Episode Forty-Eight: The Interview-Joel Nakamura

Joel has had experiences that some (including me!) would covet. Find out what (and who!) he's seen in the woods in this longer episode, and why those experiences have changed him. For lovers and speculators of mysteries in our great forests.

Transcript

They met,

You know,

They both had to be in camps as teenagers in the concentration camps.

And then my dad volunteered to be on the 442nd,

Which was a battle battalion for the U.

S.

Army made up of Japanese Americans.

And so they were the highest decorated battalion ever in U.

S.

Army history.

And so what they did was,

You know,

They unleashed these angry Japanese men on the poor Italians.

They sent them on every suicide mission,

Is what they did,

And they succeeded.

I guess,

First and foremost,

I'm an artist.

And I only I do not only fine art for myself,

But I'm a commercial artist,

Illustrator.

So people call me for magazines and stuff and corporate things.

So I do assignment work,

Which I find very challenging and rewarding,

Because I never know what I'm going to be painting about.

And it gives me an opportunity to learn about that subject and try to figure out how am I going to solve this problem and still be the artist I want to be.

I kind of like doing both.

I've done that for over 30 years now.

Next I'm a husband,

You know,

So I've been married for 31 years.

And I'm a father.

I have a daughter and a son.

I'm a loyal friend.

And I'm a teacher.

And so teaching is something that I've always enjoyed doing,

To give back to not only people coming up in artwork at different ages,

But I also teach martial art Aikido,

Which to me is kind of a almost a spiritual experience for me at the same time.

I'm a dog owner,

And so I'm kind of a sheepdog myself.

I'm protective and things like that.

So I guess everybody says,

You know,

You identify with one dog species,

You know,

And so I'm a sheepdog.

My parents were art educators,

And so I always had art supplies around all the time.

It was either that or I was going to play in a progressive rock and roll band,

You know.

But then the kind of music I liked kind of went out of style and out of favor.

And I decided that,

You know,

Art is something I always enjoy doing.

My parents are very encouraging of it.

My uncle was a card designer.

And so he designed the split window coupe Corvette and the Cobra Boss 302 and a bunch of really cool muscle cars.

And so when I was in high school,

I was in my room,

You know,

Tripping out with all these record covers around me because record covers were big back then.

And I really love the artwork of Yes.

And he goes,

You know,

There are people that do that for a living and they're called illustrators.

And then this light went on in my head and went,

Ooh,

Really?

And so he goes,

Yeah,

This is how you do it.

You know,

You go to this art school and you clean up your act and,

You know,

You've got to get it together.

And so that's what I did.

And then the Salt Lake City Games,

I think was in 2002,

Were here in the United States.

I did the program for the opening and closing ceremonies art for that.

And so that was a great honor to be able to be featured like that and then reproduced,

You know,

Beautifully and,

You know,

Have it seen by the world,

You know.

So that was probably the biggest honor that I could have as far as a project.

I grew up in Whittier,

California,

The hometown of Richard Milhouse Nixon.

Right after his resignation,

Like all the Nixon postcards like disappeared out of drug stores and stuff.

We were going to have a street,

They were going to rename it Nixon Avenue.

And then that got nixed,

You know.

It was kind of our claim to shame.

I grew up mainly Christian and we'd go to church and Sunday school and stuff.

And I learned about all these different stories.

And my parents were both in concentration camps,

You know,

World War II.

And so they wanted us to emulate and be American,

You know,

And not speak Japanese and,

You know,

Do too many things that would alienate us because we were,

That was,

You know,

One of very few Asian people in Whittier at the time.

Now there are many,

You know,

I had to like fight every Pearl Harbor day and stuff,

You know,

So it was bad enough already,

But not anything like the prejudice my parents had to face.

Well,

They met,

You know,

They both had to be in camps as teenagers in the concentration camps.

And then my dad volunteered to be in the 442nd,

Which was a battle battalion for the U.

S.

