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0:11
Lisa Tsuchitani: Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome and thank you so much for the sense of community that we're already creating in the chat and, I have to agree, I'm definitely getting hungry after reading all the comments that I'm seeing there. My name is Lisa Tsuchitani and I am a faculty member in the Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies program of the Department of Ethnic Studies here at UC Berkeley. While we may be located in disparate spaces geographically,
0:38
I would like to formally begin this event by recognizing that the location which connects us to each other today, UC Berkeley, occupies the territory of Huichin, the unceded and stolen land of the Chochenyo Ohlone, ancestral land which continues to be of great importance to the Ohlone people. On behalf of the Japanese American Studies Advisory Committee and the UC Berkeley Library, as well as our event co-sponsors, the Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies
1:07
program, the Asian American Research Center, the Asian American and Pacific Islanders Standing Committee, the Asian Pacific American Student Development Office, the Ethnic Studies Library, and the Racial Justice Task Force of the UC Berkeley Library, thank you for joining us today for this special interactive workshop, "Ancestors and Archives: Working with What We Have." According to a recently published article in "The New York Times," the United States has surpassed 700,000
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known COVID-19 deaths to date, making the coronavirus pandemic the deadliest in American history. As we continue to make sense of the many ways in which the pandemic has touched our lives, we hope that this workshop will serve as a space of reflection and inspiration to explore and create new forms of archival and ancestral meaning making. At this time, I'm very honored to introduce to you the speakers for this afternoon: David Mas Masumoto and his daughter, Nikiko Masumoto.
2:09
David Mas Masumoto, or Mas, is a sansei, or third generation organic peach and grape farmer whose farming techniques have been employed across the nation. Born in Del Rey, California, Masumoto left the Central Valley to study sociology here at UC Berkeley. After completing his undergraduate studies at Cal, a master's degree in community development at UC Davis, and additional studies at International University in Tokyo, Japan, he would return home to work on his family's farm and begin writing.
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Mas is the author of 11 books including "Distant Voices: A Sansei's Journey to Heal a River," "Country Voices: The Oral History of a Japanese American Family Farm Community," and "The Perfect Peach," a family farm cookbook co-written with his wife Marcy, and his daughter Nikiko. His bestselling memoir and loving tribute to the Sun Crest peach variety, "Epitaph for a Peach: Four Seasons on My Family Farm," won both the 1995 Julia Child Cookbook Award and the
3:13
1995/'96 San Francisco Review of Books Critics Choice Award. A former Kellogg Foundation Food and Society Policy Fellow, Mas has served as chair of the California Council for Humanities, a board member of the James Irvine Foundation, and an appointee of former president Barack Obama to the National Council on the Arts. He currently serves on the boards of the statewide Leadership Council to the Public Policy Institute of California, the National Council on the Arts,
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and the Journalism non-profit, Cal Matters. Nikiko Masumoto is a yonsei, of fourth generation organic farmer, memory keeper, and artist at the Masumoto family farm. Though she grew up on her family's peach farm, she came to farming herself through a journey that included a bachelor of arts in Gender and Women Studies here at UC Berkeley and a master of arts in Performance and Public Practice at the University of Texas at Austin. In an agricultural world where 86% of farmers are men, most
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landowners are white, and few are queer, she employs art and creativity to access her power as an organic farmer. The co-author of two books, "The Perfect Peach" and "Changing Season," she also is the co-founder of the Yonsei Memory Project, which uses arts-based inquiry to generate intergenerational dialog connecting the World War II incarceration experiences of the Japanese American community with current civil liberties and healing justice struggles.
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Currently, Nikiko is part of a fellowship cohort of artists with the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. She also is a team member of the Center for Performance and Civic Practice Reimagining Group, the board of trustees of the Western States Arts Federation, the board of directors of the Art of the Rural, and most recently the University Advisory Board of California State University at Fresno. Mas and Nikiko's remarks will be followed by a Q&A moderated by my colleague, Dr. Liladhar Pendse,
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librarian for the East European and Central Asian Studies, Caribbean and Latin American Studies, and Armenian Studies Collections. Feel free to throw your questions in the Q&A prompt on the Zoom sort of panel at the bottom of your screen. With that, please join me in welcoming back to campus, Mas and Nikiko Masumoto. Nikiko Masumoto: Thank you so much, Lisa. It's a pleasure to be here and really huge thanks to Lisa for envisioning and welcoming us back, and I know it's taken
5:54
quite a scheduling hurdle--hurdle-jumping to get us to today, so it's extra-exciting. I just wanted to kind of take a moment to think back about all of the beautiful, really, the poetry we wrote together as people joined and shared with us how and when and where you connect with ancestors. Just to remind us of what I heard, a lot of you talked about connecting with ancestors through stories, places, specific places, redwood forests, grave sites, temples, farms.
6:34
Some of you spoke about connecting with ancestors in dreams, through photographs, in small moments on a daily basis, and annually at Obon Odori. Some of you spoke about food, seeking more knowledge and connection with ancestors, cooking, fabrics, and dancing. I am so appreciative of these ways that we can interact even though we are virtual. So as we embark on our times together, thinking about ancestors and archives, today we're gonna invite you to be here introspectively.
7:14
Also we're gonna invite you to do some activation in the spaces you're in, and to collect some objects. And we're also gonna invite you to continue to participate in the chat and, as Lisa mentioned, if you have specific questions for us, the best way to field those is through the Q&A button at the bottom of your Zoom screen. And our goal for today, really, is to--my dad, Mas, he's gonna share some of his upcoming book, which is all about constructing memory out of fragmented archives.
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And we are so blessed that Patricia Wakida, who is the phenomenal artist, dear friend of ours, but phenomenal artist and part of this forthcoming book with my dad, is here in the audience. So, Patricia, feel free to weigh in, in the chat as we get to that section. And really, the heart of why we wanted to gather was to offer ways of strengthening our pathways of connection with ancestors. So with that kind of context of what we're all gonna do today,
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together, it's my honor to kick us off with an activity. So I'm going to pull up my screen and share. So, this activity is gonna involve you moving around your space. Now, if you're not at home or not in a space where you have a lot of objects that are of your own, you also can pull out your phone and look for photos, or if neither of those are accessible, you're also welcome to just travel in your mind's eye to your home and collect objects in your imagination.
