Ethnic Studies Library, UC Berkeley
February 12, 2021

Here is an interview I did with Professor Elaine H. Kim that’s been published as part of the Asian American Political Alliance Oral History Project by the Ethnic Studies Library, UC Berkeley. The AAPA Oral History Project initially includes eight interviews with former AAPA members and is a treasure trove of information on student radicalism and the founding of Berkeley’s Asian American Studies program.

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JEFFREY THOMAS LEONG

LEGACY IN THE MAKING: AN ARCHIVAL HISTORY OF THE 1960S ASIAN AMERICAN SOCIAL MOVEMENT

Interviewed by Elaine Kim and edited by Jeff Leong

The following is a transcript of an interview that took place in Oakland, California, at the home of Elaine Kim on Monday, October 3, 2016. The subject matter of this interview is Jeff’s experiences during the 1960s at UC Berkeley, particularly with the Third World Liberation Front Strike of 1969.

I’ll start by mentioning that I’ll be traveling to China to visit my parents’ villages. I discovered my father and mother’s villages are just a mile and a half apart; you can walk it in about ten minutes! I’ll be able to visit the house in which my mother was born.

My parents are both from Guangdong Province, which is in the southeast corner of China near Hong Kong in Guangdong Province. The name of my mother’s village is Sei Yah Village. They’re both from Zhongshan district area. For the early Chinese immigrants that was one of the larger areas for immigration. But actually more Chinese American immigrants of that generation were from Toishan. And then my father’s village is called Siu Yuan Village, and again it’s about a mile and a half from my mother’s village, both in the Zhongshan area.

She comes from a family of eight children, and they grew up in the Sacramento River Delta in the town of Locke, California. She was the only sibling that was actually born in China. So her one brother and seven sisters – or is it six sisters – I always get confused – they were all born here in the United States, they’re definitely Chinese American. But she is too, though she was born in China. These are homes that were built by the overseas Chinese. When they made money, they sent money back to build these houses, which were fairly well constructed and are still standing.

For my father’s village, I’m meeting with my father’s younger sister who’s in her eighties and apparently, there is a house there. I don’t know the condition of the house. We’re having some family discussions because my grandfather’s buried on the property, and the family has not been connected with the house and the village as much as we’d like.

And I’ve always felt a connection with my ancestral roots as a Chinese American – I think by seeing the village, even though it’s quite different than it was when my parents left a hundred years ago, that there’s a sense of being, to a certain extent, Wah Kue which is overseas Chinese. The Chinese have diasporic history throughout the world, mainly in Southeast Asia but to South America as well as North America. Part of that comes from that impulse to connect again with those ancestral roots.

But I think part is also trying to understand my own upbringing and what parts of me are traditional Chinese American, what parts are modern or contemporary and different, and to see how those parts relate within myself, which actually for me I think is a journey that ties back to my Berkeley days. Those same kinds of conflicts or impulses in terms of what I was given of my culture and what as a person growing up here in America what I gained as a young person, and now as an older person, has always been kind of a melding process, a kind of a merger of different parts of myself.

I think it will help me understand better who I was fifty years ago, but also who I am today. And I tie that in with my poetry too, because since I’ve graduated two years ago, I think my work is changing. I’m trying to be more truthful, write from a deeper place that talks about things that are my obsessions as a writer and as a person, themes within my own life that I feel are important to me. So I think that this will help me understand those things much better.

You know, when I look back at my time period at Berkeley, particularly the undergrad years, and through my working life with the San Francisco Health Department for twenty-seven years, through my retirement, which began just five years ago, I can see where certain things had been important to me. One of the things I think as a Chinese American male, what are the role models, ideals that make sense in terms of how men, as differentiated from women, are to be in society and the world, both from a traditional point of view but also from a nontraditional point of view, and then from a personal point of view.

