Mo Nishida was born in the Crenshaw area of Los Angeles in 1937. He was sent to the Amache Japanese-American Internment Camp in Colorado with his family age six through nine. He speaks about living in the Seminary Methodist church which acted as a refugee camp when his family returned to Los Angeles. He made it to the National Championship for Judo and speaks about running a food co op in Chinatown, Los Angeles in the 1960s.
The conversation took place during a larger umbrella project called,Talk Story Talk Place, that I helped host at Los Angeles Contemporary Archive (LACA). The project was to allow for intergenerational conversations between Chinatown residents. Being that I am not Chinese or Chinese American, but similarly to Mo - am a rent payer in Chinatown and interested in activism in Chinatown, I was negotiating this during the conversation.
- Hailey Loman, May 20, 2019
I felt particularly torn during the conversation on how much to share during the interview. On one hand we had a lot of overlapping topics: such as my immigrant Eastern European Jewish and in Los Angeles family's timeline. This overlapped with some of his shared accounts. In terms of the interview I worried about taking up his space with sharing which would transform the conversation. While this can often be something successful I also wanted to give him an uninterrupted moment to speak. Balancing withholding relevant information versus hijacking a conversation was something I was constantly considering in the interview with Mo Nishida.
- Hailey Loman, May 20, 2019