<Begin Segment 34>

AI: Well, so as your kids were growing up in Bothell, they were among the few who were not white children in their schools. Did you ever hear of --

TY: Yeah, well we've asked them, and I guess they had some, but it was not, nothing, nothing major. They said that some things they, people would kind of jokingly... what was Bruce called? Oh, they used to call him "Rice," I think. I think that's what it was. But other than things like that, they really didn't have -- Bruce said that he, he never really encountered any kind of problem except for minor jokes and racial jokes and things like this. But they would just laugh it off and they laughed together and I think that was the about the extent of it. And the other kids, same way, I don't think they really had too much problems. They played around with a lot of, they played with a lot of the neighborhood kids and they got along very well, so I don't think that they had any really problems that we heard of, anyway. I guess we were very lucky that way. I don't think that -- other than the housing incident things, and I didn't tell our kids about that for a long time because I didn't want them to feel too self-conscious about it. So I think we purposely avoided discussing it.

AI: What about the issues of being put into camps during World War II and... was that anything that you ever discussed with the kids, either, when they were young?

TY: No, we didn't. Not until late, in the very late date, when all this start coming up all the time. But, in the early years I don't think we discussed it very much. And then, in the later years, when they start getting into late grammar school and high school, they start having projects in composition. In English classes they have to write about things. And then I remember Bruce asking about it and I remember getting some information for him. And Nan also, our second oldest, oh, yeah, Linda, too. Yeah, I guess all the kids did write something about the camp. And at that time we talked about it. But that was it. Beyond that they'd forget about it because it never, the subject never came up. And just lately is when they started, well, "lately" meaning the last what, ten years when they having Remembrance Day and all this stuff. But they didn't have it back then so everybody was trying to forget about it, I guess. And by design, I guess they just -- and Bothell is, was a kind of an interesting place because it was very conservative area and Bothell is one of the few areas that voted Goldwater in, and George Wallace in. So we used to call it George Wallace Country. [Laughs] So Fumi, being a Democrat, she was, she was very active in Democratic activities at that time politically. And she was always lamenting how -- she always was, not being a Japanese, being a minority, but being a Democrat and it was a real minority in Bothell, too. [Laughs] They have this lunch group in the neighborhood. And they're, and she said that she was one of the, she, being the one few Democrats within the group, and they were very conservative. And she had to, didn't agree with them most of the time, but didn't say too much. [Laughs]

<End Segment 34> - Copyright © 2002 Densho. All Rights Reserved.