The interview is recorded on CD, added to the StoryCorps Archives (Library of Congress American Folklore Center), and made part of a collection of oral histories. There are two permanent StoryBooths in New York City and a traveling setup that moves from city to city, including a one-week stay in Madison. That's a long-way story of my finding out that it ain't too bad to be interviewed, especially if the interviewer is someone who knows you.
      Knowing that it ain't too bad to spout off about myself, I went to find out more about Memoirs Made Easy by author Ruby Walton of Janesville. She gave a talk about autobiographical writing and how to go about it. The session was at the Madison Senior Center. By the way, people of all ages are welcome at senior centers to participate in the various offerings and to volunteer for one thing or another, as Melba and Victor Jesudason and others do.
      Gerda Wald is a retired high school librarian, as is my wife, Atsuko. Gerda and Atsuko have known each other for years and share many fun and not-so-fun memories of their library media center experiences. Max Wald and I, as social workers in the Wisconsin Division for Children and Youth, worked together to develop and establish the statewide mandatory child-abuse reporting system. The Walds and Kusudas still get together every so often to keep up with stories of our children and grandchildren and how great they all are. Max is the oldest one of us, being in his 90s, but he still goes with Gerda to visit their son, daughter-in-law, and granddaughter in Massachusetts.
      My early days were spent in Los Angeles, first in the downtown area, then in the so-called Uptown district, and then back to the downtown area. All the time, we were poor, but we three children didn't know it. Most of the people we knew were in the same financial condition. It didn't matter whether they were Asian, African American, White, or Hispanic. We didn' t know any Native Americans. Later, when I became a student at the Los Angeles High School, I got to know a few White Americans who came from rich families.
      When I was in elementary school, and later in junior high school, a couple of Nisei (Japanese American) friends and I got part-time jobs. We actually earned something for doing what we considered fun. One job was to deliver advertising for a place that did hair-dressing and other cosmetic work for women (with money, of course). Each flyer we distributed, by handing out to ladies who looked rich or by placing on windshields of automobiles, had a code number. When patrons returned flyers to get a discount on services, like hair-styling, hair-drying, or manicure, we individually got credit. Our pay depended on the number of flyers with our code numbers.
      Actually, we didn't get much  money, but it was enough for candy or movie money. Candy cost one to five cents. Movies cost 10 cents. We had fun. We went all over Uptown Los Angeles and even door-to-door in the Beverly Hills District.
      When delivering the beauty-shop flyers began paying less and less, I and my friends, Frank and Jim, suspected that the owner was ripping us off by not giving us credit for the business we knew we had been bringing in. So we quit. Then we went to a local theater, the Victoria, and got jobs passing out handbills advertising coming attractions. Our pay was one or two passes, depending on the number of handbills we distributed and the size of the area covered. Once in a while, we magnanimously gave our passes to our younger sisters: Frank and Jim to Yukie; I to Helen. We had fun, and the "B" movies were, to us, great.
      Every so often, we even went to soup lines (this was during the Great Depression) sponsored by Aimee Semple McPherson or Father Devine. After hearing a short religious talk, we'd join the line of mostly men (some of whom might have been homeless, unemployed, and/or alcoholic) to get a bowl of some kind of soup and some bread. We thought it was great, especially when we had wandered a long way from home. Our parents never knew about such exploits; they would have been chagrined, so we never told them. That was part of the fun we had. We decided without discussion that we wouldn't lie, but we wouldn't tell everything either. That's the way kids were then, and that's the way kids are now. Some things change; some don't.
      Lots of things happened during the 1930s, and we grew up learning more than we even knew. We learned a lot in classes, but we learned a lot outside of school as well. Being poor was not too bad for kids, but it wasn?t much fun cutting out cardboard to make insoles for our shoes to make them last longer. Hand-me-down clothes were OK because almost everybody had the same experience. Getting ready for the first day of school was hard. We knew that our parents couldn't really afford the start-up costs of supplies and clothes. Somehow or the other, though, they always came through. Most of us just accepted it. We didn't truly know how hard it was on our parents. But that's what being a child is. Years later, some of us stumbled onto the fact that our parents had protected us much more than we realized. They had given us so much more than we appreciated. We owe a lot to so many, some of whom we'll never know. That almost forces us to give time, effort, and money to others, so that they can give to others as well.
      That's the essence of advocacy and action. The need is there. So do something! Don't just sit there and read!
 
Are memories to keep or to tell?
By Paul Kusuda
     Gerda and Max Wald, decades-long Madison friends, often urged me to write about myself and my family. I said, "No; who'd be interested? Also, I don't especially like to talk about me." Then, Heidi Pascual (whom we all know as the editor of Asian Wisconzine, or 'Wiz' as she calls it) and Jonathan Gramling (longtime editor of The Madison Times and winner of many honors for his activities, including media work) suggested that I participate in the StoryCorps, a "national project to instruct and inspire people to record one another's stories in sound."
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