Kimi Maru | Interview 1 | May 18, 2022

TEWES: This is a first interview with Kimi Maru for the Japanese American Intergenerational Narratives Oral History Project, in association with the Oral History Center at UC Berkeley. The interview is being conducted by Amanda Tewes on May 18, 2022. Ms. Maru joins me in this remote interview from Monterey Park, California, and I am in Walnut Creek, California. So thank you so much for joining today, Kimi, I really appreciate it.

MARU: Well, thanks for asking me.

TEWES: Well, let's start at the beginning here. Can you tell me when and where you were born?

MARU: I was born March 1956 in Oakland, California, at Kaiser Permanente Hospital. I grew up in Piedmont, California, well, until I moved out of the house at about seventeen. [laughs] 00:01:00My family lived in San Francisco before they moved to Piedmont. That's where my brothers were born. I was the only one that was born in Oakland. I'm Sansei, third-generation Japanese American -- I'm sorry, did you want to ask something?

TEWES: Oh. Yeah. Well, thank you for all that info. I'm just curious: why did your parents move to Piedmont?

MARU: They were looking to buy a house, and apparently, the house that we're in was up for auction, and they won it. I don't know if they specifically were looking to live in Piedmont, or if it was just that they happened to come across a house that they could afford to buy, and it happened to be in Piedmont. I'm not sure which of those are 00:02:00true, but they probably wanted to live in Piedmont just for the schools, which is one of the reasons why a lot of people move there.

TEWES: And what did your parents do for a living?

MARU: My father was an architect, and my mom was a stay-at-home mother. But before she was married, my mother was a seamstress who went to sewing school and learned how to draft her own patterns, and she learned millinery -- making hats and lingerie. She worked in one of the department stores, I believe in Berkeley, doing alterations, and she was a very good seamstress.

TEWES: Out of curiosity, is she -- is her sister Kay Sekimachi?

MARU: Yes. My mother had 00:03:00two sisters. My mother's the oldest. Kay is the middle sister, and Kaz was the youngest. And Kaz passed away last year, and my mother passed away this year. Kay is still doing well. I think she's ninety-five, will be ninety-six this year.

TEWES: Wow, still kicking. I was just struck by the fact, though, that you've got two very accomplished seamstresses -- or people who know how to use textiles -- in the family.

MARU: Yeah. Well, Kay is a pretty accomplished artist, textile artist. She sews, but her main thing was weaving and doing other kinds of textile art with not just cloth and fiber, but she did things with paper and leaves and natural kind of items. But my grandmother, 00:04:00my mother's mom, was also a really good seamstress. And she used to sew, she used to knit, crochet. She was very good with her hands, too, and I think probably passed it down to her daughters.

TEWES: Oh, that's so fascinating. Yeah, and I want to talk more about your aunt in our next session. But I'm sorry, I skipped around. That was my fault! [laughs] Could you tell me a little bit more about growing up in Piedmont in the fifties and sixties?

MARU: Okay. Back during that time, Piedmont was predominantly white. There were maybe a dozen Asian families, but mainly Chinese, and there was only one other Japanese family besides ours that lived in the city at that time. There was one Black family, and no Latinos or Chicanos that I know 00:05:00of lived there at that time. It's changed a lot since then, but yeah, at that time it was pretty white. We lived in what's called Lower Piedmont, which was right on the border between Piedmont and Oakland. In fact, across the street from my parents' house was Oakland, so we were really on the border between the two cities.

But the schools we went to in Piedmont -- they only had one high school and three elementary schools and one junior high school. They were kind of known for their schools being really good, because I guess the school district had a lot of money. But growing up in an all-white type of situation was also difficult in a lot of ways. That's probably the reason why I chose to graduate early from high 00:06:00school, so that I could kind of find myself in another situation. [laughs]

TEWES: Would you be able to give some examples of why that was so difficult for you?

MARU: Well, there were a lot of different kind of incidents of racism in Piedmont at the schools. A lot of the people that I grew up with and went to school with were extremely rich and came from a lot of wealth, so I went to school with people like the sons and daughters of Dean Witter, [Morgan Stanley Dean] Witter [&] Company, which is like a stockbroker. The Pillsburys, which is the Pillsbury Company. Breck, which at that time was a shampoo, Breck Shampoo. I was classmates with one of the 00:07:00Brecks. The Dreyers -- Dreyer's Ice Cream. I don't know, there's quite a few. Anyways, those were the kind of people I went to school with, so they were like -- you know, they had a lot of money, and our family did not.

In particular, on December seventh every year, Pearl Harbor Day, that was like the worst day to go to school, because people would point at me or my brothers and say, "You bombed Pearl Harbor," that kind of thing, and that would happen almost every year I can remember. And so I used to hate going to school on December seventh. It was just the worst. And there was no explaining to people that, obviously, I had nothing to do with it or my family, 00:08:00that that was Japan. And there was no distinction that people made between being Japanese American and Japanese from Japan. Obviously, even if I was from Japan, that was not something I had anything to do with or my family, but those were the kind of accusations and things that people would accuse myself and my brothers of, and it made it really difficult.

TEWES: Thank you for sharing that. I'm sorry to hear it. I'm also trying to get a sense of your family as a whole. We mentioned that your parents lived in San Francisco -- or grew up in Berkeley, I'm 00:09:00sorry, and then were in San Francisco previously. Can you, I don't know, just tell me a little bit more about them beyond your father's career in architecture? Where was his firm? Where was your mom's sewing again?

MARU: My dad first worked in Berkeley in an architectural office in Berkeley. Actually, I think he had his own business for a while, and then joined another office in Berkeley, and then later on moved to a firm in San Francisco that was called Del Campo & Maru, so there were two principals. On his own he used to do a lot of people's homes, designing homes or remodeling people's homes for them. 00:10:00Once he got to the office in San Francisco, I think they did more commercial buildings and things like that. They got state contracts because of the fact that their office was a minority business, so they got state contracts in the prison industry, and I think they remodeled a couple of the Kaiser hospitals. Actually, I think they did one of the extensions of the San Francisco Airport.

TEWES: So they worked quite a bit around the Bay Area.

MARU: Yeah, yeah.

TEWES: Oh, that's interesting. And different kinds of work, too.

MARU: Yeah.

TEWES: Okay, do you know how your parents met?

MARU: I don't really know that story. All I know is they lived nearby 00:11:00each other in Berkeley and went to the same school, although my dad was a year older than my mom. They went to the same schools in Berkeley, because they lived a couple blocks apart.

TEWES: That's funny. So yeah, possibly they just saw each other around. [laughs] And you mentioned you have two older brothers. How much older are they than you?

MARU: Actually, I have three older brothers.

TEWES: Three! Okay.

MARU: The youngest of the three is three years older than me, and then they're all one year apart. So three, four, and five years older than me.

TEWES: And did you grow up with your grandparents around?

MARU: Yes. My father's parents 00:12:00were both alive, and we used to spend a lot of time with them on the weekends. They would babysit us or we'd spend the night over at their house. And then my mother's mother, my grandmother, we didn't spend as much time with her, although we would see her on holidays and family get-togethers. But she spoke very little English, so it was difficult for us to communicate with her, because she always spoke to us in Japanese. We'd just kind of nod our heads and act like we understood what she was saying, even though most of the time we didn't. My grandparents on my father's side, their English was pretty limited, but they had a better command, and we could communicate with them more.