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But if you able to move around your spaces, it's really fun. So, here is our prompt. So I'm gonna give everybody, literally, two minutes. Don't worry, you can do it in two minutes and if you don't get all three objects, that's okay. We're gonna go on an ancestral treasure hunt. So in the next two minutes, I'm gonna invite you to find three objects: one, an object that reminds you of an ancestor. And for me, as a queer person, it's really important to underline, ancestor does not have to be
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someone in your family lineage. It can be, most definitely, but it can also be a chosen ancestor. So the second object you're gonna find is an object that reminds you of a favorite family or cultural tradition. And the third object you're gonna find is something that represents the kind of ancestor you want to be. So with that, if you have any questions for me and in the directions, pop 'em in the chat, and I'm gonna start my timer. Feel free to get up and I will verbally
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call you back when two minutes are up. So go find your ancestor treasures where you are.
11:10
Nikiko: We're about halfway there, one more minute.
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Nikiko: You have about 30 more seconds.
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Nikiko: And we're almost there, just a couple seconds left. So if you can make your way back. [timer sounding] Nikiko: That is our two minutes, so if you wanna welcome yourself back to this space. Thank you for going on an ancestral treasure hunt, and Kelly in the chat actually had a great question. It just reminded--we are recording the--our speaker side of today, but we're not recording what's in the chat, so feel free to share. The chat will not be archived; it's just for us today.
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So, thank you so much. So you all now either have photos or, hopefully, objects with you and this is where I wish I could see you, but in the webinar format we're gonna have to use the chat. So I would love for you to sit with your objects and absorb them for a second. And for us to think about that activity as a activity of archival research. Sometimes, I think we separate ourselves from the archive and, really, we have archives--we live in archives, we--our homes are archives.
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And so you can do archival research, archival work, anytime. So as you are sitting with your objects, I'd love for you to list, if you feel comfortable, some of the things that you collected in the chat. What did you bring? What objects do you live with that remind you of your ancestors? What objects remind you of your family or cultural traditions? And what objects remind you of the kind of ancestor you want to be?
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And as you all are typing, I'm just gonna call out some of the things that I see in the chat. I'm seeing an object, a picture-frame. Someone--an object that reminds us of family or culture tradition: dumplings. This continued food theme. A charm bracelet. Someone is calling up a grandmother's pot. Drawings done by family members, tea, a tattoo, children's books.
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Things made by grandmothers, made by hand. A shoe, mm, an artifact from a memorial, from a father's memorial. Written stories, a shaker, an ojuzu. Hand-sewn things passed down through generations, origami, pieces of wood, sculpture, fresh pomegranate, a red envelope, shoyu. These are beautiful. A diary, an army blanket, an old family photo, a wooden spoon. As we continue to share, it strikes me how poetic these lists are, this archive that we're creating now, and since I
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know many of you, you know, these are archives of our families, they're archives of Asian America, they're archives of America. I know somebody's here from internationally, that these are our global archives of who we are, who our families are, who we want to be. So as we are sitting with these objects, I want us to begin to dive deeper into how we construct stories, how we construct narratives from the archives we live with. And so, I'm gonna share some questions and I wanna invite
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introspection so you are welcome to receive these questions with silence followed by some silence, and if you were so moved to chat, to add some thoughts into the chat, you're welcome to do that. But I just wrote some questions, thinking about these objects and this exercise of searching for story, understanding story, from the artifacts and the archives of our homes. So as you hold these objects, as you think about them, and you look at them, and you smell them, you feel their weight,
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I wonder how they came to you. I wonder what questions do you have about these objects. When did you first encounter them? Who did they belong to? How do you care for those objects? How do you interact with these artifacts of ancestors? Who doesn't know the story behind one of the objects you chose, who doesn't know the story? And who do you wanna tell the story of these objects that you gathered? Why are these objects treasures to you? What words, what emotions, what thoughts
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are attached to these objects? And now that we've done this small miniature ancestral treasure hunt, this searching through the archives that we live in, what do you wanna do with these objects? Who would you wanna share them with and how? Would someone in your family pick the same objects to the same prompt or different objects? In my dream, what would it be like at the next family gathering, whether it's virtual or in-person, what would it be
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like for you to repeat this ancestral treasure hunt and share amongst your communities, your families, these objects that carry deep meaning for us and that we live with? This is my invitation to you to replicate and adapt this exercise in your communities and families. So we're gonna return to ancestors many, many times throughout today and, if you wanna keep your objects close to you, I invite you to do that. If we have time, we're gonna do a question activity later.
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But now I wanna turn attention to my dad, Mas Masumoto. And I'm curious, Dad, what did you grab? What objects did you bring to do with ancestors? David Mas Masumoto: I brought this tennis shoe. And this is a tennis shoe and it'll lead to this book that I'm--that will be published in early 2023. It's a tennis shoe of my lost aunt, and she wore these tennis shoes and when she passed away, I was given a box of these tennis shoes. It gives a sense of how big she was.
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She was actually tiny. And here's the key. This is an aunt that we didn't realize we had and it was 70 years's separation between when we first knew of her and when I "discovered" her, so to speak. So that's one of the things that I found. And the other artifact has to do with our-- it's our fruit box that we have, you know? Because if there's something that's gonna be passed on, it's this box of fruit that will be passed on with it. So that's just two of the things that I brought.
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It's interesting, I did a--when I was doing oral history, I collected these fruit labels of all these Japanese American family farms. And that all the labels had a story behind it. And that's the key to all these artifacts. It wasn't just the shoes or the box. It wasn't just the label. It was the story behind the label, you know? And some had meanings, like, initials of the four--three brothers that formed the farm and it was called G.H.I. is the Morishita family in Del Rey.
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And the joke was they grew such good quality produce, their label was G.H.I., George, Harry, and Irving Morishita, that was the initials, but the joke was that because their produce was so good quality, they charged more for it, so everyone said, "Oh, their label's really, 'G, HI' price," that they charged for it, and everything. But it's their story behind it that was the important thing. Another story behind another fruit label that I had was this Ohama family and Sons, S-O-N-S.
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And it was peculiar because the family only had one son and I couldn't understand why didn't he have two? Was there some tale about someone who passed away? But the idea was that the father, he said, well, he made the label before he had kids, and he just thought that he would just be optimistic and have a bunch of kids and a bunch of sons. And it turns out he only had one, but he didn't wanna change the label. It's the story behind it, of course, that's important.
