<Begin Segment 7>

AI: So you were accepted at NYU and you made the move to New York.

MY: And then my two years in NYU was exhilarating. I think when I got to New York City I had never, you know, just such a liberating experience because New York City was just -- oh, it was during that period, 1947, when the U.N. was just being formed, and there was just so much news going on about the U.N. and the world government, and I was living in the dormitory -- living in an apartment. Tosh came to -- I was living with my mother's friend, a Mrs. Nomura. She was, she was a very interesting Issei woman who was there since before the war and she had this apartment where Lincoln Center is right now. And she had one of those long, what they call railroad apartments, where there were all these little rooms and then a long corridor and then a bedroom in the front. My oldest daughter Jeni remembers, she used to remember her as that lady who... oh, "Remember Grandma's friend who lives in a house that doesn't have a living room?" or something like that. Because she had, the front room had been converted to a bedroom and she was sleeping in there, and each of the other rooms were rented out, and that was how she was making a living, since her husband died and then the kitchen was right by the entrance. And so she had, one room was empty so I lived in there for a while. The men who were there were workers. I think they used to work at Coney Island. One of the very few Japanese who were there from before World War II. And so it had been a long time since I heard Japanese spoken, you know, Mrs. Nomura and all the Issei guys were all speaking Japanese and she cooked for them and she had this little, she had this bathroom that was just disgraceful, it was just so grungy-looking. And so I went out and I told her, "Do you want -- you know, I want to paint your bathroom." And she said, "Sure, you know, if you want to. Yoroshii desu yo." And I said, "No, I'll paint it," you know, so... I went to the store and I got some glossy paint and I was standing on -- it was a very small bathroom and I was painting it and then I heard one of the men come in and they were sitting in the kitchen which was right next to it. And he was saying, "Oh, kanshin da ne," you know, that, "just really admirable for a young person like her, and for a Ni -- " oh, he said, "That's really admirable for a Nisei, you know, to be such a hard worker," or something like that. And Mrs. Nomura said to her, "No, kono hito wa Nihon umare," you know, "She was born in Japan." And the guy was saying, "Oh, doride, yeah, no wonder she's such a hard worker." [Laughs] And that struck me as very funny right after, this is almost right after the end of the war. These Isseis, you know, they were just so totally untouched by the conflict of any kind, they were still very pro-Japanese. It was really kind of amazing. Because my mother, by that time having experienced -- you know, they hadn't experienced evacuation or anything, they probably were somewhat isolated just among themselves. And that struck me as very interesting, because I think my mother would have had by that time, had been somewhat -- she would say things like, "Well, now this is my country because my children are here," and things like that. And then these Isseis, you know, acted like they didn't know the war -- Mrs. Nomura, you know, thought that the picture of the Emperor and MacArthur, it was front page news, right, in 1945, when the war ended and then the Emperor and MacArthur had gotten together. They had a picture of the two of them, I don't know if you've seen those pictures of them standing very much at attention. And Mrs. Nomura said, "You know the way they're standing? I know that they cut the picture in half," and it was a composite picture, that there was no way that the Emperor of Japan would pose with an ordinary white man and that kind of thing -- and this is in New York City, you know. It was really amazing, in Manhattan. [Laughs]

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2002 Densho. All Rights Reserved.