What has always struck me and I think affected me deeply was the fact that in my mother’s family, there was one boy and seven girls. And that produced a dynamic within her family under traditional Chinese culture that was very negative. Because boys were valued more and so her family had to struggle, the girls in her family had to struggle throughout their whole lives dealing with the sexism of the traditional Chinese culture. And ironically, but also intentionally and consciously, my daughter was adopted from China. Part of what China had, which has now changed was the one-child policy in which many girls – ninety percent of the children adopted are girls – were given up by families in order to have a male child. That aspect of Chinese cultural tradition has affected not only my parents’ generation but also my child’s generation. And so it kind of bookends my life, it’s something that has affected me and something that I really want to explore. And it also translates into my relationships with women, in my marriage, and who I see myself to be in relationships with women.

In terms of my own personal history, in the relations between men and women, I feel… yeah, I was very close to my mother and because of that – her family as I mentioned earlier, having virtually all girls except for one boy – that I saw through her eyes what her experience was within a traditional kind of Chinese American family.

And then in my parents’ marriage, I think they had a good marriage. It was in some ways, even though they were both born in China, it was a progressive marriage. My dad used to like to call it, you know the things that were more traditional that he didn’t like, he would call it “China-fied.” And so he was more “modern.” Those were the terms that he used. And those were great terms because they perfectly expressed what he was thinking. But it was – there were contradictions. And despite his “modernity” in some ways, there was a side of him that was the traditional “man of the house” and my mother I think felt frustrated.

I don’t think that story’s uncommon particularly for that generation. But he never graduated from high school and he lived in China twice, so he came actually twice to the United States. He lived in the village for many years and that may account for some of his traditional perspectives. But she on the other hand came here as an infant and was raised totally in the United States. And she went to… it was a segregated school in California… through elementary school she went to the Oriental school, and then in high school, it was an integrated school, she went to Rio Vista High School. And she actually went to one year of community college. So when you look at her educational background, she had far more education than he did. She had certain skills and certain worlds were more open to her than him.

He was able to survive by going into business with other Chinese people, which was a traditional role, and he was very successful. And he probably – if he had the education – he probably could’ve become an attorney or whatever because he was extremely smart. But because of who they were and their opportunities and their cultures, I could see the discrepancies and the variances in their relationship between who had what skills, who could go out into the world and interact with the world, what kind of limits there were upon my mother, and even though they raised a family, I think very successfully, there were those kinds of internal tensions.

And you know I think an example would be when my sister graduated from high school three years after I did. She wanted to go to Berkeley and my parents basically said, “Well, you’re a girl, so you should go to San Jose State.” I’m not slighting San Jose State at all, but she wanted to go to Berkeley. So she felt, and I think she’s right, that this was a case of gender discrimination, that being the daughter and also being number two, that the impetus for sending her to Berkeley was not the same as for me.

But I was at Berkeley, and I had connections in EOP because this was right after the Third World Strike. And I said, you know, hell no this is not going to happen that way, so we got her into Berkeley. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Berkeley, and she got to live her dream as far as going to school at Berkeley. That was an example of trying to do an intervention to correct something that was not right, that’s based upon some gender attitudes and discrimination that I’ve always been aware of and tried to be a part of changing.

And when I got through law school, I didn’t particularly care for the adversarial aspect of the law, so I went into public health which I feel is much more – well it’s obviously less adversarial, but it’s also more humanistic and probably less to a certain extent, less gender focused than law has been. Although the law is mixed in terms of gender, it tends to be conducive to more aggressive kinds of approaches to be successful. I think that accounts for my career change, the things that I saw.

In terms of my present life, I was married once before, and now I’m happily married with my present wife. We’ve been together for eighteen years. I think it’s been a learning experience in terms of how those perspectives translate into my personal relationships in terms of marriage, and now being the father of a daughter. A daughter who frankly is facing some of the same issues that my mother faced, that my sister faced, and now in a different role as a father and a co-parent with my wife, I’m giving her my wisdom and support to try to deal with those kinds of things.

These are fourteen-year-olds and they’re in the first year of high school and they’re, you know, dissing girls. And with some of the worst aspects of rap culture that’s popular with teens nowadays, there’s a lot of bad stuff out there. And my daughter asks her mother and I, “What’s this about? You know, why, why do they keep putting us down? Why are boys such idiots?”