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And that's what I think counts the most in that. Nikiko: Thanks so much, I am-- I think we should do this at Thanksgiving with everybody. So I'm gonna pass the baton to you, Dad, and I hope--I wanna hear more about Shiziko and I can't wait to hear what you have to say about your upcoming book. Nikiko: I'll be back. David: Thank you. And the upcoming book was, I think, it almost had its genesis in an exercise we just did of how do you construct stories from objects or pieces of information?
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So the book is called, "Secret Harvests." And it's a tale about family secrets, and I had discovered that there was an aunt that we had that was separated from our family for 70 years, and there are two factors that were involved. When she was a child, she got meningitis which stopped her development. So she got it when she was about five years old and she stayed at that level of kind of communicative capacities in that, and also then in 1942, when Japanese Americans were
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interned and forced to evacuate, leave the area, the family didn't know what to do with this daughter, and it had the idea that if you were disabled, had a disability, you were a, quote, "misfit," and the family was confused about what--if they could take her with them, could they take care of her? Who would take care of her? So they gave her up to become a ward of the state so that she would become going through the institutional care.
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That was the last time people saw her, and this was in 1942. And when--later when they came back from the camps, they all assumed that she had passed away and everyone lost-- obviously lost touch, didn't look for her. Turns out then, in 2012, 70 years later, I got this phone call and found out that this aunt was alive in Fresno. She had survived 70 years of institutional care. She is in her 90s, and it was this big question of how do you deal with a family secret?
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And it brought up all kinds of emotions and all kinds of questions, emotions, of course, of shame, emotions of guilt, but also emotions of anger and pain that was involved in these family histories. And my family, like many Japanese American families, like many Asian American families, they tended to deal with a lot of things with silence. So I was stumped at what to do, so I slowly began to ask some questions and--but the most challenging for me was to
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realize that these stories that we have, these family stories, they're always gonna have these gaps, because there was no written history of my family, and my grandparents were illiterate, they couldn't write. There were some oral traditions, but not that many in our family. We were--we were quiet farmers. So there wasn't that kind of idea that there's this recorded history. So what do you do? And one of the realizations that I came to was if I was a good poet or fiction writer, maybe I'd
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write this great novel, but I'm not. I'm not a good poet and I'm not a good fiction writer. So as a non-fiction writer, creative non-fiction writer, what do you do with your stories? And it's just like all the artifacts that people were-- had collected, the question is what's the story behind each one of those artifacts? What's the story behind that carved sculpture or the photo that you had, or a food tradition that your family had?
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And the key to me was, one, you have to start asking questions. But the second thing is, you have to use your imagination to start filling in some of the gaps. I can't go back to know what was it like in 1925 when this aunt Shiziko contracted meningitis. There was no record of it. There was no medical record, of course. They--and the more I did a little research, I found out that, of course, they weren't gonna take her to a doctor or a hospital because back then, if you were poor and not white,
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you didn't go to the hospitals. You had to take care of things on your own, and that's why there was no medical medicine or cure that they could give her. So you fill in that gap of what's it like. And you have to imagine what was it like to be like that? And then you could start understanding the emotion behind the story. So in that sense then, one of the challenges of this "Secret Harvests" was, of course, how do you deal with a family secret, but what are the rich things,
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the stories, you could harvest from that? And that evolved into this book and this idea of how I grappled with--not only with family history but looking at generations of Japanese Americans, generations of Asian Americans in the United States and the challenges that each generation faces and the new realities that we ran into all the time. So that's in a nutshell this book, but a little backstory about the dynamic of the role of ancestors and artifacts as part of that story.
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So that's why, when I look at this shoe, you know, what does the shoe tell me, right? Just a side note, this aunt Shiziko, when I first met her, 'cause I went through the assisted care that she was in. She was in her 90s and in a wheelchair, right? And I looked at her and, of course, she didn't know me 'cause I never met her, right? And so I tried to introduce myself and she looked at me, looked up at me, and she wasn't able to speak, 'cause that was
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one of the deficits that came from her meningitis. So she looked at me and then she kicked me, right in the leg, and it turned out that her shoestring was untied. She wanted me to tie her shoestring. But she kicked me, and that's why things like her shoe become part of her character, 'cause I think it was that dynamic of her--when she need something, she would kick somebody to get it. That's how she survived 70 years of institutional care. So that's kind of gave me a sense
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of what was her personality like? You know, and again, what would I do to try to survive in a situation like that? And you have to be willing to imagine and it's okay to imagine, because I think we're caught in this idea that, you know, history could only be based on facts. But the challenge is, of course, who recorded most of the facts? For a certain--certainly part of the history of America, it was white men that recorded the facts. We don't think of the, quote, "founding fathers,"
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but we don't think, "Well, where's the founding mothers? Were they not there?" Of course they were there. They were part of the revolution, but we don't know quotes, the recorded history of it, 'cause they were ignored through most of that. So that's an example of looking at artifacts and the power of these stories, 'cause that gives you a little sneak preview of this book that'll be out in early 2023, so thank you for letting me share that with you. Nikiko: Thanks, Dad.
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[laughing] As I join you back onscreen, I just have some questions for you. I mean, I got to witness both the writing of the book and this unfolding family story as yonsei, you know, as yonsei, one more generation removed, and I remember just feeling shocked, like, completely shocked that we had, for me, a great-aunt that lived within, you know, 20 minutes of our farm and we had no idea who she was until this very lucky sequence of events that brought her back into our life.
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So one of my questions for you, Dad, is both as you experienced this, moving from this unknown into knowing certain parts but not knowing other parts of our aunt's story, do you feel a sense of closure with this book, with this story? Or have you gotten to a sense of closure? David: Yes and no. I mean, one of the challenges with trying to piece together stories like that is that you have to try to-- this is what I try to do, at least. I try to imagine what it would be like.
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'Cause, for example, I kept thinking, you know, how could they just let her go, you know? Well, I wasn't there in 1942. It's just about impossible for me to imagine the dynamics of that moment in history, but yet, at the same time, it obviously occurred. So there's this internal struggle where you kind of think, "All right, how can I empathize with it as much as possible but yet, at the same time, be critical 'cause we know so much more now?" And that was the juggling act.
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And here we had this aunt that was suddenly alive and everyone was kind of going, "Uh, she's alive?" you know? And there was a struggle that a lot of the other family members had with that because it wasn't just coming to grips with this aunt, it's coming to grips with history. And it's coming to grips with those stories behind the history. We may know of some type of story, but there's so many other levels and dynamics for that. And that was the challenge, I think, in doing this: trying to
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continue to uncover as much as I can but knowing there's more. But that's great. We forget. Our memories are fluid, right? We think that, "Oh, okay, I remember when I was growing up, going to Disneyland," or something like that. But later you go, "Wait a minute. You know, why did we go to Disneyland?" Was because, you know, I wanted to escape into this made-up world and that's what Disneyland is. Why did you want to escape? Because farm work was hard, you know?
