<Begin Segment 7>

TI: I wanted to back a little bit more to your, to your mother, since she was such a big influence in terms of...

RM: Oh, yeah.

TI: Did she ever talk about, sort of, race relations? About other ethnic groups?

RM: Uh-huh.

TI: What was that...

RM: Well, we got into that sort of accidentally. She had an uncle, and that uncle in The Dalles, or somewhere in Oregon, had married an Indian girl. And in Boise, in... well, in Idaho particularly, there was an anti-Indian feeling. And it was there in the class, classes that I took, too. But my mother -- and I remember it clearly -- somebody came to the house, a relative, and started to disparage Indians. And my mother really, once in a while she, she would get upset, usually pretty-well controlled. But she really threw the person out of the house. She wasn't going to hear that, wasn't going to have it, and was very upset about it. And so -- and I asked her, and I've, I don't know whether Jesse or Roy were there, but I immediately, I remember, after the person was, left, I said, "Why? Why is that person so hostile to the Indians?" I said -- you know, I had 'em in class, worked with 'em, they were on, selling papers, they were just like everybody else. And she said, "Well, there are some people who just don't like other people because of their skin, and you have to know that and live around it." And then she mentioned the Jewish people and Hitler persecuting them.

TI: Before you go into that, I was curious, that incident when she essentially threw that person out of the house --

RM: Yeah.

TI: -- did that surprise you that your mother did that?

RM: Yeah, yeah, because my mother wasn't that -- was sort of a gentle creature. [Laughs] In fact, shy, even as a waitress, she couldn't, she'd, she would rarely ever become emotional and get upset like that. And so it took a lot to stir her. But that issue really bothered her.

TI: Was it more from a intellectual, or was it because she really felt a kinship? You mentioned your uncle...

RM: She, well, she loved the Indian girl that my uncle married, there was an attachment there. This is an Oregon attachment. And I don't know, that early period is pretty gray to me. I never met the Indian girl, and he died, he drowned in the Columbia River, so it was a different era that we're speaking -- this is the, in her life, this would be the "sand" area, era. And we didn't get to meet the family in Oregon 'til quite a few years later. But I remember the incident clearly, and I remember her being explosive about it, and it really jarred me that my mother could get so upset about something like that.

And I know that that had another influence, when, that there were Japanese -- just a few -- in classes that I had in, in grade school, junior high and high school, and when something would be said about them, particularly after the war, I would react hostile to that. I marched behind, in ROTC, a Japanese fellow, Atsushi Shintani, who's really a fine guy in every way.

TI: So your mother's influence just wasn't just for Indians. It was all, like, different people of color that she --

RM: Yeah. Oh, yeah. She, that's what I meant by the Jewish people. She was really hostile to Hitler's persecution of the Jews. I remember in 1937-'38, coming home, I would come home and talk about the headlines that I had read, and I'd ask her about this persecution of the Jews. And she said, "Well, they've been persecuted throughout history because they have a different religion." And I had remembered that, because I said, "But Mom, the Jewish religion came before the Christian religion. I don't understand the connection." She said, "You're not doing very well in Sunday school," something like that. And I said, "Is there a connection between Sunday school and what's happening to the Jews?" "Yes," she said, "there is." She said, "I can't think of what, for you to read," she said, "but why don't you go to the library?" So I, I went to the library and I checked out World's Great Religions, and still couldn't get the difference. It was still, to me, "Why are you persecuting Jewish people?" And that, that kind of thing.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.