We do our best to try to answer those questions in regards to cultures of all different types, whether they’re the traditional American cultures or newer American cultures like immigrant cultures, that there’s a lot of unequal beliefs in terms of gender relationships.

Now in terms of my relationships to the world as a male, to the larger world, you know I can talk a little bit about that. I was thinking about how I came to Berkeley and what it was like when I started being involved with AAPA and the Third World Strike. I think what I realized is that as a young man – I was a junior and nineteen years old when the Third World Strike started – the time in my life of my transition from adolescence into adulthood. There was a war going on, the Vietnam War. And I elected not to take a student deferment, so I was “1A” for the draft.

My journey was very complicated because I came from a school background that had a large population of students of color, both African American and Latino. And with this background I left high school and got into Berkeley. I felt that the war in Vietnam was being unfairly soldiered by working class and people of color, and that I did not feel it was fair from a class perspective to take a student deferment. So that’s why I elected not to do so.

My first impulse was to become a “conscientious objector,” and I think that tied into my own personal background as a Chinese American where I was taught to defend myself but not to be the aggressor. It was more of a peaceful approach to life. But it also had to do with racism, an approach I feel Chinese Americans and Asian Americans adopted in order to survive, that rather to fight injustice directly, instead to survive in one’s persistence to overcome obstacles. That was kind of my approach when I started Berkeley.

I was you know, not quite full-blown, but connected with the hippie movement, singing in coffee houses. And like other people in the counter-culture, love was supposed to be the idea. You know “Make Love Not War.” And so I applied to be a conscientious objector and had the help of my high school English teacher who was white and not Asian. In fact, he was a gun enthusiast and an outdoorsman, so by no means was he an anti-war person. He was the grandson of a Berkeley professor (who had discovered Ishi, the last Yahi Indian) over in the Anthropology Department. He had a tradition of being socially minded but not personally political. But he defended me, helped me in every way, to try to achieve my conscientious objector status.

I firmly believed that the Vietnam War was not only unjust in terms of being an unpopular war in Southeast Asia, but that war itself was not the way I chose to resolve conflict. So I was at UC Berkeley, I dropped out of school for a quarter – in those days, they had quarters – and sort of played in coffee houses. Finally, I think the Asian side of myself and my family caught up with me, so I went back to school in the fall of 1968.

That was a very tumultuous Fall. As you know, there were two assassinations that took place: Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. There were riots going on. And then the San Francisco State Third World Strike started during that same time period. So I was “1A” for the draft as I mentioned, and I got my pre-induction physical notice. I went down to the induction center in downtown Oakland and was prepared to refuse induction with the consequence of being charged and going to jail.

As a conscientious objector, that was my plan of action. Then I happened to meet John Chang and some people in the Asian American Political Alliance on campus at Berkeley. I believe there was some kind of a draft resistance program meeting. John told me about AAPA and said we’re very interested in anti-war activities and so on. He invited me, and I did go to a meeting before I had my physical and that’s when I met Vicci Wong and some other people. Of course they were all in support of me, my position about the war and the draft. However, each of us that were drafted had to go down, take the physical and deal with it on an individual basis, and so I did.

Fortunately, my right eye’s vision was barely over the limit to be inducted into the military. So they gave me what they called the “1Y” deferment, which was – they weren’t giving any “4F” deferments at that time – equivalent to exemption from serving because of my eyesight. That was a life-changer because that saved me a path of going to prison, and I would’ve had a very different life if I experienced that.

But it also meant that I wasn’t inducted into the military and didn’t have to go overseas and see action in the war. I recently read a book which was very impactful for me by the author Karl Marlantes, and it’s been out for four or five years. He was a Vietnam War vet, and he talked about what it’s like to go to war. After I read that book, I realized certain things about my experience with AAPA and with the Third World Strike.

What happened was that we in AAPA and other folks identified the lack of historical accuracy in the courses we were taking, how the Japanese internment was not even in the history books, how discrimination against Asian Americans, Chinese Americans, Filipino Americans also was not in the history books. So we made it a high priority on our agenda to make changes within university and high school curriculum to include courses that covered those subjects.