Army made up of Japanese Americans.

And so they were the highest decorated battalion ever in U.

S.

Army history.

And so what they did was,

You know,

They unleashed these angry Japanese men on the poor Italians.

They sent them on every suicide mission is what they did.

And they succeeded.

My dad was never bitter.

He was never prejudiced about any of that that happened.

He just wanted us to know that it did happen and it could happen again.

My dad,

He's always interviewed about it.

His name is Yoshio Nakamura.

And he's still alive.

He's 96.

And he still drives.

We went to every museum show there was in L.

A.

And,

You know,

I saw things like the Broadway musical,

Hair,

When I was a kid.

My mom,

Like,

Tried to cover my eyes when,

Like,

They came out from under this tent,

Nude.

You know,

I had a very interesting upbringing.

You know,

I didn't get to have any of the cool new shoes or toys and all that stuff.

But we had lots of weird stuff around that I could make my own toys,

You know.

So I think the lack of commercialism in my family made me extremely creative.

Some of my friends would say,

Oh,

You make the best stuff out of complete crap.

Do you think that your parents felt they had to be Christian to assimilate into American society?

Maybe.

You know,

I don't know.

I can't answer that for them.

But you know,

They,

They,

You know,

Embrace the fundamental values,

Which if you look religions all over the world,

Those same fundamental values are the same.

They'll get attached to different dogmas.

Again,

My group's better than your group,

You know,

Even though we're supposed to be listening to the same message.

I think it was a good value system to grow up with.

I wouldn't consider myself a religious person,

But I have a tremendous knowledge about Christianity and Judaism and different religions,

Muslim,

And understand how they are similar.

They have more similarities than I think differences.

I really had fun going to like church camp and stuff as a kid.

And I got to be around other people that were other races than myself.

And so,

You know,

Really made good friends with these people.

So it helped expose me to other people that I wouldn't have had exposure to in my own city.

It taught me a lot.

Well,

Since you like Sasquatch,

I'll tell you about two sightings I had and none of them,

Not here,

But the first one I was in high school in California and Yosemite of all places,

Very well traveled.

And there's a second waterfall called Nevada Falls.

And so it's a very well hiked trail.

And I was having lunch on a rock and I saw something large and dark sticking up out of the top of the bushes,

Moving parallel along.

But I thought,

What is that?

So I started going down there and it just went boom,

It was gone.

And when I got down there,

The bushes were like way over my head.

So I thought that had to be Sasquatch.

You know,

There's no other explanation for what it was.

I mean,

Bears can't leap up onto a ledge,

You know,

As far as I know.

And that bear,

A black bear that lives in the area wouldn't walk upright for that far,

You know.

That's the only thing that could be with the Sasquatch.

And then my second sighting was in Oklahoma of all places.

So I was going to,

I was teaching a workshop at Quartz Mountain for the Oklahoma Arts Institute.

And it's a really great thing they do.

They have this teaching workshops,

You know,

For free for Oklahoma art teachers.

And so they bring in people to give them ideas on projects they could do with their students.

And they work so hard,

You know,

They're so dedicated,

All these art teachers.

And so I'm driving up,

So it wasn't really a mountain,

Not like here,

You know,

Quartz Mountain was like the hill or something,

Driving up the road and some deer come out in front of my car.

So I stopped the car and there's this big lumbering shape coming after them.

And I turn around and look and the thing was like the size of a refrigerator,

Double dark shape.

And so I tried to get out of the car and take a picture and it just melted away into the shadows and was gone.

So that was pretty close.

And I thought,

Okay,

That had to be Sasquatch.

It's kind of like when you see something that's inexplicable,

How does your mind,

How can you figure it out?

Well,

You want to go,

Okay,

That was something else.

Or,

You know,

You try to justify that.

You didn't see what you saw,

But I know what I saw both times and there wasn't any other plausible explanation than Sasquatch.

In both cases,

Because the size of the animal,

It was amazing.

