<Begin Segment 9>

AI: So we're continuing our interview, and just before our break, Elaine, I was about to ask you about your, the way you felt, as neither being black nor white, in Chicago in 1944, '45, '46. Can you tell a little bit about that?

EH: I think, I probably didn't intend to stay with the Nisei associate circles totally. In fact, my, my mother, while I was at, (yes), while I was at Preferred, she decided to buy this two-story, brick flat. Now, I don't know how she went about locating that. There was a real estate office close by. We were kind of in the Addison, Cub field area, and this fellow was a Syrian -- oh, we had also joined Lakeview Presbyterian Church, which was the neighborhood church for that area. And among other people, there was a good, I became friends with a Syrian, college, I think college graduate, but, and that was a good experience in many ways. Though the minister was very conservative, I have to say almost out of line conservative, but I had some good friends there. And, so we, when we bought the house, that was comfortable. There was a Greek couple above us, very friendly, loud, noisy, kind of, but they loved, they were always making that dish, wrapped in grape leaves. The grape arbor that we had at, at 509 Newport, I think was the address, never bore any fruit, but the, but the Greek family always got, got the grape leaves, and they would make these, almost like cabbage rolls, but they were grape leaves, and, bring, bring them down.

They were... well, and my sisters went to Lakeview High School, which was also in that neighborhood. So, you know, we didn't really -- though my mother went to morning service at Lakeview, and then -- and I had Sunday School for a time there, my daughter, my sisters went to Sunday school class. And was only Anna and Sara by that time, Jean never left her Evanston domestic service job that she had until her senior year, her last semester of senior year, you could live anywhere and still graduate from Evanston High School, if that's where you were going. But my mother would dash home, grab a bite, and get to the Japanese, to the Japanese congregation which was meeting at the Fourth Presbyterian Church, the north end of Michigan Avenue. So, that, she enjoyed that group, and then from there it was kind of the usual social life, once, once in a while she probably went home with somebody, but that's also where... Jean, Sara, who was probably, well, she was in elementary school, and I'm not sure there was a junior high school. I don't know whether they went through eighth grade or ninth grade, but anyway, Sara wrote somewhere that she was living a split-personality life because she was in a white high school, and yet, on the weekends she was being a Nisei gadabout, and she was new in town in '40... '44, it was '45 almost, I guess, when we bought that house, but because -- oh, that's right, we were even renting a house still in that neighborhood, but she talks about going to Nisei dances. And I think the only place she would have found those is if she went with my mother to the Presbyterian Church. And my mother soon learned to travel, navigate through Chicago by herself, but, that's where she met, well... oh, I brought some printed material, but she befriends an Esther Yoshioka, and Jean, I think that's what happened, Jean and Esther's sister Julia were sharing the domestic job in Evanston, and both going to Evanston High School. So that these families somehow would have met, the younger sisters met, and they became bosom-buddies.

And my, I was also living at that -- oh, I think I was living, when initially I went to American Council, neighbors in that Rosenwald house, these were huge, cement, mostly looked like cement houses, I mean, they were big, in the University of Chicago area. Ellis Avenue at, at Cottage Grove or something like that, is a black section, and Ellis is maybe five or six blocks east. But there was a, a Jewish family lived -- the Rosenwald house is almost a double-block, they had a huge lawn, and, and servants' quarters with a carriage house, so it's an old house. But the Jewish couple had come to Julius Rosenwald's building and asked if they could interest somebody in earning their room and board, living with them there, and they had two, two children, a five- and an eight-year-old, something like that. He was a, what do they call it, the Jews had to have a special butcher, Kosher butcher's son, and she was a social worker, formerly. But anyway, so I said, wow, that would save me an hour's transportation, coming from the north side down to the middle of south side, so I said, you know, I'll try it. And so I with... I can't remember their name, Friedlanders, Frybergs, or somebody, anyway, for a whole year at least, and that was a good experience, 'cause I learned all about, they were excited about the establishment of Israel, and though Israel really didn't get their independence, or their established government until we were in Seattle, in '48, '9 probably. But I learned a lot... I should remember, I shouldn't forget this name. But anyway... in fact, there was a prominent doctor across the street, a black doctor, who was notorious as a dermatologist, and so that was slightly integrated. Even with the high cost.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.