TEWES: That's interesting, 00:13:00because part of the conversations I think we're going to be having are about how we're talking between the generations, and it doesn't sound like you were always able to do that with family.

MARU: Yeah, it was hard. In fact, it used to be funny to me, because my mom, when she'd be on the telephone with her mother, she'd be speaking to her in English, but I know the conversation the other direction was entirely in Japanese. [laughs] My mom would mix in a little bit of Japanese words here and there, but for the most part she spoke to my grandmother in English. And it's kind of funny. So I knew my grandmother understood English, it's just that it was hard for her to speak it. So even though we couldn't really communicate with her in Japanese, when we'd talk to her in English, she knew what we were saying and stuff. She 00:14:00just had a hard time conversing with us.

TEWES: Well, speaking about family, I would be curious to hear if there's a story about your name that you'd want to share?

MARU: Well, my name, you know, is Kimi. It doesn't have the -ko on it [as in Kimiko]. But my mother and her two sisters all had a -ko, so my mom's name was Yaeko. My aunt's name was Keiko, and my other aunt was Kazuko. But when my parents named me, they just went without the -ko, so I'm just Kimi. And then my brothers also have Japanese first names: Kenji, Jiro, and Koji. And we all have American middle names. Well, I know my oldest brother, Kenji, his middle name was after my uncle, 00:15:00but the other names, I don't know where they came from. But yeah, it's kind of different, because most of my friends, Sansei, not that many of them have Japanese first names, so that was kind of different.

TEWES: Do you know why that was important to your parents, to give Japanese names?

MARU: You know, I never asked them that. I wish I had. But yeah, they never really explained it to us. I guess they just wanted us to have those names. But what's interesting is that my father -- our last name was Marubayashi, but my father changed and shortened his last name to Maru. So I think all of us, except for one of my brothers, on our birth certificates, all have the last name of Maru, and one brother has Marubayashi. [laughs] But he also 00:16:00goes by Maru. And then later in life, my second oldest brother changed his name back to Marubayashi, so he goes by that. My nephew, one nephew, and one niece also go by Marubayashi. So it's kind of interesting, because, yeah, we all have different last names. [laughs] You know, I would actually like to use Marubayashi myself, but since I've used Maru my entire life in all my accounts and ID and passport, everything is in Maru, it'd be such a hassle to change it at this point that I just decided to leave it. Plus, everyone knows me by Maru, because that's how I grew up, right? So I've just left it, but it would have been nice to have my actual surname.

TEWES: Thank 00:17:00you for sharing that. That's fascinating. I'm also curious, given that you had exposure to different generations in your family growing up, what values you think you learned from your family?

MARU: Well, we learned that we should always be kind to other people and be generous, be thankful for what we have, but always be respectful of others. I think my parents really tried to instill in all of us to have friends of all different nationalities, 00:18:00to think of others the same way you would want them to think of you and treat them in the same way. So I think that was really important, because growing up in Piedmont, we didn't really get that kind of feeling, you know, from other people and stuff. You didn't feel like you were equal or treated in the same way as other white kids or have that kind of respect. So hearing that from my parents, I think was important to instill in us some self-respect and self-esteem, and I've tried to pass that on to my kids, as well.

TEWES: 00:19:00Thank you. Was religion important to your family?

MARU: My family was Buddhist. Well, my grandparents on my father's side were very active in the Berkeley Buddhist Temple. And when we were young, we used to go to temple every Sunday morning for Sunday school, up through maybe when I was in junior high school. Part of the reason why my parents really wanted us to go every Sunday was because living in Piedmont, where we didn't have very many Japanese friends, they thought that that would be a way for us to get to know other Japanese kids and make friends. That was important to them, so they wanted us to go to Sunday school, where we did meet people, because we'd see them once a week. But since we didn't go to school 00:20:00with them, we didn't see them in any other setting, really, outside of church. So it was hard to really get to know people well, because we only saw them for an hour or two on Sundays, and that was about it. But I understand why my parents wanted us to go. My parents weren't that religious, although I think they believed in Buddhism and liked the values that it instilled and stuff, but I think it was a lot for social reasons, of wanting us to feel like we're a part of a community.

TEWES: Was there anything about Buddhism that really spoke to you then or now?

MARU: I mean, I still consider myself Buddhist, even though I don't belong to a temple here and I don't 00:21:00go to a temple regularly. Although, I do go to most of the Obon festivals during the summer when they had them. They haven't been having them because of COVID[-19], but I think this year a couple of places are actually going to do in-person Obons, so I'm kind of looking forward to that. I mean, I do agree with a lot of Buddhist principles and values, and I try to live by that myself.

Well, one thing that came up was when my brother, my oldest brother was -- this is during the Vietnam War when they had the draft that was happening at that time -- they had a lottery where, 00:22:00based on your birth date, you had a certain number assigned to you, and depending on what the number was, you could get drafted if it was a low number. And I believe my brother, my oldest brother did have a pretty low number. I can't remember exactly what it was, but it was likely that he could get drafted, so he chose to become a conscientious objector. Part of his, I guess, case that he tried to build to defend that position was being Buddhist. Also, he became a vegetarian -- and I did, too, just to support him. So we were both vegetarian for years, actually. Yeah so, he really became active in the temple at that time and joined the YBA, which is the Young Buddhist Association, which is for the 00:23:00younger folks. I don't remember exactly what happened, but he didn't get drafted. I think it was because he had a college deferment or something, so he didn't have to go into the service. But that was sort of his backup plan, was to be a conscientious objector.

TEWES: Wow, that's really interesting. But while we're on the subject of that, you were a young teenager, I think, during the Vietnam War. What are your other memories of it besides your brother's conscientious objection?

MARU: Well, my parents used to go to all the anti-war marches that were in San Francisco against the Vietnam War, from really early on, when these marches first started. But I was pretty young then. I 00:24:00don't remember exactly how old, but I know I was not a teenager, it was much younger. And so they would take all of us over to these marches, and they were huge. I just kind of grew up going on anti-war marches. [laughs] When I got older, like into junior high and high school, they had different contingents of people, like Asian contingents. That's when my brothers and I started going, we wanted to join those contingents. Whereas my parents said, "You know what? You don't have to do that. Just march with everyone." We said, "No, we want to be part of the Asian contingent," so we used to split off from them and go over and march with the Asians. But yeah, I think it was mainly because my parents were very much opposed to the war and actively protested, that kind of got 00:25:00all of us political and very conscious about things like that.

TEWES: You had also mentioned to me the moratoriums and skipping school. Can you tell me more about that?

MARU: Yeah, so I was in, I believe, junior high school. This was like the early seventies or late sixties, and they would have these moratoriums where people would cut school. I think a lot of it was geared towards college students to not go to class and then join these rallies or marches and stuff. There were several of them, and my brothers were in college already, so they were participating in these moratoriums. I was still in school, high school or junior high, so my 00:26:00parents would allow me to not go to school. One of these marches that happened in Berkeley that my oldest brother went to, he actually got shot by one of those rubber bullets and had this big, big welt on his back, a bruise from it. Luckily, they weren't real bullets, but still, it looked very painful. So I think that's part of the reason why my parents didn't want me going to those demonstrations, just because of what happened to him. But they did allow me to not go to school and at least participate in that way. [laughs]

TEWES: I'm really curious, Kimi, if this was a popular approach in Piedmont. Were you one of the only families that was anti-war?

