Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Tosh Yasutake Interview
Narrator: Tosh Yasutake
Interviewers: Alice Ito (primary), Tom Ikeda (secondary)
Location: Seattle, Washington
Date: November 14, 2002
Densho ID: denshovh-ytosh-01-0033

<Begin Segment 33>

AI: And in between this time, from 1952 to 1960, you also had started your family.

TY: Yes, we had two kids. Bruce, our oldest, was born in 1952 and Nan, the second child, was born in 1956, four years later. And, let's see, Keith was born there, too. He was two years later. So we had three kids by the time we left there. And in 1960, when we moved up here and then after we moved up here, Linda was born, eight years later after Keith. So... and we rented a house in Bothell. Reason we decided to go to Bothell because we investigated various areas and the cost of housing and so forth. And we found out that Bothell School District was one of the better ones at that time. And one of our good friends who was formerly working in the Western Fish Nutrition Lab who had come up to Seattle and moved to Bothell and he was, he had rented a house and he had just planned to move out. He had bought a house and he was gonna move out of the rental home and he said, "Well, Tosh, why don't you come up and take over the house that I'm, we're moving out of?" And I said, "Okay, that'll be fine." So we moved to that house and we stayed there for a year. And then we decided to buy a house. But we started looking for house in that area to buy. And that's when we had the problem with discrimination.

AI: Tell me what happened.

TY: Well, at that time they were just building the Maywood housing development. Big housing development not too far from the elementary school that the, our kids went to. And so I thought, well, that might be a good place to move the kids and then the kids would just walk to school. But we looked at the houses and we didn't care for the houses too much and, but then we also heard that they probably won't let Nihonjin get into the house, housing. So I thought, well, that's kinda interesting. So let's give it a try. So I, we went to look at a house and the salesman was very nice and very friendly. And he showed us the house. And I said, "I'd be kind of interested in it. You think you can make arrangements, maybe we could purchase it?" And he said, "Well, sure. I'll, call me up tomorrow and I'll, we'll get together tomorrow." So I said, "Okay." And we left, and that evening about nine o'clock he called and he says, "Mr. Yasutake, I am sorry but I think we can't sell you the house." And then I said, "Why?" He says, "Well, we've asked the neighborhood and they objected to it very strongly and so I'm afraid that we'll have to back off." And then he was very apol-, yeah, he felt very guilty about it obviously because he was very apologetic. And he said, "Well, I hate this but, because I know it's gonna be no problem with you people because -- you know, our son, who is going to Harvard right now, has a roommate, a Nisei roommate, and they really, he really thinks worldly of the fellow," and his name was Dick, I think, and he said, I forgot, I didn't remember what his last name was. But he said, "He really likes Dick and he thinks he's a great guy and I just feel so badly about it." And he kept apologizing over and over and that made me feel worse. [Laughs]

And then after that, we decided, well, maybe we'll look at some other houses. So we did look at some houses. And one tri-level home that we saw by the Bothell High School, we, the owner showed us the house, and they were very nice. And we, I think we would have bought it from him if we didn't run into any problem. But we did run into a problem. The problem was that as we left the area, as we drove out of the driveway, I was looking at the back rear view mirror, and I saw the man across the street, he lives in the house, apparently he lived in the house across the street from this tri-level. And he was giving me the finger. And I thought, "Oh my. I think we're gonna have some problems here." And as he -- and then we drove off and that night the tri-level home owner called me and said, "I saw that incident and I'm awful sorry." He says, "You know that we don't feel that way, and we'll be glad to sell you the house." And then he proceeded to tell us that his boss at work had gotten some phone calls from, crank phone calls from people, some unknown people, saying that, "You better do something about that," he said, "one of your employees is doing such and such." And was giving the -- not only the tri-level owner, but his boss, giving him a bad time and told him that they gonna stop doing business with him and all that kind of stuff. It was a -- he worked in a garden store, and, kind of a hardware store, right in the middle of Woodinville. And they weren't even living in Bothell. But anyway, that's -- we had problems like that for the next -- few days after that we had people dropping and visit us from the Bothell Methodist Church, which church that we went a few times after we got to Bothell. And, oh, they, it was very, kind of uncomfortable. And they came in and they told us they were sorry. They heard what happened and I don't know how the word got around but it got around real fast. And they said how badly they feel about the whole thing and of course they proceeded to tell us that lot of the church members and lot of the people in Bothell don't feel that way, and you know, the usual story. And, but we did finally find a property that there was no house on, right across the street from the development that we couldn't buy a house at. And we built a house there, in 1961 we moved into it and we've been there ever since. And we've had wonderful neighbors. And all the kids grew up with each other, and they still correspond with each other. And every time they come into -- Nan, our daughter from back east come into Seattle, well, the neighbor daughter come in with their family and they come and visit us still. We have a very, very nice relationship with all the neighbors, former neighbors and what have you.