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I think everyone wanted to have that escape and that's okay. So, suddenly, going to Disneyland has a different significant and different meaning to it because you had the harsh reality of growing up poor and growing up in rural America, growing up in an invisible world, and yet, at the same time, understanding the escapes that were involved. It's that kind of a closure and lack of closure that I think is so important. Nikiko: What I hear you articulating is, you know, with
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the fragments of memory that we know, especially in families, especially as you call out for people of color, immigrant communities, who our stories are chronically under- documented, right? Our lives are under-documented. So sometimes we might only have one or two photos of an ancestor or maybe no photos. You know, we may only have, like, very small pieces of a documented life. And what I hear you illuminating is that with those fragments, we can still construct meaning.
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And you use the word "imagination," like, you have to imagine to fill in those gaps, so that we can make meaning out of our ancestors, out of our communities. And so, can you bring us in a little bit more deeply. How do you imagine? What process do you go through, like, with our aunt Shiziko or any of our other family stories. When we have, like, one piece, what do you do then? What's your writing method? David: One of the things that I do a lot is that I allow myself to write notes
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and this is a trick, at least for me, for writing. Some people think that and maybe some geniuses could just sit down and pound out the perfect sentence, the perfect paragraph, the perfect story. I can't. I begin with notes. And the notes, really, are something where you make, literally, a little card with an idea and you may never come back to it or you may come back to it, but you have to actually--it's not just a thought, it's a written idea, that you're sort of anchored to come back to it
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and it's that second time you come back to it that you go, "Huh, why did I write that, what did I think? And what has changed since I wrote it?" So that was part of this journey and that's where you could say imagination comes--takes into place 'cause you-- here's an example. There are no photographs of this aunt. There's--you know, we had photographs taken, you know, 30, 40, 80 years ago and there's no pictures of her. You know, partly because for a lot of our families,
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there weren't cameras around. Pictures weren't common, and if there was a formal picture, it was pretty rare. So one of the things that struck me was why wasn't Shiziko in any kind of picture? And then it occurred to me: there weren't that many pictures, so here's the key. Does that mean then history didn't take place? Does that mean that the stories didn't take place? Of course not. It's just that we lack that kind of, quote, "physical evidence." But here's the other fun thing as a writer.
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You have to say, "Okay, well then, what happens of how some pictures were taken and how some pictures weren't?" Here's an example, apparently, there were these books that were made about Japanese American farmers in these different parts of the state, and family pictures were taken then. And I go, "Where did these pictures come from?" It was this traveling photographer who, basically, needed to earn some money so what he did is he would take these pictures of these families and then, in turn,
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sell them the book with these pictures in it after they would put 'em all together. He wasn't this historian, he wasn't this-- he was trying to make some bucks, you know? But he was great 'cause he archived all these families, and that's why it was a staged photograph. Almost none of the images were informal with them working in the fields. They were--men were dressed in ties and the women were dressed in nice, you know, "city" clothes, and you go, "This seems so artificial."
37:27
Then you realize, no, it was a photographer going around, taking these formal pictures. But yet, embedded in that is the back story, right? What did they do when they got these pictures and the book that came with it? A lot of them then sent these pictures back to the family in Japan. And I--when I lived in Japan and stayed with the Masumoto side of the family, I'd see these pictures and I'd go, "I didn't see these pictures growing up." They were the formal pictures of the Masumotos,
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and I'd go, "How did they get here?" Well, you know, my grandmother sent it back to her brother, and it also gave this other interesting perception. Because they were dressed up in coat and tie and nice clothes, everyone assumed they were very successful, all right? Now, is that the image they wanted or is that the image that they were hoping--their dream that was involved with that? And so there was these dynamics of, you know, who sent pictures like that? Would you send a picture like that?
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And it occurred to me, yeah, I would send a picture of me being really nice, because I'm not gonna just send 'em a picture of me all beat up and dirty and everything, 'cause it's sending a picture of failure. And at the same time, yeah, but life was a struggle. Yeah, you know, but you probably, at that point for a certain immigrant culture, you didn't think of yourself as a failure, 'cause if you did, you would probably go back to Japan, and they didn't, they stayed here.
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So, all of that is the imagined story behind a picture that we had or didn't have. And as a writer, it began with a little note saying, "How come Aunt Shiziko was not in any pictures that we found?" And that's what triggers one thing that leads to another and that leads to another, and that's at least how I try to write and explore things, so, you know, so. Nikiko: That's so amazing, the depth of one question, "Why don't we have any photographs of Aunt Shiziko?"
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then sparks this entire journey of thinking about historical context, thinking about the archives that you do know of, this traveling photographer. And then it--what I hear it in just the exercise that you just led us through, is a filling-in with proximity. Like, you--I feel closer. I didn't know this story about this photo that traveled back to Japan. And so, the labor of memory-keeping, of filling in those gaps, to me, is quite amazing, quite amazing.
40:04
I wanted to ask one more question specifically, about this upcoming book project, and then I have a couple other questions more in general about some of your career and your connections to UC Berkeley. But for, specifically for this upcoming forthcoming book, "Secret Harvest," I got to watch in the background you work with an artist, with Patricia Wakida, who's here with us in this webinar. And I'm curious about, particularly thinking about the way in which art can work in tandem with archive.
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So in this case, you know, our Aunt Shiziko's life was--we had almost no archive of her life. So can you tell us about working with Patricia, why you wanted to work with Patricia? Describe--Patricia is the artist of many form, writing, researching, and as well as creating woodblock prints. So I know that she's created so many for this upcoming book. So tell us about that process of working with Patricia and, Patricia, you're already weighing in in the chat, thanks so much.
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Tell us about that, why was working with another artist so important? David: Well, it's interesting because we had these gaps in our family stories. And one of the conclusions I came to is that all families have secrets. And if you talk to your parents, grandparents, brothers or sister, and say, "Oh, we don't have any secrets," they're lying, all right? Everybody has some secrets. Some may be just minor but some could be actually very major that you'd never heard of.