MARU: 00:27:00Pretty much. I had one friend, who also would come with us to these marches and whose parents also let her stay home from school, but there was only one person that I know of in my age group. Yeah, so it wasn't really something that a lot of people did at that time -- at least not in Piedmont.

TEWES: That takes a lot of conviction to stand out that way.

MARU: Yeah, I guess so. I already felt like I didn't really fit in anyway, so it wasn't really that different for me, but it was part of my, I guess, politicization -- becoming more political, basically.

TEWES: Yeah. And speaking about that, you had 00:28:00mentioned to me the fair housing measure in Berkeley, and that you worked on that a little bit as a youngster.

MARU: Well, my parents were the ones working on it; I just accompanied them when they used to go canvassing door to door. You know, I don't really even remember what year that was, but I do remember knocking on doors with my parents, and they would be talking to them about trying to get this fair housing ordinance passed. It finally did get passed; I don't know how many tries it took, but they did get it passed. But you know, before that, African Americans, as well as Japanese, weren't allowed to live in parts of Berkeley. Actually, anything that was above what was then called Grove St., which is now called Martin Luther King [St.], they weren't allowed to 00:29:00live -- is that north of that? North or east of that street, that was sort of the dividing line. Blacks and Japanese had to live like [in] more of what they call the flatlands of Berkeley, until after the fair housing thing was passed. Then people were allowed to move into other areas and stuff. And even before that, the laws excluded Japanese, like Isseis, you know, my grandparents, from being able to own property. So when they bought their first house, they had to put it into my father's name, even though he was young at that time. But because he was a citizen, and my grandparents were not at that time, they weren't allowed to own a house, so they had to put it into my father's name.

TEWES: Do you know which part of Berkeley they lived 00:30:00 in?

MARU: Yeah, it was on California St., which was a few blocks west of Grove St., and is now the Black community. But there were a lot of Japanese living in that area at that time, because that was the only area they were allowed to live. [laughs]

TEWES: What an interesting connection. So I want to think more about the Japanese American community that you were able to interact with growing up. But first maybe: I'd be curious to hear about family traditions, specifically around food and holidays in your house. Is there a family holiday that stands out to you?

MARU: Well, New Year's was always the big 00:31:00one, my favorite, because of all the food. [laughs] My grandmothers on both sides of the family were really good cooks. And my grandmother on my dad's side used to do a huge New Year's spread, and so I used to go over to help her prepare the food a couple days in advance, help her cook. And actually, she's the one that taught me a lot of Japanese cooking, I learned from her. My mom actually didn't do too much Japanese cooking. She was a really good cook, but not so much in Japanese food, so she always relied on her mom or my grandparents to do all the cooking. But I'm glad that I learned from my grandmother, because, yeah, otherwise I wouldn't have learned it from my mom. [laughs] She 00:32:00taught me how to do a lot of other things, like baking and cooking, but not so much Japanese food.

TEWES: Is there a particular dish you love to make or eat?

MARU: Well, especially during New Year's I like to do -- and I still do this -- make the kimpira gobo, which is -- I guess the American name for it is burdock root. But you slice it into real thin matchsticks, and you cook it with a sort of a shoyu and sugar seasoning with a little bit of dashi. Anyways, that's a traditional New Year's food. My grandmother used to make a lot of tempura at New Year's, tempura and sushi. There are specific foods, like these black beans, and a 00:33:00daikon and carrot salad called namasu. So each of these foods has a certain significance, like one is for good luck, one is for good health, different things like that. And so every year we'd all have to eat at least one bite of each of these things. [laughs] You know, for the New Year it would give you good health and good luck for the year. But I always look forward to New Year's, because it was a day that you would just basically eat all day. You were supposed to not do cooking on the day itself, so that's why all the food was prepared in advance, because New Year's Day is supposed to be the day that -- whatever you do on New Year's Day is what you do for the rest of the year. So if you don't want to do a lot of cooking for the rest of the year, you do it beforehand, right? The same with cleaning your house. All that stuff you do it 00:34:00beforehand, so on the day itself, you basically just enjoy being with people, and you eat and just have fun, and that was supposed to be the New Year's celebration.

TEWES: Thank you for sharing that. So as we said, you're growing up in Piedmont; not a lot of Japanese Americans there, but you have these connections to Berkeley. Were you going to Japantown in San Francisco at all?

MARU: Growing up, I don't really remember going to San Francisco Japantown very often. Only if there was some kind of cherry blossom festival or something like that, some event. Yeah, I didn't really go over there to J-Town 00:35:00until my teens, or when I was a little bit older and got more involved in the community there. But we would always walk by Japantown when we went on those anti-war marches, because they went down Geary, which is one of the streets that is where J-Town is, so we'd see it, and we'd see the trade center -- [it was called this long ago but is called the Japan Center Mall today, I think] -- and things like that. But we didn't go there too often, that I recall.

TEWES: And you mentioned attending temple. Was there any Japanese language school or lessons that you took over the years?

MARU: My parents didn't send us to Japanese school, which a lot of other, I guess, kids did go to, but we 00:36:00didn't. I took Japanese when I was in high school and then in college, just on my own. But what my parents did do is put -- my three brothers took judo when they were growing up. I wanted to take it, too, but at that time they didn't allow girls to take it. It was all boys. [laughs] So I used to have to go and just watch them practice and stuff, but I could never participate.

TEWES: Was that something [where] the judo senseis would be creating those rules, or was that just an unspoken rule in the community?

MARU: You know, I don't know. I don't know who created that rule. [laughs] But it was like that for a while. I don't know exactly when it 00:37:00changed. But now, of course, people can take all kinds of martial arts classes. And actually, I started taking aikido when I was in junior high school. My oldest brother and I took aikido from the Aikido Institute, which was in Berkeley, and so I started doing that.

TEWES: I'm not as familiar with that. Can you tell me what it is?

MARU: Aikido is not a martial art. It's entirely self-defense, so it's a form that basically you're learning to defend yourself, so if you're attacked -- whether it's by someone trying to punch you, kick you, or whatever -- you learn moves to deflect and take that energy, and then use it against the person who's attacking you. But it's not offensive in any way, so it's 00:38:00not like karate or even judo, for that matter, because you're not doing anything that would basically hurt the other person. You only do moves to defend yourself. And even when you do that, the moves that you do are in keeping with the way the body moves, so in other words, you don't break bones or do anything that would dislocate someone's shoulder or whatever. You try to do things that actually are in keeping with how the body actually moves. But you know, you do see aikido -- like, you'd see demonstrations of people doing it and stuff, and they can do things like break boards and things like that, which are kind of like these parlor tricks that they show. [laughs] But that's not really the 00:39:00point of it. It's really a self-defense kind of thing.

And the reason I started taking aikido, actually, was because of an incident that happened to me when I was going to high school or -- yeah, high school, where one of my classmates, this white guy who was much larger than me, grabbed me just on the wrist and wouldn't let go. And he was insulting me, saying I don't even remember what, but it was just a really humiliating experience. The fact that I couldn't break free from him, after that, I decided I wanted to take self-defense, because I didn't want anything like that to happen to me again. So that's why I started taking aikido.