AI: You said earlier that at that time, though, at 1960... 1961 that you were, you were kind of surprised at the level of prejudice still remaining.

TY: Yes, I was extremely surprised. I thought, it's been oh, fifteen years or so after the war. And I just, I thought, well, gosh. We were in, see, we were located down in Willard, down in Cook, where we didn't experience any of that. They, everybody was very nice down there, we just were one of the hakujins and they were very nice and, just, even I even forgot that I was Nihonjin. It was just, was really, it really was nice. And then we came up to Seattle and run into that and it was just -- it was a real shock to me that some things like that still existed. I thought, well, by then it'd be all over, and people, people would have accepted us, and, but it didn't and that, it just baffled me. I just couldn't understand why that after such a long time that they, some people still felt that way. Of course, in Bothell there weren't that many Nihonjin then, or Asians. The Funai family were there. They've been there, old Bothellites. They been there ever since before the war. I remember the -- I didn't know the family that well at that time but I remember the name because when was a kid I used to do judo and the Funai family boys used to be, come take judo, too. And I knew of them, I didn't know them that well. But, and once I heard they were from Bothell I thought oh, my God, that's far away. [Laughs] I mean it's really out in the tules, and it was at that time. So the Funai family, there are some, a few Japanese living there, but not many.

AI: Excuse me, but also at that time of 1960, the early '60s, wasn't that also the time of the Fair Housing --

TY: Yeah.

AI: -- debates were going on?

TY: Yeah, they were going on quite strongly and so, after the incident happened in the Maywood housing development, shortly thereafter -- we had joined the Unitarian Church. And you know how active Unitarian Church people are. So they, I think one of them had approached Fumi. I was at work then and said, "How would you like -- we're gonna picket the Maywood housing development. How would you like to join the picket line?" And she said, "Oh my gosh, I've never done anything like that before," and she was kind of reluctant. [Laughs] But she finally very reluctantly decided to do that. And they did picket the place. And also, joining the picket line was the Presbyterian minister that was in the local church, not too far from where we lived. We just knew them in passing. And for some reason he got talked into getting in the picket line. And he ran into trouble after he got back, from his congregation. In fact, he lost some people in the congregation because of that. He got in really, he got in deep water, he got in deep water, troubled water. And I think they really gave him a hard time for a while which was really unfortunate. But it did happen. And then, it was shortly thereafter that they, the housing, I think, proposition went through.

AI: Right. Before that, racial discrimination in housing was legal, before that.

TY: Yes, yes. It was, apparently. Because -- and they sort of opened the thing up. But even to this day I don't think many Nihonjin live in Maywood, that development, for some reason. There's a lot of, not... Asians, I mean. There are quite a few Asians in Bothell now, lot more than there used to be, not, there are not many Nihonjin, but there're a lot of Koreans and Taiwanese, and other Asians living there now. I see a lot more Asian faces than I used to.

<End Segment 33> - Copyright © 2002 Densho. All Rights Reserved.