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AI: You know, I wanted to ask you: you had written about an incident in, I think it was in the dorm, about race relationships that you weren't aware of --

MY: Oh yeah. That was when the house mother had -- well, these people were there way before I was, I think. Susie and George, it was a couple, African American couple who worked -- Susie worked there as a cook, and her husband worked there as a janitor and a handyman around the house. And she, of course she, in the weekends, when the house mother took one day off on a weekend and -- or weekday, I guess it was a weekday when they were... because on weekends we were all, many of us are there, or on the week-, and she would come upstairs, you know, to the third floor and ask us if we had any laundry, and the women would give them their dirty laundry and pay her a dollar to do their laundry. And then she said, "How about you, Missy?" She used to call everybody Miss -- Miss Mitsu -- and I said, "No, that's okay." I didn't, I couldn't imagine giving my dirty underwear to somebody to wash for me, because I just never had done that before. So I told her that's okay and my roommate, my bunk -- the woman who had the bunk next to me, her name was Ginny, said, "Yeah, give her your, you know, she likes to do it." You know, it was one of those things that, "She likes to be" -- and I said no, that's okay. So I didn't give it to her. And then a couple days later I was helping in the kitchen to earn my keep, you know. To, I got a discount on my, my rent, you know, so I was helping to wash dishes at night. And Pete and I were washing dishes together, and my mother had given me this pearl ring that I treasured quite a bit. So when I was washing dishes I didn't want it to get -- I don't know why I took it off, I always took it off when I was washing, had my hand in soap water, and I had it on the windowsill and after we were finished, I ran up the stairs and when I got to the top of the stairs, I just, oh, I don't have my ring. So I ran downstairs to pick up my ring, and I went to the windowsill and it wasn't there. So I ran over to Susie, and I said, "Susie, did you see my, did you see my ring I left?" And so she kind of smiled and she reached into her apron and took it out and gave it to me, and I thought, "Oh thanks, God," you know, I found it. And I went up, took it and I went upstairs. And then the next day, Mrs... Mrs... isn't that funny? I don't remember her name. She called me into her room, the house mother called me into her room and she said, "You know, it's really hard getting help nowadays, you know, with the war on," and da da da -- and that she was very disappointed that Susie had told her that I accused her of stealing my ring. And so I said, "What?" I just, I couldn't imagine -- of course she could not tell her about the laundry thing because it was not, she wasn't supposed to be doing this. She was trying to earn extra money. She wasn't supposed to be doing that. So then when this second thing happened, she reported it to the mother, to the house mother. And I kind of suspected that she was very upset about my not giving her my laundry and so the second thing with the ring was kind of concocted, you know. And so -- oh dear, I said, I just, oh, I can't imagine that... I didn't tell anybody there except I talked to Rose. And in Seattle I had never had any encounter with black people. I didn't realize their sensitivity -- oh, and then something else happened. I asked one of my friends, one of my classmates who was having trouble in English... I think she -- an African American student -- and so we were studying in the library, but I think one day the library was closing early. And so I told her, "Why don't you come to the dormitory and the living room is almost always empty, nobody is down there. And I have all these roommates and we can't study in my room, but we can stay downstairs and study in the living room." So she came to the dormitory, and it was after that, that Susie said -- Mrs. B, I guess we used to call her Mrs. B. I don't know even know what her last name was -- she said, "Susie told me that she was very upset," because she thought that I should have invited my friend to come in the back door. And she was furious that this young girl, black girl -- well, she called -- you know, this Negro, Negro girl came in, that she had to open the door for a Negro girl, and she thought that she was being very uppity and she should, you know, have come in the back door like the rest of us, you know, Negroes. And that really shocked me, you know, and then with the ring incident, with the laundry, I was... you know, the whole thing, I thought, oh gosh, I didn't know. I just felt like God, you know, what am I doing? I was doing these things that were unconsciously and totally unaware of white/black relationships or where we, as Asian, you know, Japanese Americans fitted into the color spectrum, right? And so, yeah, you're right, I think it's probably some of those incidents that made me feel like this is not a very safe place for me. I don't even know how to behave in this atmosphere, you know, so I, and of course I didn't tell my parents. They were pretty, very comfortable in the home that they were working in, away from the social intercourse with anybody else, so... [Laughs]

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2002 Densho. All Rights Reserved.