the key thing is no matter where you go how do you build a community. Cuz you can't get things done by yourself.
The only way you solve problems is a group of people working together. Then you can do things that no one person can do. So this is why the department that we are in right now is pretty important because that's the whole idea on how you build a community. That's why it's called that Human and Community Development. I would say yeah the ummm.. .the life experience not just in the camp but growing up in an ethnic community.
What I've seen people do how they have taken on challenges and how they dealt with discrimination. It's very much related to what I am doing now. I mean everybody had gone different ways, but I mean you know, I don't see too many people doing this. They go on other roads. I think everyone had their own strategies. In ways to solve challenges. I think uhhh...building in this kind outlook gets people positive and build the confidence and uhhh.. .we were put on this world to do something worthwhile. For me uhhh.. .all of these experiences had made a huge difference. And I think it's a very important lesson.
What made you choose Davis?
For a lot of reasons. I think its not a coming home but you see after Berkeley umm I went to, I was a probation officer in San Mateo County and I went to Korea that was before. And then when I came back I started teaching Chemistry in High School in San Jose. So I did that for 3 years. In went to a black University, this was in Washington D.C and that was because uhhh.
I came back from Korea and that was right about the time the Russians had Sputnik and this country was really scared. Just how people are scared of Iran now. They were scared that the Russians would take over the world. And the answer was the way we'll beat the Russian is to really beef up the Science in this country. And the only way to do this was to get all the Science teachers in High Schools so they can teach the kids how to be rocket scientists. Because they believed that the students were the products of these.
This was the time for new math, new biology. And so because I was teaching Chemistry, You can pick what kind of schools and then you think what a minute this is the 1960s. This was during the Civil Rights movement and I figured I should go to a place where I could learn both Science and Civil Rights. So I said, that I should go to a black school. So I went to this high school where all of my classmates were black teachers from segregated schools all over the south. They told me what was going on and it was not good at all. I mean, these kids.
You take high school Chemistry and you know what they were doing, they had no supplies. They had no Bunsen burners, nothing. And you can't learn no matter how smart you are if you don't have the resources. And umm, because so the segregation the white schools got $25,000 while the black schools only got $1,000. And you can't do anything with that.
And there are a lot of black colleges in this country. The first year you have to catch up because you fell so far behind. In the 1960s there were only two types of jobs you either worked for the post office or you go back to teach in segregated schools. So the cycle kept on coming and this is why the civil rights movement was really critical. So I think unfortunately we see the same thing happening again. A lot of these schools are getting segregated again just by the fact of public housing and that poor people live in the same area.
And we find that many schools in California now are in high proportion of minorities. Pretty much 75 percent all are Latino, black. The Asians are kind of different because they really turned around. This puts you with a lot variation and what are you going to do?
Do you think your dad, you know how he held a leadership position that in some ways influenced who you are today?
Well, you learn from example. You know, you have do that to get your community going. When you are isolated you have to depend on each other. Otherwise you would get ticked off and so the community has to depend and rely on each other to get things done. You learn how to take on the responsibility and getting people together.
So I see a lot of the Asian stuff very interesting. I go to a lot of these festivals and a lot of them are successfull, but it takes a tremendous amount of work to put it together. So by watching 23 people you know the way you are and how you grew up, you start to think about what's important.
Are you still close with your family?
We just got together about 2 weeks ago. My parents died about 2 years ago. And we're Buddhist and you have certain years where you have to get back together. And I realized about the importance of people coming back together because you keep on refreshing you memory of what you learned.
Well thanks for the interview.
Yeah sure. You're welcome and if you have any other questions you can just send me an email.
[End of Interview]