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It would be like your grandparents, you know, had some siblings that died and they just don't talk about them. Or some other dynamic that was involved. So how do you fill in some of those gaps? And that's where I think art comes in because it's idea of imagination and a visualization of it. In this sense with Patricia, she made these gorgeous woodblock prints. We had no pictures of this Aunt Shiziko as a child. I don't know what she looked like, you know?
42:10
I don't have pictures of my grandmother, you know, and she's a close mom as a child. So what do you do, you know? It doesn't mean that they didn't exist again, you know? So the images could help promote the story and balance it, especially in this area we're in now where we have so many visual elements that are part of the stimulation that we have with the stories. And one, they could play off of each other, so the hope is that when you look at this artwork,
42:39
it'll trigger something to start, as you read the story. And if the story's working, suddenly it's not just my story, it's your own family story where you start thinking of, you know, hmm, what secrets do we have? There's another dynamic to all this that was a part of the Shiziko book, is she had a disability, right? And disabilities were not talked about in my family. And I think a lot of Japanese Americans, a lot of Asian Americans, a lot of people in general,
43:09
they don't talk about people with disabilities, right? So how is that portrayed in that? And the thing about Shiziko, she had some kind of magical strength to survive 70 years of institutional care. She lived into her 90s being institutionalized and that, you know? On the one hand, that's an amazing great story of strength, and also, it's the other idea: what did she go through to kind of survive through that, you know? So you try to imagine that, but Patricia's artwork could help
43:39
pose that, so there's an image of her, of an older woman just looking a little perplexed, or another one of Shiziko in her wheelchair looking up at this light, at this window and you could imagine that. The thing that I think kept Shiziko alive was she was able to always look toward the future, as opposed to look toward the past. You know, is that exactly what happened? I can't tell. I mean, 'cause I wasn't able to interview her 'cause she wasn't able to speak and I don't know if she would--
44:13
how much she was aware of that. But it's that idea of how do dreams fit in to all of our family's stories of legacy, of immigration, of things? And you know, what are dreams, you know? They're abstract, but yet they have this real side of her. So it's just like all the artifacts that people talked about, there's a dream in a lot of those artifacts, whether it's a food or a photograph or a piece of art that someone has and that's what art does. It allows you to dream, you know, as opposed to
44:43
some--non-fiction writers, we tend to think of, you know, that they only could deal with truth and reality. It's like, no, you deal with truth and reality and imagination and dreams and emotions, at the same time, so anyway, so. Good stories, great stories. Thank you for asking. You know, what do you think about hearing about this? How do you--what do you think, Nikiko, about family secrets? Nikiko: Well, I mean, they make me nervous.
45:14
They make me nervous because, as a younger person in our family, I have questions about people and sometimes people have passed on that I never got to ask them questions. And then, you know, there's hard questions and so sometimes I wonder what are the muscles that we can work out or develop to get us to ask some of the hard questions? And I know that I've learned from you, I used to get really frustrated when--with the silences in our family history
45:52
and in other community context, and I think, reading some of your work has really made me think differently about silence, that there can actually be meaning in silence. And that we have to listen to silence as much as we're listening to words. And I don't mean silencing, I don't mean the force of silencing. I mean, you know, I've listened to some of your oral history work interviewing Japanese American farmers, and you ask a question and then there's a long pause.
46:28
And so you've taught me that there's something in that pause, that there's meaning, there's--sometimes it's people thinking, searching for the right words. Sometimes it's, you know, people responding to never having been asked the question that you ask them. So, actually, if I could pivot just one minute to go back in your earlier career, we're virtually at UC Berkeley and I'm imagining we're in a library somewhere, and especially for the students who are here today.
47:07
So one of my questions is when you go back in your career, what were some of the early things you learned about how to find stories that have helped you throughout your career? David: Well, one of the advantages of going to Berkeley was, literally, the library system that they had, you know. And I would try to dig out some documents and research papers at Bancroft and at the different institutions they had, but also just realized what was the power of
47:40
all the stories that were in these libraries? And it's the fact that they were documenting stories, right, you know? And that was the important part of me--and also the power of being on a campus that had history with it, you know? The recent history of the, you know, the Free Speech movement and protests in the '60s and '70s. Nikiko: I think that's recent for you, Dad, maybe not for us. David: But then you go back even further in that work, you
48:12
know, how was--what was Berkeley founded on, you know, and what were the challenges of establishing itself. And looking at different parts of it. So you look at some of that and understand you're part of something larger, right? And that was a big turning point in terms of looking at how do you piece together histories, that you're part of something larger, you know? And that was the fun thing. Now, of course, when I was, you know, a farm kid going on the
48:40
campus and it was like, "Whoa, you know, this is a--you know, we're not in Kansas anymore, right? This is a big campus and there's a lot of activities, a lot of things going on, and you know, I lived in the dorms and, you know, walking to campus and going down Telegraph, it was all, you know, an important part of that legacy of things that are happening around us. And also, realizing that one of the big questions was leaving the farm, was I gonna go back to the farm?
49:10
And certainly, when I started at Berkeley, I had no intention of going back to the farm and that's why I said, "All right, what major would I study that would never take me back to the farm?" 'Cause I was worried that if I went into, you know, the sciences, well, maybe I could get a job, you know, looking at technology in agriculture, or if I majored in business or something that, oh, I bet you'd take me back. So I majored in sociology, thinking that it would never
49:37
take me back to the farm, and, ironically, it was the very thing because I looked at sociology, and certainly cultural sociology, and it took me back to the stories of everything. So in that sense, who would have thought a farm boy walking around on this big campus of Berkeley would actually end up back on a farm after all that? So that was part of that evolution and, of course, you had no idea that was happening, you know, and no idea that was gonna be the impact that you have.