TEWES: And did that change anything for you?

MARU: Well, it made me a lot more confident in terms of being able to 00:40:00carry myself in public and stuff, and feel a little bit more prepared. Incidentally, with all this anti-Asian violence incidents happened over the last couple of years and stuff, since COVID, the group that I work with, Nikkei Progressives, organized some self-defense classes for especially elderly, seniors, because they were the ones that were being targeted the most. And so we set up about five or six different sessions that people could come to for free that would teach basic self-defense and basic safety kind of awareness for people when they're out in public and on the streets. You know, just basic things like don't read 00:41:00your cell phone or look at your phone while you're walking on the street, but be aware of people and things around you, you know, just real simple things like that. But they're important, because most of us, when we're walking around, you're not really conscious of who's around you or what's going on. People are always looking at their phones, reading text messages or whatever, right? But when we took these classes and offered them to people, I think it really helped people realize what you need to do to be safer. And then there were actual moves that people showed us, like if someone comes up and grabs you from behind, or even from the front, these are the kind of things you can do to try to defend yourself.

TEWES: Thank you for sharing that. I 00:42:00certainly want to speak more about the rise in the AAPI [Asian American Pacific Islander] hate these days, and what that means for the community.

I guess finally, as we're thinking about, again, your connection and your family's connection to the Japanese American community growing up, you also mentioned that dancing is a big thing in the community, but that you weren't necessarily involved. Can you tell me why that is?

MARU: I think it's mainly because my mother never learned any of the traditional Obon dances. Like the Berkeley Buddhist Temple would have its annual Obon festival, and people would be dancing in a circle -- they did this at the civic park in Berkeley. I can't think of the name of the park [Martin Luther King, Jr. Civic Center Park], but it's right across from City 00:43:00Hall. We would go to watch it, but my mom never joined in, because she felt too, I guess, self-conscious about not knowing the dances, and then therefore I didn't either. [laughs] I didn't know the dances or want to get up there and just try to follow along, so none of us did that. But when I moved to Los Angeles and started going to these Obon festivals and Nisei Week down here, where they have a lot of public dancing and things, I started joining in and just following and trying to learn it. They also have these practice sessions before the Obons, where you can go and actually -- for about maybe six weeks, once a week, go have like a two-hour session, where they'll teach you the dances and stuff. So I started going to those. I would take my kids, because I wanted them to learn. They were too 00:44:00self-conscious and wouldn't get up and dance, even though I tried to encourage them to. [laughs] And I did it, thinking that if I did it, maybe they would do it, but they wouldn't do it. So anyways, every year, you know, when we go to the Obon dances, I always get up and dance. And now that my kids are older, now they will, too, just join in and follow along. But when they were little, they didn't want to do it. [laughs]

TEWES: And can you explain what Nisei Week is, for those not in the know?

MARU: Oh okay, so Nisei Week is a community festival/celebration that happens in Little Tokyo in Los Angeles, and it has been going on for, you know, I don't even know how many years, but a long time. It's a tradition that's been going on like every summer in early August, 00:45:00and it's two weekends in a row, where they do this festival. There's a parade, a Nisei Week parade, where all these different community groups, as well as different schools, dance schools, they do this parade through Little Tokyo. The Nisei Week parade used to be huge, I mean, like people would come from all over LA just to watch it, because especially the dancers were in full kimono with -- they'd be doing these dances and stuff, and it was really beautiful to watch, and so people used to come from all over.

Over the years, it has gotten smaller and smaller, and even the length of the parade has gotten shorter, but it still happens every year. And people do come out, but it's not the same as what it used to be. And then the second 00:46:00weekend of the festival used to be what they called the carnival, where they would have game booths, food booths. It would be like this whole carnival kind of atmosphere. They stopped doing that maybe around twenty years ago or something, so they still have the two weekends of Nisei Week. It still does happen in Little Tokyo, but it's changed a little bit. So now they have music, they have bands that play. They still have booths and food and things like that, but it's not exactly the same as what the carnival used to be. They still do have the parade. They have a Nisei Week court, where there's a competition of women who -- usually these are people in their early twenties -- who are sponsored by different groups, and they compete for the Nisei Week queen. And so they have a Nisei Week 00:47:00coronation, where they announce who the winner is, and that kind of thing. So it's still happening, but it's kind of changed over the years and gotten a little bit smaller I think largely due to the fact that the community itself has been sort of dispersed. I mean, people live all over now, rather than concentrated down in Little Tokyo. People still come to Little Tokyo for events and food and things like that, but people live all over now, so it's different than what it was forty or fifty years ago.

TEWES: Thank you, that was a great explanation of what the event is. I also briefly want to think back to your early education, which I know was 00:48:00not necessarily a happy time, but I'm specifically curious about curriculum. You mentioned you took Japanese starting in high school, which is really interesting. But I'm also wondering what you learned, if anything, about Japanese American incarceration during your early school years.

MARU: Not much. I believe in one of the history books, I think in junior high school, there was maybe one paragraph that said that Japanese were put into internment camps during World War II. And I think it named a few of the camps, but there really wasn't much explanation about why it happened and anything. So I remember reading that and asking my parents about it, and they said, yeah, that they were in 00:49:00camp, but they never really wanted to talk about it too much. It was sort of acknowledging that it happened, but there was definitely not a willingness to really say too much about it. I think it was very painful for them to talk about at that time.

It wasn't until much later, in the early eighties, when the redress movement started, that my parents really opened up a little bit more about their experience and what they felt about it and stuff. But it wasn't until the redress movement came about and people -- Niseis and Isseis at that time really started opening up and speaking about what they went through. Before that, many people, especially Sanseis, never even heard their parents utter a word about it, you know? It was just not something that people 00:50:00spoke about. It was through the redress movement that I think it really brought the community together and really opened up a chapter in history that needed to be talked about, and the younger generations needed to learn about what people went through.

And then when the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians hearings happened, that was when there was such an outpouring of people sharing what had happened to them, things that most people had never even heard of, as far as what people lost, in terms of their houses or businesses, their belongings, the conditions in camp itself, what people went through. You know, many people died. There was not very good medical care, so a lot of people died unnecessarily, 00:51:00just because they didn't get the kind of medical attention they needed. There were children that were born in camp who died because they didn't have the right medical care. Things like that. Anyways, a lot of the stories came out that had never been talked about before, and it was really something that, I think, was kind of cathartic for the community to really express anger and the pain and all the rage, all these different emotions that were held in for so many years and that had never been talked about came out. I think it was really very powerful -- it still is when I hear these testimonies, because 00:52:00there's footage, video footage of at least the LA, Los Angeles Commission hearings, and clips of that are shown every year at the Day of Remembrance programs. Every year, when you see it, it's just so powerful to learn all these things.

TEWES: I suppose we should talk about how you became involved with redress, because you were in your twenties when much of this was happening. How did you learn about it? Why were you interested?

