<Begin Segment 9>

AI: And it seems that you helped start that off by your decision to go beyond the realtors' negativity, that even though they were discriminating against you and didn't want to sell to you...

PB: Right.

AI: ...weren't, wouldn't sell to you, you found another solution to that problem...

PB: Sure.

AI: ...by going directly to the builder.

PB: Right. And as a result of it, there were one of my friends that graduated the same year that I did from -- I graduated from Roosevelt, he graduated from Narbonne High School. His name was Ken Nakaoka. And he started a real estate office. Kamiya and a fellow named Mamiya, Buddy Mamiya, they started a real estate office. As a result of these companies starting up and catering to Japanese Americans, we were able to list and sell lot of nice homes to Japanese Americans. I still meet people that I sold a home to forty, fifty years ago in their -- they say, "Well, good thing that you sold us this. We're very, very happy." So I think that we did something to open up the whole community there to people. Otherwise, it would've been a very, very disastrous area that no Japanese could buy.

AI: So, once again, if you hadn't, and others hadn't taken these steps, Japanese Americans might have been shut out of that housing market.

PB: Oh, yeah. There's other areas that still don't and for a long time wouldn't sell to Japanese Americans because they were afraid it would open up to other minorities. But Gardena didn't come about that way. It's changed lately, but we've done away with a lot of prejudice in that area, and it took a little while. But everything is, if you fight it subtly without being out front, you can do it. I remember one thing as, when, I happened to mention Ken Nakaoka became mayor of our city, and I was on the city council. And some friends of mine took my name and recommended that I be a member of the Elks Club there, which was right across from city hall. And I was turned down because I was Japanese American. They even recommended the mayor, Ken Nakaoka, and he was turned down because the Elks had a policy in all their lodges, they didn't want Japanese Americans. What happened after that, as a result of that, is they started a lodge in Carson, the next city south, and they said, "Mr. Bannai, we know why you are not a member of the Elks. We're starting a lodge. We'd like to have you as a member." So I joined that lodge, which was a benefit to me because later on when I went to Washington, D.C., my office was right near the Elk's lodge, and I could go in and enjoy that. And as I traveled the country, I took advantage of my membership.

But discrimination happened that time. It still happens, and there can be ways in which you can overcome it. We, we as Japanese Americans don't experience as much now, but there are still places and times that we have it, and we have to find ways in order to try to overcome that one way or another. I'm still working on several issues, and maybe one of these days we'll get it done. I don't know. We were talking about the military. But when I was in the army, I heard about the American Legion in Hood River, Oregon, passing a resolution which went to the state and went to the national, saying that we will have no Japanese names on any monument of those that were killed in action fighting for the United States. And so ever since then, I have gone, even to the national conventions, when I used to go as a Veterans Administration official, asking them to rescind that. They say, "Why? That was during the war." What difference does it make to have that kind of a resolution? They didn't say German names, Italian names. We were at war against them. We were at war against Japanese, against Japan, so they don't want Japanese names. These Japanese names were my buddies that died fighting for the United States. So you can see there are many things that we still have that we can overdo, that we should try to correct.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2000 Densho. All Rights Reserved.