50:10
And I'm speaking now as an old man, right, could look back at that and at that point I had no idea. Well, okay, you were a farm girl and you go to Berkeley. What was your thoughts at that point? Nikiko: I mean, I probably went to Berkeley for a lot of the same reasons that you did, wanting to leave the farm and never come back. But I'll share, like, a couple of things specifically, turning points for me in being able to connect to a foreign place
50:46
because living in a city, walking on sidewalks, was a completely new experience for me. Literally, the first--I remember the first couple weeks, walking to campus was a little jarring for me because on the streets, people would brush by me and kind of, you know, touched my shoulders a little bit as you're going in opposite directions and I was just so unused to strangers physically interacting with me. And so one of the first--my first semester, I took an
51:20
Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology class and we had to do some participant observance-- observation and write a research paper. And so I decided to spend time with the folks who were completely new to my world and that was street people, folks who were unhoused and--'cause, as growing up on a farm, I never saw people living on the street 'cause, I mean, literally, there was no streets. So, I spent the first semester sitting down with people in the middle of the street and
51:55
interviewing them about their lives. So that really, I think, what--without knowing it, I was probably following exactly in your footsteps of turning to story, turning to questions as a way of coping with anxiety or the unknown. Instead of running away from it or trying to ignore it, turning towards the unknown with questions. So that was definitely a really impactful moment, and then another impactful moment, when you were articulating putting
52:34
your life in a context larger than your own at UC Berkeley, or at least that's what I'm hearing when you're--when you say, like, realizing that your story is part of something bigger. And one moment for me was in the ethnic studies library at--on campus, I found a paper that you wrote as an undergrad. David: Did it have a grade on it? Nikiko: [laughing] No grade, no grade. And that's actually also the first time I found "Distant Voices." So this was your--I would call it, like, a Chatbook.
53:14
Would you call it a Chatbook, a self-published, that documented--it was prose mixed with a little poetry and photographs from your visit in the '70s, yeah, probably '70s to Healer River which was where our family was incarcerated during World War II and I had no idea that you put this Chatbook together, and it was actually through the library system, just through meandering and I don't even know why I decided to look up our last name in the card catalog, and I found these
53:52
treasures and that connected me with a lineage, literally with you and this journey, and seeing your work in a library elevated to me--it made me realize how important it is for us as Japanese Americans, as Asian Americans, as people of color to tell our stories, to document our stories, and to protect our stories. And so that moment really was really powerful for me in the Ethnic Studies Library stacks. David: Well, one other interesting thing is we're now
54:37
in an era where there's--we're able to document stories, the artifacts that people have, and now you could actually, you know, share it on social media or at least record it with your phone. And it's so valuable because I wish I had an iPhone in the '70s and '80s 'cause now I could have recorded my grandmother and I was pretty observant but here's one thing I wish I could have recorded. I remember asking her, 'cause I came back from Japan and you know, could write kanji.
55:10
So I asked my grandmother, "Oh, how do you write your name?" You know, 'cause I wanted to make sure I had the right kanji that she had understood was our name. And she picked up the pen and then she went on a piece of paper and she went to scribble, like this. And all it was, was an "X," because she was illiterate. She couldn't write even her name. And she learned that and that it was legal back then and probably and now, if you couldn't write, you could put an "X"
55:41
on an official document and it was legally binding that that's your signature. And it was so telling that she did that, put her pen down, and then just looked away 'cause she was embarrassed by that. This was exposing her, and that was a moment I could write about. But can you imagine if I had an iPhone and could record that, and how powerful that would be, if not just to your family. So if I had that recording, I could share it with you and say,
56:10
"You need to know what your great-grandmother was like and what her life was, and the strength she had to pick up a pen that was a foreign object and to make that "X" and put it down and, at the same time, be very ashamed about that moment." That was her story of her life, you know? It's the story of immigrants, the story of all kinds of dynamics. And that's the power of today. You could be that historian and story-teller, and you just happen to record that one moment, you know,
56:45
and it's so powerful that, you know. And then as a writer, I was able to translate some of that into stories but at the same time, there are so many little things, you know, and you know Jii-chan, your grandfather, my dad, he was not a storyteller. He was really quiet, you know, and I got some stories out of him but you had to, like, hang around him a lot, you know, with it. But his power was actually in his ability to just make a few
57:17
comments here and there and they weren't negative comments, they were just a comment he would make, and you step back and you go, "Whoa, that was really, really an elegant way of describing something. So that's the other power of being a writer, of course. But of everyone, is the idea of the power of listening too, you know, and I think a good writer is to listen a lot and we're in an age, right now, where people aren't listening. They're just yelling at each other.
57:50
And I want--and I think listening is this secret weapon power that all of us have and, again, looking at those artifacts that people have, I would love to, you know, hear some of those stories of what people have, whether, you know, it was a beach toy and a big wooden spoon that someone talked about or a scratchy green army helmet. I'm fascinated to hear about that, and I would just sit down and listen. You know, what was the jigsaw puzzle that someone was talking about?
58:19
Or this wedding ring, you know, a red envelope. Was that the red envelope that I think people gave gifts and money in often and it was the idea of it was red because it was good luck or maybe not. Maybe there's something else involved. You know, all those kind of dynamics are powerful stories and if people would sit down and record them, just even for their own family, or just record it because that's how history is made, you know, so. Nikiko: Absolutely, you're bringing up to me the exercise
58:52
that I had prepared but I'll kind of modulate it 'cause I wanna make sure we have time for open question-and-answer with the audience. But you're illuminating to me a couple of things I'm hearing. One is the importance of sitting down and actually documenting our lives. And I just wanna name for myself, sometimes it feels funny, like, it feels awkward and I don't know if it's a--my personality or culturally, like, sometimes it feels like
59:23
presumptuous of, like, you know, documenting our lives, but I hear you saying that the more we can document, the more possibility those fragments of memories will be carried on. And that's one thing I've always appreciated about you, you're such a good question-asker and you have this, like, generous audacity, that's what I would say. This generous audacity to ask--ask questions of people and stories and objects, so one of the things that I wanted to just
59:56
kind of pass on, was a little list of things that I think are useful, the exercises that I think are useful in this documentation. So, thinking specifically about the artifacts that we have all gathered today, one of the things that I've learned from you is to interrogate and to open our curiosity with the senses. And this is something I've learned from you with farming. You don't just farm with one sense. You farm with your whole body. And I think the same thing is
1:00:29
with our memories and our histories. We live in full body senses, so we ought to remember in full body senses. So, you know, thinking about, again, I love the list of things that people who brought, you know, recipes, dumplings, a doll, a rock. What I would do if I were to try to help imbue meaning in passing stories is I would gather people important to me who I wanted to share the stories of these objects and I would ask everybody to observe together the objects.
