<Begin Segment 3>

AI: Well, I would like to go back in time once again. And again to the, to the year before going to camp. And because I think it's so important to hear about the situation of people in different eras. And when you were in Sacramento and working for the Garritty family, do you, did you have a sense of -- at that time, I believe the term "colored" was commonly used. Did you have a sense that that term "colored" referred to you?

EH: No, no it, I think when you talk about "colored," particularly, it comes from the South, and that was distinctly blacks.

AI: And in Sacramento also? Would, was the term "colored" used to refer to, to blacks, to African Americans? Before...

EH: I think so. The term "black" certainly didn't arrive until fairly recently.

AI: Right, so in 1941 or 1942, "colored" would have been a commonly used term?

EH: Uh-huh. Somewhere I had an experience -- oh, well, anyway, somebody referred to a friend of mine, a Nisei person, saying -- well, I told you the term color-, Kuro-chan, but I had other people say, "(Yes), but she's colored." You know, meaning that they couldn't accept the fact that I was associating with somebody who was colored. But, but also, Caucasians used that term all the time.

AI: Right.

EH: And even, even in a good-intentioned way. "Well, coloreds do that," or "That's a colored, colored custom."

AI: And that would have been in the 1940s.

EH: Oh, (yes).

AI: Well, let me ask you --

EH: There was, I did have an experience at a dance, at a school dance, I guess it was, a high school dance, that a black guy came up and asked me to dance. And in those days I think I really wouldn't have, and I declined. And then I felt a little guilt or something, but I just wasn't ready to do that. My neighbor, Leona Henderson, was just a bright person, brainy gal. And I never had any experience of socializing with her much. We might walk back and forth to school once in a while, but I never saw much of her, I never knew much about, I knew she went to church, but I didn't know where that church was. We had a... kitty corner from Lincoln School was a small black church and we used to hear the music but we never, never ventured into it.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.