The first thing we did was to create an experimental class that started in January of 1969, which I believe was called “Asian American History.” And Alan Fong and myself who were members of AAPA wrote the prospectus for that course. We mapped out the entire ten weeks and all the different stuff that would be discussed each week. Plus I think some of the books that would be used. And that course got started. We got it through the paperwork and all the channels, so it was offered in January. That was one of the things we did.

But corollary to that was the idea that started at San Francisco State for a Third World College. Not only to have one class or two classes here and there, but that there should be a whole program devoted to history that was outside of the mainstream textbooks at that time. And I think the idea of self-determination, that these courses not be within the History Department, within the English Department, was very strong, that they should be co-located together, so that there’s some sharing of ideas, a multi-disciplinary approach as opposed to all of the different separate departments at Berkeley.

That was key, but also that Asian American students and faculty would be defining the vision for these classes, this curriculum, which eventually would end up with a major. And people being able to study it within an institutional setting and have the institution itself acknowledge that this is a valid course of study. I actually graduated with a major in Asian American Studies, but it was an individual major, in 1970. I think Peter Horikoshi and myself were some of the early Asian American Studies graduates, but we did it as individual majors, not within a program. So that was what we started.

But when the San Francisco State folks met resistance by the administration to provide the curriculum that they wanted, we developed a parallel kind of program where we had a list of specific demands that we wanted from the University, that ranged from a Third World College to also something as concrete as EOP positions, work study positions. And, of all – I think it was really important that we not only had vision but we made it practical. Well, let me go back to the days when I read The Little Red Book, Mao talked about the idea of “theory and practice.”

Through the years many people got into theory, or many people got into practice, but the idea of merging the two in some ways has always been a challenge, is always a challenge. And no matter what I think people do. But I think the Third World Strike to me was an example of that merger. It was both theory and practice. The theory and vision was the Third World College. But it was also the practice of us starting the experimental class, and beyond, immediately after the strike ended, classes started within months of the ending of the strike.

I think that’s totally remarkable in terms of how frustrating it can be to work many years thinking about an ideal and goal and not being able to realize that, down to our efforts where within a matter of months, we began to implement the dream, so to speak. And it was a constant process of course because the dream kept changing and the implementation kept changing, as it should to address the reality of the situation. But I think, I think that’s just really remarkable as to what was accomplished at that time despite individuals’ frustrations. I kind of see that as the bigger picture in the larger accomplishments of the group.

For me personally the strike was a life-changer on many different levels. One, I was able to gain validation and a deeper understanding of who I am as an Asian American person, a Chinese person living in America, and the context for that and the challenges, and what I could do for that. To be more specific – for example, in terms of helping to sponsor and develop Asian American Studies classes, that I recognized that this is missing from the curriculum, and it should be there not only for Asians but for all students. And it was my responsibility and my role to push that agenda forward, and that I have that opportunity because that was my culture.

There were a lot of people at that time period who were not wanting to rock the boat, not wanting to be too radical, etc. But my parents supported me, and I think that was very empowering to have parents stand by you even though you’re saying things that they would never say themselves, or perhaps not even totally believe themselves, but with sort of an Asian tradition to be supportive of your children. I know family members who disowned their children so that’s not a universal experience, but I feel lucky that that was my personal experience.

The other piece of it is when the strike started at Berkeley, because the African American Student Union and the others felt that the university was not responding to the demands that were made which were very concrete. That the vote was to go on strike like the students in San Francisco. And I actually in my life now have participated in a couple strikes, as a professional as well as in those days. A strike is in itself a big commitment, a personal commitment. You’re sacrificing your job, scholarships, and for students, their status at the university. So those are big things to put on the line when you’re nineteen years old. But that’s why, you know, that’s why the military traditionally has and will always pick young people to fight the wars, because it’s the young people who have the willingness and the ideals to commit themselves bodily, to risk bodily harm for things that they believe in.

