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Title: Lorraine Bannai Interview
Narrator: Lorraine Bannai
Interviewers: Margaret Chon (primary), Alice Ito (secondary)
Location: Seattle, Washington
Date: March 23 & 24, 2000
Densho ID: denshovh-blorraine-01-0004

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AI: Well, maybe this would be a good place to ask you to tell a little bit more about Gardena because it is a very unique kind of community, and if you could just describe a little bit about it and what you recall, especially of the Gardena that you grew up in.

LB: It was a very unique place. As I said, Gardena was about, I think, a third Japanese American when I was growing up, so when I was growing up I, it was very comfortable. I mean, there were many people around me who looked the same as I did, who spoke the same broken Japanese as I did, who ate the same foods I did, and on top of that, there were a number of community leaders who were Japanese American. We had a Japanese American mayor and city councilman, and Japanese American banks. There were a number of Japanese American churches. There was the Methodist Church, the Baptist Church, the Buddhist Church. So we had a lot of role models and leaders. I realize now how exceptional that was for me to be able to grow up with really strong, great Japanese American role models because it really made me feel like there were few things that I couldn't do. I mean I could grow up and be mayor, I suppose. And, and growing up and believing that you could be a banker or believing that you could be mayor certainly makes you grow up thinking that, well, maybe I could even be more than that. And, I suppose something that was really important to me and my siblings (was) being able to grow up without feeling automatically outcast or marginalized because we were surrounded by a community that supported us with good, good role models, which is a good thing.

It can also be a really difficult thing, too, though, once you leave that community. I remember going to UC Santa Barbara my freshman year in college, and my first day there looking around and being absolutely shocked at how many hakujin people there were in the world. I had never seen so many hakujin people in my entire life. And suddenly I felt very small and really very much alone. And I think that could have been a very frightening experience, that could have been really disabling, had I not known that I had the base in Gardena and the support of my family to be able to get through that and the confidence that I was able to somehow muster together from my early childhood. So it's a good thing, but I think it can also lead to some disabilities later on if you grow up in a community like that without really realizing that it is a unique experience.

The other thing that was really interesting to me when I got older was to realize that Gardena was the way that it was in part because of discrimination against Japanese Americans. I mean, I grew up in Gardena thinking, wow, I am so lucky to have all of these Japanese Americans around me. And when I was growing up, there was kind of like a checkerboard pattern of housing, so there was one community of several blocks that had a lot of Japanese American families and then, the next checkerboard part of it wouldn't have any, and the next one would have Japanese American families. And I grew up thinking, I am so lucky. I get to live where the Japanese Americans are. And I'd walk through these other neighborhoods. And it wasn't until I got older that I realized that it was probably that way because real estate agents would only sell homes in certain areas to Japanese Americans and not sell in others. And my father told me that when they had first come back from the war, they had a great deal of difficulty finding a place to buy because a lot of real estate agents would not sell, or developers would not sell, to Japanese American families. So again, while I was young, I thought it was such a great place to grow up. It wasn't until later that I realized that the reason it was that way was because of racially discriminatory covenants and real estate contracts or practices that the community ended up that way.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2000 Densho. All Rights Reserved.