MARU: Well, when I was in college, I took Asian American studies classes and learned more about the camps and what had happened. And 00:53:00still, at that point, my parents were not real forthcoming with information at that time. [In] the early 1980s, when young community activists -- mainly Sanseis -- decided that we should fight for redress and that it needed to be talked about, we needed to right the wrong that had happened to Japanese Americans, and get the government to actually apologize and recognize that it was wrong, and it was based on racism and hysteria. So when Sanseis basically started a movement to try to bring redress about, redress and reparations, that's when I got involved. 00:54:00And actually, there had been a movement for redress and reparations long before that, like right after the war, and some people actually did receive redress in very small forms here and there, but it wasn't like a national thing, it wasn't a mass thing, and a lot of people didn't even know that that had happened.

But as Sanseis got together, and then talked to more of the Niseis who went through it and stuff, there were different organizations that formed who wanted to actually fight for redress and reparations. So I got involved with the National Coalition for Redress and Reparations, NCRR, which was more of a grassroots community effort. But there were other groups, like the JACL, the Japanese American Citizens League, and they were a national organization, largely of 00:55:00Niseis at that time, and they had their own strategy or priorities for how they saw fighting for redress. And then there was another group called NCJAR, the National Council for Japanese American Redress, I believe, was what it stood for, and they wanted to go the legal route of filing a lawsuit against the government for what had happened. Groups had different strategies about how they saw the movement, redress movement moving forward, and what was the best way to try to win it. And so the groups worked together, as well as had some differences and things. [laughs]

But ultimately, it was like an eight-year, pretty intense 00:56:00movement that finally resulted in President Reagan passing the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 and signed it, which recognized that the government had made a mistake: it was wrong; it was based on racist hysteria, wartime hysteria; and lack of leadership. I can't remember all of the different points. And then $20,000 reparations for those who went through that experience. It took several years after that to get the funding for the $20,000, but it finally did happen. But it was only for those who were still alive, so for those who had passed -- like my grandmother had already passed away, two of my 00:57:00grandmothers had already passed by the time the money was allocated. But my parents and my grandfather got it, and those who went through it got the money. Then there were a lot of cases of people who weren't necessarily in camp but were pretty much affected or forced to move to other parts of the country, who lost their businesses or whatever because of that. So we had to fight for those people, as well. And there's still people who -- the Latin Americans who were put into camp from Latin America. They're still fighting for justice, as well, so it's still going on to this day.

TEWES: That is a 00:58:00great point about the ongoing nature of this work. Well, you mentioned the reparations aspect of this. How did your family talk about that?

MARU: Everyone, when we started talking to people in the community, as well as our own family members, the feeling was, of course, you can't put a monetary price on losing your freedom, your belongings, everything, for four years. But originally, I believe the amount that we wanted to ask for was $25,000, but through the course of the bill and negotiations and whatever, it got lowered to $20,000. I think the important part of it was the 00:59:00fact that the government would recognize and make those payments, hopefully setting a precedent so that something like this would never happen again to anyone else, and I think that's what was really important to people. The money was one thing, right? But $20,000 is not all that much money, but it was more like this is the government saying, "Yes, we made a mistake. It was wrong. We're trying to say it was incorrect, and this is proof of that," because money talks, right? So no one felt that that was enough money, that would ever pay for what people lost, but it was at least a recognition that it was wrong.

Unfortunately, it hasn't stopped the government from doing similar things 01:00:00today to others. When we see all the immigrants, how they're being treated and put into detention centers. After 9/11, what happened to the American Muslim community, them being targeted just the way Japanese were during World War II. That kind of thinking is still very much alive, and that's why many of us are involved with immigration, fighting for immigrant rights, as well as -- right after 9/11, we held some vigils in Little Tokyo in support of American Muslims, and have continuously done work with them to show that we're in solidarity, and we understand exactly how it feels to be targeted and scapegoated by 01:01:00a government. And so you know, that's part of what I'm involved with today.

TEWES: Again, the ongoing nature of this work you're discussing.

MARU: Yeah.

TEWES: So you started around 1981, I believe, with the NCRR. Can you tell me exactly what it is you were doing, how you were participating in this redress process?

MARU: Well, in 1981, when we got the Commission -- I wasn't involved from the very beginning when NCRR formed in 1980. But I came into it around 1981, and the Commission hearings had already been approved and were starting to happen in different areas of the country -- Washington, 01:02:00D.C., I believe; New York; Los Angeles; San Francisco; Seattle; New York; Chicago -- areas where there were quite a few Japanese Americans living. I was living up in the Bay Area at that time, and what we were trying to do as NCRR was to get as many people to testify as possible at these hearings and tell their stories about what had happened.

In order to do that, to get people to testify, whether it was orally at the hearing itself or written testimony, took a lot of work, because many people had never talked about their experience, even with their own families or kids. They had never discussed it. It's kind of like bringing up a very traumatic and painful experience, and it's not 01:03:00something that people can just easily talk about, especially since they had not talked about it before. So it took a lot of work to convince people to do it, and the reason why they should do it, and helping them to come to the point where they would do it, you know what I mean? So that took a lot of work: house meetings, meeting with people. We had community meetings trying to explain what kind of things they should include in their testimony, all kinds of things like that. So that's how I got involved, was trying to get people to testify.

I couldn't get my mother or my grandmother to do it in person at the Commission hearings, but they did submit written testimony, so that was a contribution. But my parents and 01:04:00I attended all three days of the Commission hearings in San Francisco, and it was probably one of the most moving experiences I've ever had, listening to so many people talk about what they had gone through. These are stories that no one had ever heard before, and it was just pretty heart-wrenching, but it was just really powerful. After that, both my parents got involved in NCRR, [laughs] and started coming to the meetings and became very active. I think that that's true for a lot of the Niseis who attended and who spoke out. It was something that really was so moving to them, that people really became involved and 01:05:00wanted to really see this through and really win redress. Yeah, it was a very powerful thing.

TEWES: Wow, so much to unpack there. I've got questions! But I suppose I'll go with the last bit first. This was, as you mentioned, an intergenerational effort to move this forward. How have you thought about that over the years? Why was that important, that there were several generations working together?

MARU: Well, I mean in this particular case, it was essential that we had the Issei and Nisei involved, because they're the ones who lived it. There was some Sansei who were born in camp, but they were so young at that time they probably didn't remember anything, you know, or they were very young, right? But the 01:06:00Nisei and the Issei were the ones who suffered the most, who had the stories to tell, and so they were the ones that we really had to work with and learn from what they went through, because none of us really knew until they started telling their stories about everything that had gone on. Even today, there's not too many Niseis that are left, who are still alive, who can talk about it and stuff.

But there's still so many things that we're learning after the fact. And now, I think one of the things that is coming out is this thing called intergenerational trauma, that the experience that our grandparents and parents went through 01:07:00has had a big impact on our community and on ourselves, and it is passed down through the generations, even though it's not something that's real overt. But it's something that has impacted us, and it comes out in a lot of different ways, I think. I mean, the reaction after the camps, in some families it really varied. Some people after camp didn't want to really relate to being Japanese. They had to really show that they're patriotic and American, so they wanted to do that by not eating Japanese food or, you know, not relating to the Japanese community, just a lot of different subtle things that -- trying to 01:08:00show that they're American and not Japanese. To me, that's pretty sad. I'm glad that that's not how my parents handled that situation, but it did happen with a lot of people.