You know,

I don't tell many people about that because most people think I'm some kind of clack or the like.

I'm so curious,

You know,

Because I have thought long and hard about this Sasquatch phenomena and people seeing,

You know,

Something that they haven't seen before in their life or something that they can't readily identify or categorize.

I don't know if you heard what happened in Taos a few years ago with the two hunters.

It made the front page of the national news and New Mexico newspapers,

The newspapers that still exist,

That is.

But these two hunters were in Taos and they both had time off.

They're in the film industry.

So they were in the woods in Taos and had been hunting for,

I think it was pretty much all day and having no luck.

And they looked over to the next ridge and they saw these two very tall people,

Basically,

They thought there were people standing on the ridge and they thought,

You know,

We're going to go talk to them because they might be scaring the game away.

So they hiked and hiked and hiked.

And when they got there,

The two people weren't there.

And that was confusing for them because there was nowhere else that they could have gone.

And so they just thought,

Okay,

Today's a wash,

We'll hunt tomorrow.

So the next day they moved their camp and they were driving and were going up and down these windy roads.

And both of them looked down into this kind of shallow valley and they saw this huge movie set up in the,

There were like multiple buildings,

Lots of people,

Lots of vehicles.

They were like a little far away,

So they couldn't see all the details,

But both of them agreed,

Wow,

There's a movie shooting back here.

We had no idea that this was even happening,

But they got a lot of stuff into the backwoods that most sets wouldn't normally do.

And so they went down a dip and there were some trees.

And when they came up over the rise,

They looked out and it was all gone.

There was nothing there.

And they were so shocked.

And so I think kind of horrified.

And there are two guys that don't believe in this stuff at all,

Whatever it was,

But they were so kind of blown out of their own reality that they reported it to the police.

They reported it to the authorities.

That's how it got into the news.

And so my rational thought brain thinks,

Oh,

They just,

They saw some things like a dimension bled through,

You know,

It's things from another dimension that entered our reality briefly.

And it just so happened to be seen.

And so for Sasquatch,

I think much the same,

Maybe they're not in our reality all the time.

Maybe they can go in and out,

But that might explain why people see them sometimes,

You know,

You said it melted into the shadows.

I mean,

That's very interesting phrasing.

Maybe it just melted back into its own dimension,

But I find that it's not scary.

It's kind of exciting to think that these things are happening and that they're all around us.

Yeah.

So I think,

You know,

Probably the same thinking can go for many things,

You know,

So probably religious miracles and things like that could be dimensional transitions or that certain beings are interstitial,

You know,

That they exist in between spaces and time.

And so who am I to say it can't?

I just like to be open to the possibility that that could exist.

And so I've seen,

You know,

I've never seen a UFO here,

Which I'm very disappointed to say,

So I'm still waiting for my UFO sighting.

But I practice the martial art of Aikido,

Which to me is kind of,

Has a kind of spiritual aspect to it.

Our philosophy is to create less violence in the world through martial art,

Not more violence through martial art.

And so our intent is to,

Even though somebody has bad intentions for us is to not harm them.

I have my own dojo here in Santa Fe called Kaiju Aikido Club.

You know,

My youngest student is in second grade and my oldest student is probably 75.

Going back to the Sasquatch,

I don't know if you have heard that certain people attract lightning.

And so if you get hit by lightning once,

The chances to get hit again are high.

I'm very jealous of your Sasquatch sightings.

I just have to say that.

But that you've had two is just astonishing.

And to me,

It's as if almost like you're drawn to them and they're drawn to you so you can have that experience.

Does it feel like that ever?

Well,

No,

I thought,

You know,

If that were true,

That probably have,

You know,

More experiences like that.

Although I do notice things,

You know,

Hiking around here,

There will be a Y and a tree way out of reach for any human being.

And there'll be rocks and things placed in those,

You know,

Almost like decorations.

And thinking,

You know,

The Sasquatch,

You know,

Is that how they make art?

