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How did you get involved in the Nisei Young Democrats?
Well that came, after I got into college. After I got into the University I got into contact with some young fellows who were in the Young Democrats of California. I talked to them and they asked me if I would like to join the club so I went and listened to the meetings and things. And I said “Oh well that sounds interesting.” Then they introduced me to a Japanese American from Los Angeles, who had come up, and he talked to me and asked me "How about organizing a Nisei Young Democrats?" So I said I could try it so I talked to a few people and we got together and decided to organize the group. Of course one of the reasons that we wanted to do this was because the Japanese American Citizens League leadership was very conservative and we couldn't get anything through that had anything to do with the discrimination of the Negroes in the south- they couldn't vote and things. We wanted to discuss that and they wouldn’t take it up and job discrimination they didn't want to take it up. That was the main reason that we decided to organize the Nisei Young Democrats. We got about fifteen people together and began to have meetings and we had discussions at each meeting. We went once a month we discussed something and mainly they were civil rights issues because that was what most of us were interested in at that time.
We got people from the Young Democrats to talk to us about that. Interesting I learned that one of the Young Democrat leaders was a woman who came and spoke, her name was (Bransten). I learned that she was the daughter of the (Bransten) in MJB, you know, the coffee maker. The B in MJB is (Bransten) and she was the daughter of one of those. That was kind of interesting that a person with all that money and stuff would join the group, and she came and spoke to us too. That was the main reason that the Young Democrats were organized and because of that the JACL leadership didn't like us, naturally. So we were treated like enemies all the way through until the war was over. When we got involved in the Civil Rights movement after the war we took up the issue of the three Nisei who refused to be evacuated and were sentenced and then it went all the way up to the Supreme Court. They were charged with refusing to the camp. We took up that and because of that we took up Fred Koromatsa's case because he was living here. Another person who was a lawyer from Idaho but he was an older person who knew what he was doing- knew it was a civil rights issue. The others took it up because they didn't want to leave and felt that had a right to stay. The lawyer was the mainstay of the case. It was during this period that we began talking about it. This was when even the civil rights became an issue with the JACL. This was when the leadership changed because of that and they, the JACL, became civil rights fighters because young people came in. After that the JACL became the main civil rights fighters among us and the leadership developed into very strong civil rights men and we were more or less looked upon as supporters. We were civil rights supporters before the war so they looked upon us with more honor than they did before. They used to call us names and things but after that they looked upon us as leaders.
Was there a certain event that sparked your interest in the civil rights movement?
At that period naturally a lot of the young democrats became leaders in the movement because they already had the fundamentals of it and they knew what they were dong. Whereas in the JACL they had to develop these people. They developed very fast because the lawyers that came up were very smart and these lawyers even today they are good lawyers in the issues they take up. Of course the lawyers started by supporting the Nisei who came back from the camps. they didn't have money and that's why they organized this group to support these people. That was the local that developed and this is the law group that became the center for the fight that got the rights back for the Japanese Americans and they took up these three peoples fights.
Earlier you were talking about job discrimination, did you ever face that, before internment?
Well, no we couldn't take that up because there wasn't any support any place else. Discrimination was against us but if, for example, you go to a carpenter's union, they won't accept a Japanese into the carpenter’s union so you can't get their support. They don't want Japanese in there and because of that when we went to school at University like when I was going they didn't tell me that there wasn't any jobs in electrical engineering for me. They didn't tell me I don't know why but when my wife Chiz went to school, they told her you won't get a teachers job here that's why she went into social science but she was told that. I guess the teacher was more open. He wasn't hiding anything and told her. I learned later after working for two years and got out of school I learned that Japanese didn't get jobs. The Japanese were working over on Grant Avenue, that's Chinatown, in those little stores They were working for forty dollars a month, what is the point of going to school and then coming out and not getting a decent job. So I looked around and it looked like civil service was the best bet so I thought the easiest one to get right away would be the county so I went down there and took their exam. I passed it and so I got a county clerk job and I had been there five months when the evacuation happened. You had to be there six months to become a permanent worker but when I was leaving, the county clerk was a decent guy and he gave me a letter saying that if it weren't for the evacuation that I would be kept on because I was a very good worker and that he was sorry that I was going. When I came back it came in handy because when we got into the Kuromatsu case the lawyer heard about me being in the Young Democrats and learnt that I was in the county clerk office so he asked me if I would like to help get money from the county clerk's office for all the county clerk workers. That's how I really got involved from there and then I got into the Kuromatsu case.