And so even my kids had friends growing up -- they're Yonsei, fourth generation -- who didn't know how to use chopsticks, because their families didn't eat Japanese or Asian food. [laughs] And largely, I think that's because of the camps, because they didn't want to really relate to being Japanese. They wanted to prove their Americanness. And so but that to me, even to my kids, was pretty astounding. Like they couldn't believe it, that that Japanese 01:09:00American generation wouldn't know how to use chopsticks. So we taught them how, [laughs] and tried to teach them more Japanese American culture and stuff. But I think it's a direct result of the camps and how that impacted people, about how they thought about themselves, and what it meant to be American, but not really understanding what it meant to be Japanese American.

The other way it comes out is the out-marriage rate among Japanese Americans is probably the highest of any -- well, at least any Asian nationality. I don't know about overall, but it's very high. Not just marrying whites, but marrying someone other than a Japanese [person]. 01:10:00Almost all families have somebody in their family who married someone who isn't Japanese. Like in my family, my nephews married Filipino, white, other nationalities, and that's true of so many families now.

TEWES: While we're on the topic, how did your family think about or talk about interracial relationships?

MARU: I don't recall my parents addressing that issue head on, but I think they preferred that we would marry Japanese. But it was never a spoken thing, it was just sort of an unspoken thing. As it turns out, my 01:11:00brothers and myself all married Japanese, which was a little bit unusual, but we all did. But our kids didn't necessarily do that. But I don't think my parents, given their politics and awareness, I don't think they would have really had a problem if any of us married outside of Japanese or married other nationalities.

TEWES: Backing up to redress again, you've mentioned how difficult it was to convince people to tell their stories. Is there an argument or something you would say that was most powerful in getting people to become 01:12:00 involved?

MARU: You know, I can't think of specific instances of how we did that, except by trying to explain to people how important it was that our stories get out there, that the only way that others are going to learn the real truth about what happened in our history is by people telling it, because it's not in history books unless we write them ourselves. It's not being taught in school, unless we really fight for that. So I think it was through just putting out these kinds of arguments to people about the importance of it, and that there will really be no 01:13:00justice until the truth of what happened to our people came out, of what people really suffered through. And I think that was a powerful thing for people to hear, because everyone had a story to tell. It was just a question of did they want to do it, and did they have the courage or strength to be able to do it? And it was really hard for people. Many, many of the testimonies that were given people were crying. It was just so painful, because it was the first time that they had ever even spoken about what happened to them in public, and so it was a very, very difficult and painful thing for people to do. But I think it really had the impact that we knew it would have when people told their 01:14:00stories. Yeah, it was just a really amazing experience to go through.

TEWES: Yeah. Well, on a personal level, you mentioned your mother and grandmother submitted written testimony. What was it like for you reading that?

MARU: Yeah, I wish I still had them, but I don't have either one of them anymore. I lost them somewhere through the years. But they are in the National Archives, so eventually I think I'm going to try to get a copy of it. It was really powerful for me to hear my mother's own words, and my grandmother's own words, about what happened to her. And I think for my grandmother, in particular, she was a single mother of three daughters, and having to go through that by 01:15:00herself, with no husband, I think was really, really hard. More so than other people, I think she had a pretty difficult time going to camp. And then after camp, they were sent to Cincinnati, Ohio, and lived out there for a year before they returned to Berkeley. And living in Cincinnati, from what I heard from my mother, was very racist and really not a pleasant experience. She said that one time she was on a bus and she was wearing a ponytail, and some man grabbed her by the ponytail and kind of turned her head [makes a yanking gesture] and looked at her and said, "Your eyes aren't that slanted." You know, stuff like 01:16:00that she said happened to her out there, and it was just really -- not a real friendly place.

TEWES: So for her, it was the ongoing experience, and not just incarceration.

MARU: Yeah.

TEWES: Thank you for sharing that. Finally, I just want to mention that you told me previously that part of NCRR's fight for this entire process was to get these hearings translated into Japanese, and to make multiple sessions and make them available at times that working people could actually attend or watch. Is there anything you want to say about that?

MARU: Yeah, I mean, that was something that we had to fight for, because it was a congressional 01:17:00commission, so I think it was, I don't know, something like nine congresspeople who were part of this panel of hearing people's stories in all these different cities. In order for many of the Issei to testify, they had to speak in Japanese, because that was their first language. In order to have them testify, of course there would have to be translation from Japanese to English. And also, for them to understand what was being said by others, they had to have translation from English to Japanese, so that was something we had to fight for. And we did win that, where we had translators and things like that, but it wasn't something that was thought of by the government or that they would have come up with on their own unless 01:18:00we raised it.

TEWES: And finally, this has been forty-plus years since that moment. How are you thinking about the redress movement today?

MARU: Well, like I said, every year we do what's called a Day of Remembrance program on or around February nineteenth. This year was the eightieth year since the signing of Executive Order 9066, so we had sort of a special event this year. It was kind of a hybrid thing, because COVID was still happening, so we didn't have an in-person large event at the Japanese American National Museum as we normally 01:19:00would have. It was mainly on Zoom, but we did have some people there in person, just a very limited number of people, and it was very distanced to be safe.

TEWES: Were you at the in-person event?

MARU: Yeah, I was there.

TEWES: What was that like? I only saw it on Zoom.

MARU: It was great being there in person. I think it really helped for the panelists to have an audience, because it would have been hard, I think, for them to do the panel, and speaking about all the topics they were covering, if they didn't have some people in the audience to speak to. [laughs] If you're just speaking kind of to an empty room, it's kind of weird, right? So I think it helped that we had a small audience. I think there was about thirty people there in person, and I think it helped them.

But the other thing about this year's event is that we 01:20:00had -- at least the LA event -- we had a guest speaker come out from D.C. named Dreisen Heath, and she's very much involved in the whole fight for Black reparations, which many of us in Nikkei Progressives, as well as NCRR, are involved with now. And so we were trying to bring out the parallels between fighting for reparations and the importance for African Americans to determine what they feel should be the appropriate path, as well as form of reparations for slavery. So that was really, I think, very important this year.

We're continuing to work on the fight for Black reparations and getting this bill called HR-40 01:21:00passed. It was introduced for the first time like thirty years ago by John Conyers, but never really got out of committee until this past year. And this year, it has close to 200 sponsors, which is the most it has ever had. And so we've been wanting to have it go to the floor for a vote, but that hasn't happened yet. I think people are still fighting for it, because if it just -- this term of Congress, if it doesn't come up for a vote, then it's like starting over the next congressional session, where you have to get all the sponsors all over again, and it's possible, it's just a lot of work. So we're trying to get 01:22:00it on the floor for a vote, as well as people are fighting for President Biden to issue an executive order. Basically, this bill is just to have a commission, similar to the one that was formed for Japanese American redress, where there was a commission that investigated and heard testimony and came up with recommendations for redress and reparations. This bill is very similar to that, for having a commission that would do a similar thing, coming up with recommendations. So anyways, we're hoping that something will happen this congressional term before it ends, 01:23:00but it's hard to say if it will be successful. But even if it isn't, the struggle will continue and people will continue to -- we'll continue to support the effort for Black reparations.

TEWES: A few things on that. One being the California [bill] AB-3121, which is basically California's version. It's a [reads] "Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans." And I know that NCRR is connected to that, too. Can you tell me how?

