<Begin Segment 10>

AI: So let me ask you, you just were mentioning, about how for your younger sisters, that, or at least one of them felt that she had a divided life, where one part of the, her life was --

EH: With white kids.

AI: With white kids, and then on a weekend she would have a social life with other Japanese Americans. Well, what about yourself at that time? I guess, before, before the American Council, did you also feel like you had kind of a divided life?

EH: Not really, I mean, I was aware that there was a different world. But, I could enjoy, and I wanted to be a part of both worlds. So at Lakeview Presbyterian I was with -- in fact, at Lakeview Presbyterian I was a Sunday school teacher, and they wanted us to go to McCormick Seminary, which was a Presbyterian seminary, middle of, close to, well, it was a little south of us. So I used to go every, once a week at least, to have Bible text discussions or Sunday school curriculum discussions, and that kind of thing.

AI: And was the seminary mostly white, or...

EH: Oh, (yes), probably. There may have been black students there by that time, we certainly didn't see them. But the Nisei life, I went to JACL meetings and dances once in a while.

AI: Were you dating anybody?

EH: No, I wasn't dating anybody. I did have a couple of -- well, I did have one or two dates, but they weren't, certainly weren't steady, and... oh (yes), that's right. I was dating a Seattle guy for a long time, I'd forgotten that. In fact, it was a little bit abrupt because I was getting involved with Ralph, and because we worked together, we'd see each other daily. But I went with this guy for six or eight months, and finally I had to tell him that, that I'm leaving for Seattle, and why. And that was a real -- I'm not even sure I told him he was black. But the, but the Jewish family wants to know what kind of a guy this was, 'cause I'd lived with them for a whole year, and they asked me if he was Japanese, and I said, "No," and, "Well, then, is he white?" "No," then so they made up their own assumption, "Okay, then he had to be black." And I had gone, when Ralph wanted me to come to Seattle, I thought, "Well, I'd better go meet his family," and I took it upon myself to -- I did get acquainted, she had a, he had a sister living not too far from the Jewish woman, so I had met her, and, and then I just took it upon myself to go down to the, to a housing project, way out the edge of Chicago, it was Meadows around then, and it was kind of, not risky, but an adventure, 'cause I'd never been out of Chicago on my own, probably, that end of town I never would have been, the only way to get there was go on a bus, and being a housing project, they would have had to have regular, but I had to transfer at kind of weird places. And...

AI: What direction was that?

EH: Due south.

AI: South.

EH: Altgeld Gardens. And that was a real eye-opener. I had been... at American Council I was having to clip things out, like we got brochures and major articles about Seattle's Yesler Terrace, and that's a, in Chicago that just seemed astounding that they would, that a city would have rambling, it looked like rambling tree-covered, tree-lined houses, and clean cottage-looking, where in Chicago they were really slums, or skyscraper, there were some, there were some low, two, one- or two-story masses of housing in Chicago also, but things really run down very quickly in Chicago. Anyway...

AI: Did you go out with Ralph to meet his parents?

EH: No, I went independently, and I don't know where Ralph was at -- Ralph had to work a lot of jobs to keep, he was getting his GI Bill, was, that was probably a hundred and five dollars at the time, and he was living at home -- oh no, (yes)... but anyway, he had to, he, for instance was a, bowling pin setter in a bowling alley before there was a mechanic, mechanical system of setting up pins. That kind of thing. But he was also active in American Veterans Committee, so he was gone at times like that. But this Altgeld Garden was a massive housing project. And absolutely, by the time you got out past Meadows, there's no stores or anything, and, interestingly, one of my, Ralph had one brother, or he had, one, two, three, brothers. His youngest brother, I think, at that time maybe was still in high school, and developed a real streak of art ability. Eventually, I, you know, he, the air-, he goes into the air force, and the air force never hires him in the art area at all. He becomes a tech-, communications specialist. And at one, but he's developed his skills, it wasn't until he was an adult, and we probably met him in, in the mid-, I met him for the first time in the sixties, 'cause he was out here at, close to Sacramento, and he was already in his arts. And at one point, the air force was honoring a general that was retiring, and who had something to do with a specific airplane, and something happened to the artist, so that the grand retirement party, big affair in Los Angeles, was already set, and, and ready to go, and they were going to present him with a major art, painting of the airplane that he was, kind of responsible for, introducing, and Fred was ordered to make a painting of that airplane, but they weren't excusing him from work, I mean, he, 'cause he wasn't classified as an artist, so he had to do this at night, all hours, all night, and they came to get the painting when the painting was still wet, and they flew it down to Los Angeles for this big occasion. But he never once got compensated or recognized for that painting. And that's the way life was for them. He had to comply, you know, because he was in the military and ordered to do that, but that's the way -- maybe at that point when he was telling me, telling us about that, here he was in, in Chicago in the school system -- I knew one, but he, he didn't know there was an institution like the art museum, the Chicago Art Institute. Here he was a part of the school system, so that meant that those kids never came into the city. Rarely were they able, nobody had cars, for one thing. So later he tells me that had he known there was, an un-, that's one of the things they wanted to see. Because as an adult he got married, and, and they wanted, they were eager to come to Seattle because seeing the art institute was a big thing for a potential artist.

And then, ironically, my sister, Anna, was visiting at some point. She had a Jewish husband who was sometimes difficult to cope with, but anyway... and Freddy must've been there at the same time, and, and it may have been when Candy died, that all the relatives were at the service, and they were getting --

AI: So this was much, much later.

EH: (Yes). They were getting acquainted, and, and, in the course of conversation they discovered they're the same age, and, and then they were remembering an art contest for juniors, in the Chicago school system, and he won that, all-city, juniors, art contest, and Anna said, "Oh, you were the one that took my prize." And that's all she said, and she never commended him, and, of course, maybe she didn't realize what a hard, hard time he was having, in real poverty, and to think that he was the junior class -- and that must have been thousands and thousands of juniors in the whole city of Sea-, of Chicago, and he never knew that there was an art institute, never, nobody ever introduced that to him, but that's the way, that's how deep-seated, and 'course, Chicago's school system is not the world's best, I mean, they were, it was, they were notorious for a corrupt system.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.