Why did you leave college early?
Well I ran out of money. I left it like I said I decided not to go back because there was no use in doing it. When I got to camp, that was what a lot of the others were saying too. That's partly the motive for a lot of the Nisei to get involved in the civil rights movement because we wanted to get the right to get jobs after we get out of high school, if we had the knowledge and skill to get jobs like anybody else. That is what happened after the war. That was another motive. There were very different aspects, economic and some were political. Many because of that many got involved in the civil rights movement. The involvement of the Japanese American was very rapid Of course during this period the civil rights started in the African American with Martin Luther King Jr. We learned from them too while we were struggling, it helped us move faster and become stronger on it too.
Is there still the Nisei Young Democrats today?
Nisei Young Democrats never reorganized after the war because JACL took better positions so most of the people got into the JACL- into it starting with the civil rights movement to get the rights back for the three people who had refused to go to the camps and were put into jail. Of course the struggle continued and we got rid of all the laws like the Japanese couldn't buy land, they couldn't intermarry, they couldn't own land, all these things and they couldn't get jobs there were laws against this so that became part of the whole civil rights movement to get rid of all this and so in 1952 we got the right to have our parents become citizens, 1942 (1952)the first time and we had a massive first generation people who became citizens several hundred and it took that long. For one thing we had to develop ourselves so it took a while. for us to get there We couldn't own homes.
When I was in Chicago that was another interesting thing. I got into assembly work, this Afro-American Union member came in and said you can get a better job than this so I got a job as a machinist, an apprentice I guess. I started learning how to make tools and things. This was, I don't know remember the exact year. It must have seen 1949 or 50. I worked at that place but in the meantime I got involved in union work I got elected to be a steward. I think this was a first for a Nisei to become a steward in a labor union. After a year or more, I became the chief steward in the plant and this was 500 workers. A steward usually is elected to represent the workers in a department. If they have any grievances they go to a steward and the steward takes it up. Of course the chief stewards takes care of all the stewards and he gathers all of the stewards. It is kind of an interesting job because being a Japanese American you are not used to going in and fighting. So I would go in and talk to the guy and maybe sometimes I wasn't forceful enough. So the former steward said I am chicken because I don't get up and shout at the owners but the Negro from the Union says he is not chicken he just has a different way of doing things. So sometime I learned you have to do things differently, you have to be forceful. I learned a lot there too from that.
Were you ever criticized by the other workers when you moving on to the chief steward position?
When I was a steward, I had a black fellow who was doing cleanup work, they used to clean up all the metals the rust it was dirty work. Well they got a new guy on the manager's side and he wanted to take this guy off and put somebody else on. So he took him off and put this fellow on somewhere else. so this black fellow came over to me and said that I don't like this other job and I don't think he should have moved me. So I talked to the man who had moved him and he said Well I can put him anywhere I want, I am the manager not him. So I said Okay I'll have to take it up further and talked to the higher management and they said okay we will put him back. Under the union we had you can't change a person's job unless he is dong a bad job, you can't just move him around when you feel like it. That was one of the reasons why I became chief steward because I did something. We had this paint section, which was all blacks. This group was solid, when we did anything they really went out, the whole thing. They really pulled the rest of the plant up with them in union activities. I learnt a lot from being a union steward and I think that helped me in the civil rights movement too.
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