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MY: But as it turned out, the Fair Housing bill did pass. We had some problems with the people in the church and I've had people tell, there was one woman I met at a gas station, and the kids were in the car, and she -- because there were three of us, you know, women, the other two women were white, obviously, and she -- and then my children were all in school, at the Ascension School at that time. And she came up to me and she said, "You know, I'm really surprised, because I always thought that you people were very happy in our church." And she said, "I didn't realize that you were unhappy," you know, and I, "What do you mean?" And she said, "Well, I thought we've always treated you very well, you know, you're the only Japanese, you're in the church." And I thought oh, you know, that "Didn't we treat you well?" Why are you -- oh, I know, and then she said, "Why are you doing this to us?" You know, like, doing what? By supporting Father Smith? He was wonderful, in spite of his personal misgivings about his conservative feelings about it, he felt that he was going to be a good servant of God and listen to the bishop and I guess there were a lot of people there who were the same. But she thought, I don't know, what do you mean? I mean, I didn't say anything because I was just a little bit astonished, but she said, "Why are you doing this, why are you trying to ruin everything? We have such a harmonious wonderful little family, this very small group of people," and so forth. And then Pasadena at that time, which was right, a neighboring, neighboring community, the big threat was, "You don't want Sierra Madre to turn into Pasadena," they had a lot of black people over there. It was just kind of unreal at that time. But we recovered, recovered from this. [Laughs] But you learn, you know, the kind of things that you learn through life is really interesting, I think.

AI: That is interesting because on the one hand, when you were speaking to the Japanese Americans from the area, they were fearful and not wanting to support the Fair Housing petition, for reasons based on their experiences --

MY: That's right, yeah, that's right.

AI: -- of being discriminated against, and at the same time here are these white people who are also not supportive of the Fair Housing --

MY: Because of... yeah. You're absolutely right, I mean, and the, it says something about not... I think one of the things that I remembered about when I saw James Baldwin on TV, when his The Amen Corner, I think -- he wrote a play and it was performed in San Francisco, I think, and it was bombed, the first night. And I remember his face, you know, on television, those big eyes. Even a man like that, you know, was just totally astonished about this. I remember watching this newsreel with, my husband had a colleague, a young man who was working in his lab, who was -- I think it was actually, he was Yosh's lab assistant at Bell & Howell, who, we had invited him over to dinner and were having dinner, and we were watching this together. He was -- oh, and we were watching this and then we were watching all the activities of children being spat on and he was just so, became very emotional and he said... and he was a young man, a little bit younger than Yosh I think at that time, he was probably in his forties or so -- and he was saying that the reason why those kids, these things are happening right now, is because those of us who could have done, who could have been, had more courage at one time could have protested earlier than... like I feel like it's my fault, you know, because we succumbed to the prejudice and the discrimination and endured all of that for years and years without raising our voices. And now there's this backlash, the white, the virulent nature of the, of that was, he was just really... I thought it was kind of interesting because he was really saying, "It's all our fault, my generation was too chicken to stand up against prejudice and therefore the present violence that we, the violent nature of it..." He thought that if they had gradually, from way decades ago started, that now it would be, things would be a little better. And this is, it turned out to be true. Of course it was very violent at that time but the eruption -- and things hadn't totally changed today. But things have gotten a lot better because of it. And I was saying, well, you know, James really, you know, knew what he was saying, very, very astute observation.

AI: Maybe to put this in a little larger context, this period that you're talking about, 1963, 1964, this has followed, of course, 1954, the Supreme Court decision --

MY: The Court decision, Brown and, yeah.

AI: Brown v. Board of Education, opening up the schools to desegregate the schools, and then there had been this whole decade of civil rights activity.

MY: Where would we be today if it hadn't been for that? And also they were saying at that time, well, you can't legislate emotions, you can't, that kind of thing. So you make it illegal that you can't discriminate for housing or for jobs and so forth -- and they're still saying that about gay rights and so forth, that you can't pass a law against hating people. People aren't going to stop hating just because of a law and so on, but it's necessary, necessary to have it on the books there, have the ordinance there.

<End Segment 21> - Copyright © 2002 Densho. All Rights Reserved.