1:01:05
I would ask, "What does this object smell like?" Even if it's a photo, "You know, what does it feel like? Like, what is the texture? What is it made out of? What does it look like?" And I would actually go through the exercise of describing it as if it weren't in front of me. Because people see different things, even in a photo, which we think of as two-dimensional, but I remember looking through--I remember one holiday we were looking through
1:01:34
a family photo album and a photo garnered a story from one of your cousins about something that happened around the photo. It wasn't even in the photo. It was something that happened right before the photo. So spending time with the objects and as many people who were close to those objects, those will be like sparks. There will be sparks. And then I also am always, as an artist, myself as an artist, it always is important to me to tune in to how I feel so that
1:02:13
it's okay that, you know, holding a photo or a piece of fabric or an army blanket, it's okay if you feel things, whether it's shame or fear or sadness or happiness, that our feelings are part of the archive as well. And then I would also just--I would love even just the act of writing down questions. Like, I mean, obviously, in our family, you know, there's no more nisei, Jii-chan and Baa-chan have passed away so I can't ask them physically questions anymore.
1:02:56
But sometimes when I encounter an ancestral treasure, just the act of writing down a question helps me feel closer, helps me feel more connected. So those are some of the things that I do and that I wanted to encourage everyone to do with these objects that we've collected. Is there anything you wanna add before we open it up to Q&A, generally about, like, how people in their everyday lives can use archives to stoke that connection with ancestors?
1:03:31
David: And I think one of the keys is to realize it's the everyday things that have meaning. We tend to think that, no, it's only, you know, the festival moment or the wedding photo that has meaning. And it does, but it's the everyday meaning. That's why I wish there were a photograph of, you know, more of my grandparents working. I wanna--because their life was not going to a celebration or that formal family picture. It was working, and that's where I want--I wish there were more
1:04:03
photos or images or something of that, you know? And it's really, really hard to find, you know. It's sort of like a lot of the issei, first generation Japanese women, wore these bonnets, right? This certain type of bonnets. And you find that true of almost every immigrant group, whether it be Europe or Asia or anywhere else, or LatinX. They had their bonnets, especially the women, of what they wore and how they wore and the meaning behind the bonnet. And the key thing and I have one
1:04:36
in the back, I could bring it out. The key was these bonnets were part of that tradition of women partly to protect their face and in a certain way, be anonymous. Because there's power in one way of being anonymous out in the fields where it was a male-dominated world. But also, it's what were these bonnets made out of? And they were made out of rice sacks, right? Because rice back then came in these cloth bags, when of course you're gonna recycle it 'cause it was valuable.
1:05:10
So they made these white bonnets out of the white rice sacks that we would get and thus, and one of the stories someone told me, but the brim which was a little firmer, they made it out of the rice sacks that the Chinese used for their rice 'cause their sacks, for whatever reason, were stiffer and they needed that for the brim of the bonnet, as opposed to the rest was made out of that--so just that little, little thing like that, and you
1:05:38
do a little--you have the object and you start asking that. Someone tells you a little story like that, and you go, "Oh my God, this is so important," you know. So it's those everyday objects that I think tell a lot about families and people, and the larger story of context of how that take--took place. Nikiko: Oh, that's amazing, it's like a--it's a pan-ethnic, truly Asian American fashion, started in the farm fields. David: Exactly. Nikiko: I love it.
1:06:08
Well, I'm gonna bring Liladhar from the library on with us to help facilitate some question and answers from the audience. If you have questions and you wanna submit them, please do, using the Q&A function at the bottom of the Zoom screen, so go for it, Liladhar. Liladhar Pendse: So Mas and Nikiko, first of all, thank you so much because you took me back to 1992 when I came here and my grandmother mailed a little Taj Mahal from India as a nice tradition. Now, I'm Indian American, Asian American.
1:06:40
That time, I had no idea but now you have put meaning in my life so, as a librarian, I thank you from my heart. There are three interesting questions and I will read them while talking. So one of our colleagues, Janine Congenson asked the question: "I would love to ask, can the panelists speak to how working with these archives and stories can be part of intergenerational healing? How has it changed your relationship with each other, and your relationship to the past and the future?" Thank you.
1:07:15
That was the first question, so it's two-part question. And I can repeat it if needed. Yeah. David: You wanna start, Nikiko, on that? Nikiko: Sure, sure, I'll jump in. I love this question. Thank you. I have facilitated beyond just our family, I've facilitated some community gatherings where I asked people to bring objects, exactly what we did today. Bring an object that connected them with our community identity or community history. And I absolutely believe that just the act
1:07:50
of coming together, using artifacts as a springboard for story, it absolutely is healing. I know that, you know, community is complicated, right? Community is both where we find belonging and also sometimes where we experience betrayal, to be blunt, where we experience hurts. So, getting to listen to the things that people selected that give them meaning about our shared identity, that has been really beautiful, to warm--create a warm space of
1:08:30
understanding, even when in community, you know, communities are full of diverse people and will not always agree. I absolutely think passing on stories is a balm. It's a balm for the soul, and I think it's quite magical. Dad, do you wanna add? David: Well, I think part of a intergenerational element has to do with putting--getting stories, first of all, and again, we forget how much oral traditions, oral stories, were so important in all of our families, and we think now it's
1:09:06
only just written in--on and now it's social media, it's the pictures you post, it's the stories, the words behind it that are so important, and they get passed on, right? The most important thing is when a story is passed on to another generation, the challenge is to put that story, that artifact, in context, because I just keep always thinking of the Shiziko story about my lost aunt, you know. Why would they let her go and let her be institutionalized? And I have to--and I keep
1:09:39
reminding myself, "I wasn't there. Let me try to understand the context of what was going on," and this is the great part. You allow emotions to be part of the history. For some reason, historians were taught that history is based on facts, as if emotions don't matter. And that's bull, all right? You know, the emotions are at the forefront of it. And that's what's driving a lot and that's what helps me understand and put things in context, knowing the difference.
1:10:09
I like to think I would have reacted this way, but I also kind of respect why my parents, why my mom's family, you know, made those decisions. And it was a hard decision, I'm sure it was, you know. And it's that context that try to make you understand from one generation to another. 'Cause I'm sure, you know, Nikiko, you'll find stories that are back in my piles here when I pass away, you'll start going through this pile of stuff and say, "What the hell was Dad
1:10:37
thinking when he wrote that or when he did that," you know? And you'll--and that's where you have to put these stories back into context. David: So thank you for the question. Liladhar: There's a second question, because I don't want to miss any questions, so sorry. This from Christine Kebora, "While researching my grandfather's life, I often run into why--into the why question. Why did my grandfather enter the United States in San Francisco in 1903 as a single man with $80?