And even though we did not go to war in the sense of armed conflict, it was a war of wills, it was a war against the system that existed before. And in that sense, it was a very real kind of conflict. And for me personally when I look back, one of the things that happened during that time period, the influence of the Vietnam War upon the Civil Rights Movement was a heightened militancy among civil rights advocates including the Black Muslim movement, to Malcolm X and ultimately the Black Panthers. One of the AAPA members was Richard Aoki, who was actually not only a member of the Black Panthers but was said to have provided weapons to the Black Panthers. But the fact is he also provided weapons to AAPA.

And so what happened for me as an individual was kind of a crisis. Because I had mentioned I was involved as a conscientious objector and coming from a peaceful kind of Asian background, and being confronted not just with a military kind of situation, but to be on a picket line and telling people you can’t cross this picket line, Don’t cross this picket line, and then physically having to stand your ground. I was literally knocked down by people who were trying to cross the picket line. Then being arrested and put in jail and so on. It made the reality of who has power in this country very clear on a personal level. And it raised the bar for myself in terms of how do I respond as a nineteen-year-old young man to what’s happening in the world.

I had lost a couple of high school friends in Vietnam who I knew had been killed there, and I think I’ve related this story of the first press conference when I volunteered and was selected to be the Asian representative at the press conference. And when I – I think I was towards the end of the conference and charged with reading the demands, after the African American student and the Chicano student gave some other remarks.

What I was thinking about was the people that I knew, the friends that I knew, who had been killed in Vietnam. Also the injustices that happened to my own family, through the years of not being shown houses to buy because of Chinese could not move into certain neighborhoods, etc., etc. Those were the very real kind of personal thoughts that fueled not only my anger and rage, but also gave me strength to be able to represent the group, the student group, and speak in a public forum about what I believed in.

So that was kind of like a first step, but then in the – it was a long strike. I mean, it was – what was it, like nine or ten weeks? It was a very long period. And so in the next nine to ten weeks, I – it, you know, it was, it was an education in terms of what it means to stand up for what you believe in. I mean the sort of archetypal image would be of the warrior and what it means to be a warrior and not to be sexist. It was, you know – it’s the warrior whether you’re male or female. It’s standing up for what you believe in, because we were both men and women in AAPA, and we all together, you know, spoke together, worked together for that common cause.

That’s not to say that there weren’t differences and sexism within the ranks, but overall it was an effort of speaking out. I think for me that translated not only to being vocal but being physical, being able to walk a picket line. I mean I’m not one who easily swears or uses what they call vulgar language. But when we were in the picket lines, people were shouting some angry things at the police, and the county sheriffs, and so on. And so that was an educational experience for me.

And I think what I’m learning is that I don’t know if there is an answer or if I have an answer, but the experience of being in that mode of seeing injustice and speaking out against it, is a warrior mode and is something that I developed during that period in myself, but I’ve seen my colleagues and comrades also develop that. I think it’s something that’s lasted and continues for me today. And even though I’m a different person, I’m a writer and a poet and my obsessions of trying to write about things that have not been said, or to say it in a way that’s not been done, because I feel it’s important to do so.

I think the idea of weapons and guns was not a big part of the Third World Strike. The strike was really focused on the picket lines, disruption of normal daily activities, so that the campus would cease to operate as usual which would force the administration to concede to the demands and give us the Third World College and the EOP positions, etc., etc. So that was really the focus of the Third World Strike. I think my own personal journey in terms of what it means to be a warrior, what it means to stand up for what you believe in, the Third World Strike was a big part of that and it had nothing to do with guns per se.

But you know I think the idea of violence itself was really everywhere at that time period, and it wasn’t just the Black Panthers. I mean, heck, the U.S. was killing people every day in Southeast Asia, not only Vietnamese people, but their own American sons, sons that I knew personally from my high school. There was violence everywhere. Violence was not created by, you know, radical Black Muslims or whatever. It was created by the overall society. And in fact, Richard Aoki was in the military, he learned how to use weapons in the U.S. Army. He didn’t – he was not self-taught. And so that’s the sort of milieu that I as a young man, and young women too, grew up in.

Either you were going to go to Vietnam and kill somebody or be killed, or you’re going to have to do something different. And the something different could be, you know, going to Canada, going to get a student deferment, going to prison. Those were your options. And it wasn’t theoretical. It was real. If you didn’t make a choice, conscious choice, then you backed into whatever would happen, and it may very well be your own death. I mean, it was – that was the kind of choice – they were life and death situations.