MARU: The Commission has been meeting, and actually, I think they're coming up with their report sometime this summer, I believe, fairly soon, because they've been meeting and trying to come 01:24:00up with recommendations and things, so they're supposed to come out with some kind of report. I guess they have a task force or something for AB-3121, and there is one Japanese American who's on that, Don Tamaki, who's an attorney. He was very much involved with the whole redress movement and the Korematsu [v. United States] case. But anyways, he's part of that task force. And so we're glad that at least one Japanese American was able to be a part of that and share his experience, as well as expertise, in what it took to fight for Japanese American redress. So we're following it. We're not directly involved with the task force, although people 01:25:00are listening in, because they have these listening sessions where you can actually listen in on the task force meetings and things. I haven't done that personally, but there are people in NCRR and Nikkei Progressives who are doing that and keeping up with it.

TEWES: Kimi, it would be interesting to hear why you think Japanese Americans have been so behind this movement for African American reparations. Many might say that's an interesting coalition here, but why do you think it has been so important for the community to support African Americans in this?

MARU: One is it's so long overdue. I mean of course, you can't -- there's no way to ever justify how slavery was -- it was 01:26:00wrong, and it's something that happened in this country, and this history of Black enslavement and the treatment of African Americans since then has just been terrible ever since slavery. You see it today in so many different ways, whether it's through all these police shootings, killings of innocent Black people and not getting convicted for it. Whether it's the redlining of where people can buy houses or can't, the fact that it's so difficult for a lot of African American families to accumulate wealth because of just the systematic racism and history of oppression of Blacks in this 01:27:00country. So you know, there's just a myriad of reasons why reparations should be given to African Americans for this long history of unequal treatment, and that's still continuing to this day. I mean, we see it in all these forms, like the shooting in Buffalo just the other day. The rise in white supremacy in this country, which was fueled by Trump and continues to be by him, as well as all these other right-wing extremists. It's just fomenting all this hate and violence against African Americans, as well as other people of color.

And so I think because Japanese Americans were able to win redress -- we're a much smaller number of people, but the fact that we were able to win something by 01:28:00organizing in our community and telling the stories about what happened to us, as well as point out how wrong the government was, those are really important lessons, I think, that we wanted to share with people in the African American community, and just let them know that we're behind them whatever they decide that they want, as far as how they want to go about fighting for their own redress and reparations is their choice. But we'll support whatever they determine is their path. We want them to know that it's possible to win. Obviously, our case, what happened to Japanese Americans, is a much, much smaller thing, not on such a large scale. But the point of getting the government to admit when they've done something wrong and to 01:29:00redress it is something that everyone has a right to do, and we want to support those people in that struggle, as well as others who will probably have similar grievances, like the Native Americans and others, who may choose to do that, as well.

TEWES: Thank you for sharing that. I want to take us back a little bit in time and think about things that are happening in the sixties and seventies again. We talked about the Vietnam War and the impact that had on you and your family, but it's also about that time that the term "Asian American" becomes used in academic circles and then trickling down. You said when you were at Laney Junior College in 01:30:00Oakland in the seventies that you took Asian American classes. I'm wondering how you thought about that term then, about that identity. Were you willing to identify as Asian American?

MARU: Yeah, definitely. It's funny, because I don't even remember exactly when that terminology became so used, because I do remember growing up, and my parents would always refer to us being "Orientals." And then it almost was like I don't even remember, it just changed all of a sudden, where people stopped using that term and started using "Asian" or "Asian American." And then whenever we heard someone use the term "Oriental," we would try to correct them and say, "That's not what 01:31:00we're calling ourselves anymore." [laughs] And you know, nowadays, you rarely hear anyone use the term "Oriental." I mean, if you do, you kind of like -- it kind of raises eyebrows, right? Because it's just not something that you hear anymore. If so, it's probably from someone much older, like grandparents' age or something like that who maybe didn't learn that.

The importance of it is that it brought solidarity between the different Asian nationalities. And in particular, I think during the Vietnam War, there was definitely a solidarity felt between Asians in this country with what was happening to the Vietnamese people, and 01:32:00how we felt like it was part of our struggle to fight for their rights and to stop the US from trying to take over their country. One of the things I think that was really important during the anti-war movement was one of the slogans that people used during the anti-war movement was "Bring the boys home," referring to the American troops. But it was not recognizing that Vietnamese people were also being killed, you know? There were many different slogans, but one of the things that I remember during that time was the slogan "One struggle, many fronts," meaning 01:33:00it's a struggle to end the war in Vietnam, but it's also many struggles in this country that Asians were facing here, as well as -- not just Asians, but others. Almost all people of color.

Anyways, that was one thing that I remember that was kind of significant, was trying to really see the solidarity between Asian Americans in this country and Asians in Asia, and that we had a common enemy, as far as what the US was doing in those countries wasn't right. We recognized that, being Asians here in this country, also fighting for rights here, and seeing the inequality and injustice that was happening here, as well as in Asia and around the world.

TEWES: Thank you for that connection. 01:34:00It's really interesting to hear how you were thinking about that. In thinking more about your time in college, what were you studying?

MARU: I was studying mainly art and Asian American studies, yeah. At one time, I really wanted to do ceramics. And then I was still doing aikido when I was going to Laney College, so my idea was to go to Japan and learn how to do raku pottery in Japan, as well as aikido. My ideal was to go to Japan and do both those things. [laughs] But I kind of didn't end up doing that. I got more involved 01:35:00in the Asian American movement and decided to just do that.

TEWES: Yes, I want to speak about your art later on, because all that's really interesting to me. But I know you also made a big life transition in 1990, and you moved down to Los Angeles. Can you tell me how that came about?

MARU: Well, the person who I married, who I'm no longer married to, he was from LA, and he had a son by a previous marriage who lived down here. So in order for him to be able to see his son every other weekend in summers and holidays and stuff, it was just really difficult living up in the Bay Area to have his son have to travel back and forth all the 01:36:00time, so we decided to move to LA. And I've been here ever since. [laughs] But it was hard, because my family's all up in the Bay Area. So especially when my kids were young, I would take them up to the Bay Area to see my parents and my brothers and stuff as much as I could. But yeah, I'm the only one that's still living down here. But I've actually grown to like LA, even though people in the Bay Area really can't believe it, because most people from the Bay Area hate LA. [laughs] I'm one of the few people that really likes it. I like the weather. I don't like the smog or anything, but I actually like the warm weather.

TEWES: I was going to ask what your impressions were as a Bay Area person coming down to LA.

MARU: I mean, the air pollution at that time was much 01:37:00worse, I think, and that was one of the main things I was really not looking forward to, was like just, yeah, all the smog and stuff. But once you kind of either get used to it or get past it, [laughs] you know, I kind of like -- there's a lot of nice things about being down here, too. And the fact that Little Tokyo is probably the largest Japanese American J-Town left is a big thing. My relationship to Little Tokyo is much stronger than, I think, what my relationship was up in Japantown in San Francisco, in terms of just being more involved in the community.

TEWES: Why do you think that is?