1:11:12
Why did he then work in Livermore, Denver, Arizona, Seattle, and finally in Portland? He never spoke about his life before Portland to his children, my mother. How do I start to tell his story from facts, resurface historical context that reflects his voice?" So the question of voice. David: My guess is, you know, it was great that he started with $80. Eighty dollars in 1903 probably was a lot of money. In fact, that's one way to begin. What was the value of--what could
1:11:52
you buy for $80 in 1903, all right? And it'll give you context of what he could do. My speculation is he worked because that--in those different places because that's what work was. And maybe you could find out that. What was the link? Was he working with--in the railroads somehow? You know, those cities, to me, don't quite match any, like, he wasn't an ag worker, was he? I don't know, Christine. But here's another thought, though. If you start looking at that, one of the questions is when he
1:12:26
came, where--what village community did he come from and there's a good chance that his "people" lived in Livermore, Denver, Arizona, and Seattle, because the reason why my dad's side, the Masumotos, we were all from Kumamoto, Japan, which is sort of like--it's like Fresno. It's the country part of the world. It was the country part of Japan. It was sort of where the "country bumpkins," quote, unquote, came from. And they settled in places in America where other Kumamoto people were, right?
1:13:04
That's immigration patterns, typically happened that way. So my guess is there is some connection to those cities that someone else was there that said, "Hey, come work here," or "Get a job here," or they went someplace like that. So--and you start to fill in those gaps. And here's the wild thing. Whatever you come up with is right, because it--because, you know, no one knows some of that dynamic and they won't know, you know, and that's where you start piecing in a few things together
1:13:35
and you may--and the key is once you start this journey, one thing you'll think--for example, once I discovered it was the Kumamoto connection, then my grandmother, she arrives in Seattle. So how did she go from Seattle down to Fresno? There were some Kumamoto people in Seattle that spoke her language 'cause these--it was a dialect that they spoke, and I'm sure got her on the right train to come down to my grandfather who was here in the Fresno area. And that was the linkage.
1:14:06
And you go, realize, "Oh my God, now I get it." It was these ethnic enclaves that drive these relationships. In a way, no different than how we have relationships today, you know, so. Nikiko: I know I'm biased, but, Dad, you're such a brilliant researcher, like, to go from that little tiny fact to, like, start asking these questions about historical context and what could you buy with $80. I just think that's, like, a brilliant place to start. And, Christine, I will just offer
1:14:35
from slightly different point of view. In--as yonsei, where, you know, I never got to meet my issei, great-grandparents, you know. I missed a lot of life with my Jii-chan and Baa-chan. I will just remind you that, you know, we are all cultural receivers and cultural authors, so we might not ever get to know exactly what your grandfather, like, the why of--behind your grandfather's exact life but we can get close and we can create meaning from what we know. And the meaning that we create is
1:15:13
as important as what we don't know. So I'll stop there so we can try to get to the last question before we wrap up. Liladhar: Perfect, so the next question is from Peter Korikoshi, "I wonder why we can't seem to know what questions we have for our parents until they are gone. How should people interpret events or situations in one's family's past that might be embarrassing or now seem, at very least, as politically incorrect?" Nikiko: Yeah, I kind of hear that as a two-part question.
1:15:54
You know, one about what do we do with the difficulty of-- how do we ask questions when often it's grief that triggers questions. And then the second part of that question of context, of things that as time has evolved, now are seen as politically incorrect or, you know, flat out inappropriate. And how do we understand that historically? Do you wanna start, Dad? David: Well, I think part of the idea is to start thinking about, again, I like--I use the word "context" a lot.
1:16:31
You know, is that embarrassing by today's standards or not, 'cause in this Shiziko book, one of the things I really, really struggled with was this relationship with people in the disabilities community. And my grand--this aunt, she had a mental disability. Of course, by today's standard, you'd start looking at it in a totally different way. But I have to say, when I started this book, I was and I continue to be, I need an education about those in the disability community.
1:17:00
So it's okay in a sense to not know and you start--and then ask the question of how do I understand the context of it, and then how do I fit in the context of it, you know? 'Cause when I started this book about "Secret Harvest," I have to say I did not think of--I changed how I am perceiving disability and then how is that changing now, even after I've finished the book? And there was an education involved and there continues to be. So I think that's when you start looking back.
1:17:33
You actually have to say, "Let me put that in context, now." And then realize at some point, yeah, maybe a family member was--did something really stupid, you know, and that's part of the history too, you know? And what does that mean? I mean, like, my grandmother, your great-grandmother, Nikiko, she was really mean to my dad at certain points, you know? It's because she was damaged by certain things, especially relocation. And I remember growing up when I was a kid,
1:18:06
there were times when she would bark. My grandmother was really quiet, but once in a while she'd get mad and bark at my dad, and my dad was really gentle, and he just sort of took it all in, and I said, "Oh my God, what is this about," you know? And then I realized it's--you have to start thinking of pieces and putting it in context. Nikiko: I'll just add, just real quickly before we wrap up. I--it's kind of in a similar vein. I think it's okay to hold our ancestors accountable.
1:18:36
I'm speaking specifically as a mixed race person. My mom is white, my dad's wife is white, and so it's okay to sit with the discomfort that our ancestors and people who came before us did horrible things and I actually think that practice is part of healing, being able to name that. And then the other thing is I like the exercise of using the objects as a way to get to stories. Because sometimes it's hard to ask people, "What do you want us to know when you're gone?"
1:19:10
I mean, it's hard to look death in the face like that. So, I think that there's workarounds that you can get to some of those questions. But I wanna be really mindful of everyone's time, so just in this last minute, we've talked about a lot. I'm super-grateful to the library, super-grateful to Lisa for choreographing this whole thing, all the staff. Dad, always grateful for you for giving me life and so much amazing history to inherit.
1:19:38
And in the last couple seconds, if you wanna add something to the chat, a word, a phrase, something that you're gonna take with you after today, I would love to read it as we depart. And I don't know, Lisa, if you wanna say anything at the end. Lisa: Oh, just thank you both so much for being in community with us, and thank you to everyone for joining us today. It's been such a wonderful discussion and we hope to continue having conversations like this, moving forward. Thank you so much.
1:20:08
David: Yeah, and thanks the library for being one of the host sponsors of this. I always had such fond memories of the library. Tell you the truth, I actually took a lot of naps in the library, but never underscore the power of naps because that's when a lot of imagination and energy, they come out of those naps. So I thank Berkeley and their library system for allowing me to find a place to safe--take a safe nap. So, thank you. Liladhar: Well, thank you so much. I will stop the recording.
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