And for young women who were not being drafted at that time, these were their brothers. And for the parents, these were their sons. So yeah, you know, it affected not just one group of people in society, it affected everyone in society. I think that’s the climate of violence that I feel existed at that time, and that’s really in the background of the Third World Strike, that you know, it may have been shocking that police on horses at San Francisco State would beat up protestors. It may have been shocking that the so-called “Blue Meanies,” Alameda County Sheriffs would beat people up at Berkeley campus, but we felt that this is the reality of the ghetto. This is the reality of the community. People – the police forces are beating people all the time. Our soldiers are in Vietnam being killed or killing as part of this war.

To a certain extent, it made Berkeley, it took Berkeley out of the ivory tower and brought it to the streets, and I think that was part of what we were trying to do. Hey, this is our reality, you know? And we wanted a piece of your reality in terms of the academics teaching true history, but we want it our way. We don’t want it your way, where you know either by erasure, by leaving things out, or by theorizing, melting pots and blah blah blah that you’re covering things up.

So we wanted the real truth. We saw what the truth was, and we wanted to define that. And it was hard because I think I mentioned that even during the Third World Strike, when the strike escalated and finally Governor Reagan got P.O.’d and went over the edge and called National Guard on campus, you have to remember that it was just a few months later that the National Guard in Ohio shot dead four students. So it was not just theory. It was real.

The Asian American students and all the other students – had to decide what the “strike tactic” would be for the following day, which would be either to march in front of the National Guard to demonstrate, you know sort of our resolve in terms of being strong for the strike, or to be less confrontational.

We had a discussion that lasted the entire evening, until about, I think, just hours before the actual demonstration would take place. For me personally I was in favor of a more confrontational tactic. And my reputation was as one of the hard-, quote-unquote, what Richard Aoki used to call one of the “hardliners.” And so that was my approach – and I can say that the people arguing me down, Floyd Huen and others, were right and I was wrong. And I’ll say that now, because I don’t think that having blood shed on the Berkeley campus would’ve helped the Third World Strike, would’ve helped us get a Third World College and an Asian American Studies Department. And in fact we got those things, without any blood shed.

Now maybe I’m being too hard on myself, but I think that’s a privilege of surviving to a certain age and being able to look at what you’ve done in the past. But at the same time I don’t have any regrets, because we were in the midst of a culture of violence. And for me to feel the way I did about confronting the forces that be, I was no better or worse than Governor Ronald Reagan who eventually became President. That you know, he was sick and tired of protestors at Berkeley, and he sent the National Guard knowing that somebody could die. I mean you don’t send the National Guard there thinking it’s all going to be peaceful, blah blah blah. He was pushing the ante up.

And so that was the atmosphere that I as a nineteen year old had to face. And you know at nineteen, you don’t want to be put in a position of asking others to sacrifice their lives. I hope I’m not being overly dramatic, but I think recently reading that book about Vietnam, that’s exactly what other nineteen year olds were doing. They were – you know, they were, the platoon leaders, very young men who were asking their soldiers that they were responsible for, to actually be put in harm’s way.

So that was that culture of that time. I don’t think we were any different except we didn’t have guns. We were probably a little bit more naive because we didn’t go through boot camp. But you know the soldiers in Vietnam, they were naive, too. I mean, they didn’t expect what they saw until they got there. I think it was a growing up experience. It was a unique time period. It’s not quite the same, but I imagine there are similarities with growing up in a war zone. Whether you’re in Iraq today or in Afghanistan that you’re – yes, you’re a child, a teen, an adolescent, eventually a young person, you get married, etc., you live your life, but around you is life and death in a different way than we as Americans have experienced it.

That’s as real in some ways today as it was, you know, fifty years ago. So as an older person, I realize that the things that we’ve done are important and essential in the time period that we lived certain parts of our life, but those things continue, and the things that we do now have to continue because nothing has really changed.

 

To view the interview video online, click here.

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