MARU: 01:38:00Well I mean, I was involved with the redress movement up in San Francisco, but other than NCRR, I wasn't really as involved in any community groups in J-Town, other than during the redress movement. So I think being in LA, there was just a little bit more going on that I could relate to at that time. I mean, I think there are things up there, organizations and things up there that if I lived up there I'd get involved with. But since I've been down here for thirty-two years now, I feel pretty at home here.

TEWES: Speaking about building a home down south, I know your children were born in the early nineties. 01:39:00When was that?

MARU: My son was born in 1992, and my daughter was born in 1994.

TEWES: And how have you thought about connecting them to their Japanese American heritage?

MARU: Well, I've always been very conscious of making sure that they come out to all the different community events and things that are happening in Little Tokyo. Of course, we always eat Japanese food, and I've taught them as much as I can about cooking Japanese food, Asian food, New Year's food, which they really enjoy having mochi and ozoni and all the traditional foods every year.

Then when they were 01:40:00young, like five or six, they both got involved in Japanese American basketball organizations down here, so both of them played basketball up through -- well, my son played until he was in about sixth grade, but my daughter played up through high school. JA basketball is a really big thing down here, I mean, it's a huge thing. There's just a lot of different teams and tournaments. And going to basketball practice every weekend and then a game on Sunday was our life for like, I don't know, twelve years or something. [laughs] And then certain tournaments -- like there was one in Vegas that we used to go to every August, and we did that every year. So our life kind of revolved around basketball for quite a while, until my 01:41:00kids kind of stopped. But that was a way that they were able to meet a lot of Japanese American friends, because their teammates were primarily Japanese -- not all, but primarily. I mean, they met a lot of other kids their age and became friends with them, and still are friends to this day, with some of those people. So it was really a community kind of thing. I think that helped them learn more about not just JA basketball, but just being part of a community of people. Yeah, so I think that was valuable.

Other things are that I made sure that 01:42:00they come to -- we've gone to the Manzanar pilgrimage a couple times. I wanted them to make sure that they learned about that, that history, and could see for themselves where Japanese Americans were put in camp. Yeah, I bring them to a lot of events, like Day of Remembrance. And of course, they, on their own, want to come to things like Nisei Week and a lot of those kind of things. So I think they enjoy and want to be part of the Japanese American community, and really make a point of connecting to those things. And I think even though they don't live down here anymore -- neither one of them do -- 01:43:00but I think they try to go to what things they can up in the Bay Area.

TEWES: Thank you for sharing that. I'm always interested in how we decide what we want our children to take from our own experiences and what we want them to learn moving forward.

So as you start this new life in Los Angeles in 1990, I know one thing is that you took a job at CSULA, Cal State University, Los Angeles. Can you tell me more about what that entailed?

MARU: Well, when I first started working there, I was working in a dean's office -- no, actually, it was a vice president's office. But I mainly wanted to work there -- one [reason] is because it was so close to where I live. So one thing that I was always 01:44:00very lucky about is having a job where I didn't have to like have a long commute, both when I lived up north in the Bay Area, as well as in LA. When I first moved here, I was working a temporary job, and it took me over an hour to get to each way, right, each way to and from. And I just was so not used to having that kind of commute and just sitting in traffic, bumper-to-bumper traffic every day. It was like, I don't think I can do this. [laughs] So finding a job at Cal State LA, was actually really lucky, because it only is like ten minutes away from where I live. And so I didn't even have to take a freeway or anything, I just get there by streets, and it was very convenient. And so once I started working on campus, after a few years you're able to find other 01:45:00jobs, move up, and move around on campus to find better-paying jobs or whatever. So I stayed there for twenty-seven years and retired in 2017, which was actually kind of early retirement, but I chose to do it then.

TEWES: Given that you're connected to a college community for so many years, were you able to get involved with on-campus affinity groups, Japanese American affinity groups?

MARU: Not really. They didn't really have anything that was Japanese American, per se, on campus. For a little while, there was like an Asian 01:46:00staff kind of gathering that they would do maybe once or twice a year, just get together for like a luncheon and things, but there really wasn't too much Japanese American activity, per se, on campus. Yeah. For me, it was mainly a job.

The good thing that I was able to do, though, was get my kids into -- when they were little -- get them into the childcare center that they had on campus. And that was really, really a good thing, because, one, I could take them, drop them off on my way into work, and then pick them up on my way out. I could walk to the childcare center in five minutes from where I was working, so when they 01:47:00had different events at the daycare center, like Halloween parties or different kinds of things like that, I could just walk over and join them and stuff, so that was really good. And then the quality of the daycare was really, I thought, pretty excellent, because the -- well, the executive director at that time was also a professor of child development on campus, and I happened to work in the child development office, so I knew her. I knew some of the other teachers that taught at the daycare center. And then the students, who were child development students, would do their practicum and their observations and things like that at the daycare center. So those students working there were always like very up-to-date on the 01:48:00latest theories on child development and things. So I felt like the kind of care that they give to the kids there was really, really good, and I think my kids really benefited from that.

TEWES: Wow! What a connection. I'm glad that worked out for the family there.

MARU: Yeah.

TEWES: Well, a little bit tougher conversation: in [1991 and] 1992 there was a series of uprisings around the Rodney King verdict and also the murder of a young Black girl, [Latasha Harlins], by a Korean American storekeeper, and there's a lot of racial tensions happening in LA around this time. What do you remember about that moment in LA?

MARU: Yeah, I remember that, because that was, I 01:49:00believe, shortly after my son was born, the rebellion. You know, there was a bunch of things that happened around then. There was also an earthquake that happened, [laughs] which I can't remember if that was before or after. But anyways, yeah, I do remember when the Rodney King verdict happened, and then the uprising happened and stuff. It was pretty scary, actually. My ex-husband's father and mother, who -- well, father lived really close by in the Crenshaw area, where a lot of this looting and violent things were going on. I remember my husband went over to -- drove to his place to make sure he was 01:50:00okay, and he said just getting there by car was just like really scary, because people were in the streets. He said he wasn't sure if he was going to be able to get home, because it was just like really, yeah, kind of dangerous. But he was able to get back okay. But Crenshaw Square, which was kind of a shopping mall area that was largely Japanese American businesses, many of them got destroyed or broken into and looted. And so my husband's stepfather had a business there, and his place got pretty much destroyed. He pretty much lost his business after that. So yeah, it was not a good time at all, pretty scary.

I think the whole thing between 01:51:00Black and Korean relations and stuff is still -- to this day it's still something that needs to be repaired and needs a lot more work to build understanding and solidarity between the two communities and stuff. That's part of the reason why I think working with groups around the fight for Black reparations is actually a very positive thing, because even though we're not Korean, we're Asian, and a lot of people can't make that distinction anyway, right? But the whole point being that to build Asian and Black solidarity, I think, is really important.

TEWES: Thank you for sharing that. That's a good insight into the way in which the work can 01:52:00continue to address history. Well, I think that's a good place for us to stop today, Kimi. Is there anything you'd like to add that we haven't already discussed or didn't delve into something too much?

MARU: I can't think of anything offhand. [laughs]

TEWES: Okay. Well, we're meeting again tomorrow, so there's plenty of time to think of something. Well, thank --

MARU: So tomorrow, will I use the same links as today?

TEWES: Oh yeah, one moment here, please. Sorry, I was just going to close us out. Thank you, Kimi.