By Jason Williams
Record Staff Writer
Published Monday, February 2, 2004
The history of Stockton is a history of several cultures interacting over time -- from American Indians who settled along the city's river banks to the migrant laborers who built the region's agricultural empire.
For many, their personal histories and journeys are passed down from generations through storytelling, with their successes kept close to home and rarely recorded.
But Robert Benedetti, a political-science professor at University of the Pacific and executive director of the university's Jacoby Center, is working to change that. He and others are part of a project to record nine ethnic groups as they share three generations of coming-of-age history with each other.
It's called Stockton Stories.
One story is of Kathryn Komure, 81, who is of Japanese ancestry and has lived in Stockton all her life.
" I didn't think I had anything to say," said Komure, who was placed in an Arizona internment camp during World War II.
" My life was mostly working out in the fields.... There was not machinery like there is today. My father pulled the plow, and I had to whip the horse to get it going," she said.
The interviewers also sought stories from her son Dean Komure, who works in commercial farming, and her granddaughter Roxanne Komure, a senior at the University of California, Davis.
" They had a good interviewer," she said. "I never told my stories before, but it came out."
The researchers are using an $80,000 grant from the California Council for the Humanities for the project, "When We Were Young: The Experience of Stocktonians Across Three Generations."
The interview sessions are recorded on audio tape instead of videotape. About 15 to 20 tapes have been completed so far.
" Audiotape people are candid and relaxed," Benedetti said. "With videotape, it's another person in the room. It makes the person giving the stories more on edge. We want them relaxed and on their own time."
Students in a Pacific writing course will be assigned to write five to seven pages of narratives of each recorded story. Photos are being taken by two local free-lance photographers.
Those interviewed will receive a final edit of their story, and the public should get its look of them by July. The idea is to present the project as set of stories to city officials, the school system and the general public, Benedetti said.
" It's important in a couple of ways," said the 61-year-old San Francisco native who earned his doctorate degree in political science from the University of Pennsylvania.
" The people who participate in it are enthusiastic and are learning about groups who are different," he said. " We have African-Americans who are interviewing Hmongs and Italians who are interviewing Chinese," he said. Participants in the project are of American Indian, black, Chinese, Italian, Japanese, Filipino, Mexican-American, Cambodian and Hmong ethnicities.
Those of Japanese, Italian and Filipino ancestry arrived in Stockton in large numbers during the turn of the 20th century, while other ethnic groups began arriving in the 1950s, he said.
Project organizers realize there are many other ethnic groups that make up Stockton's diversity, and future phases of the oral history project may include those of Sikh, Portuguese, Pakistani, Greek, Korean, Scandinavian, Dutch, German, Eastern European, Jewish, Laotian and Vietnamese ancestry. Dust Bowl refugees -- those people who came to California from Texas and Oklahoma during the Great Depression -- also may be included. Benedetti grew up in California and in 1960 flew to the East Coast to attend Amherst College. That event, he said, was among the turning points into adulthood.
It's that theme that has become the project's focal point: when those interviewed considered themselves to be adults and the life lessons they learned.
After college in 1964, Benedetti considered becoming an Episcopalian priest but believed it would be more interesting to be a layman. He felt more on his own after he paid for his graduate education, but it was during the death of his father in 1989 when he truly felt like an adult.
" I felt I had to take leadership in the family," he said. "I didn't have him to rely on.... Something new was expected of me," said Benedetti, the oldest of three children who teaches three courses at Pacific each year. Katy Fick, 21, of Oakland, a social-science and pre-law undergraduate senior, praised Benedetti's state government and politics class. Instead of learning about how the California Constitution was created, she said her class rewrote the document.
" He's completely unconventional and energetic," said Fick, who has worked with Benedetti on two other projects. To reach reporter Jason Williams, phone (209) 546-8276 or e-mail jwilliam@recordnet.com
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