You know,

Or is that some kind of communication thing?

What human being would actually go and do that?

And especially in this obscure area.

And I think there are signs that are around that are evidence,

But we may not see it because we don't notice it.

So there are lots of signs maybe that aren't like a footprint or something.

You know,

We all saw the Peterson film of the Sasquatch walking across the riverbank.

And there was a,

I think,

Life magazine even did a feature on it and stuff.

And so I thought that was great.

And then I hadn't thought about it for years,

You know,

Until I had this sighting and I thought that was really strange.

I saw,

And the only thing I can explain it with is Bigfoot or Sasquatch.

Still very jealous.

I'm,

I'm stuck on being jealous,

But also,

You know,

I guess I can put out to the universe that I would like to have a sighting sometime,

Not too close,

Maybe from far away,

But it's still,

I feel like if anything like that is going to happen,

It will happen in New Mexico because New Mexico has,

There is some weird stuff that happens down here that people can't explain,

Which is exciting,

But also you never know what you're going to see when you go on a hike.

My son had open heart surgery in June.

And so that was kind of a miracle in itself that,

You know,

It was like the worst anxiety I ever had when they wheeled him off to go to surgery was like the sinking elevator or something.

And then he was in there for like nine hours.

And so that all worked out,

You know,

The mechanical aspects of the surgery was kind of a miracle in itself.

And if they were able to do what they needed to do,

Going through the top part of the valve to clean out some extra heart muscle tissue so his heart could pump better.

And then he had,

You know,

Electrical problems throughout the heart after that.

So it took a long time,

You know,

So he was in the hospital about 40 days.

Now he's home and he's 20 years old.

So you know,

And now he's doing well.

So it was,

And to me,

That's a miracle.

And what it taught me is just to appreciate every day,

Appreciate that I can create art every day and that I can teach Aikido just to appreciate my dog,

My family and everything,

My friends.

It takes moments like that sometimes to really take a deep breath and look around and say,

Yeah,

You know,

I really appreciate what I do and what I have.

You know,

I was wearing some jewelry and I had my ponytail and some lady comes up,

You know,

With her Texas accent wearing every turquoise jewelry she owned.

And she goes,

Excuse me,

What pueblo are you from?

You know,

I'm usually pretty good at telling,

You know,

I said,

Well,

I'm from the Sukiyaki pueblo.

And she goes,

Oh,

Where is that?

And I go,

It's quite far East from here.

And she took my picture and that was it,

You know,

So I'm probably in some slideshow somewhere in Texas.

This is this man from the Sukiyaki pueblo.

And that's a wrap.

Episode 48 of Bite-Sized Blessings has come to a close.

Thank you so much for listening.

And I look forward to producing episode 49 and 50.

Can you believe it?

50 episodes so very soon for you.

I need to thank my guest,

My very special guest,

Joel Nakamura,

For sharing his story with me.

I first found out about this amazing artist on a trip through Santa Fe.

I stopped at Harry's Roadhouse,

Walked into the lobby and was confronted by all these fabulous t-shirts with these really unique and fun designs.

Of course,

I grabbed the Sasquatch shirt.

It was a prized possession for many years.

And so I was so very excited when this illustrious artist agreed to be on my show.

To see more of his work,

You can visit my website,

Bite-sized blessings.

Com.

Under his profile,

There's a link to his website.

Click on that link and it'll take you right to his artist page where you'll be able to view and appreciate more of his art.

I also need to thank the artists who created the music for this episode,

Raphael Crux,

Chilled Music,

Music L.

Files,

Winnie the Moog,

And Frank Schroeder.

For complete attribution,

Please see the Bite-Sized Blessings website at bite-sized blessings.

Com.

On the website,

You'll find links to books,

Other artists,

Playlists,

And music I think will lift and inspire you.

Thank you for listening and here's my one request.

Be like Joel.

Realize that folk tales and myths are alive and in front of us if only we have eyes to see them.