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NEW DAWN RISING History and Summation of the Japan Town Collective
by Ray Tasaki
posted October 4, 2002
This article was published initially in the book, Legacy to Liberation. It is posted here with permission from the author.
I'm a third generation (Sansei) Japanese American. I experienced internment in a concentration camp during World War II at Heart Mountain, Wyoming, when over 120,000 Japanese Americans (two-thirds of whom were American citizens) were interned as "enemy aliens." After the Camps, I lived through the Eisenhower era, a time of sterile dominant white culture, racism and Cold War paranoia. I spent four years in the U.S. Marines, then twelve years on drugs. I was in gangs and spent time in county and state prisons during this time. But in 1969, while I was immersed in the clouds of psychedelic drugs, the winds and words of revolution, of struggle and change, reached me. I listened and got caught up in this movement to change U.S. society. I joined with others to start survival programs: drug rehab, legal aid, prison outreach, youth counseling, programs for the elderly and infirm. Then we tried to form a revolutionary core to lead and direct the struggles going on, but that core never materialized.
During this period, activists from all over the U.S. were traveling and connecting with one another: seeing, learning, making alliances and sharing. In San Francisco I got excited about the struggles led by the Black Panther Party, the Red Guard Party, Los Tres (a Chicano organization) and all the groups that were emerging in the Bay Area. I moved to the Bay Area in 1971 and starting working with people in San Francisco Chinatown, Japantown, in Berkeley and San Jose. It was at this time that I joined the Japan Town Collective. Here is my view of the history of that group and what happened.
New Dawn 2 - Forming J-Town Collective
