Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Elaine Ishikawa Hayes Interview III
Narrator: Elaine Ishikawa Hayes
Interviewer: Alice Ito
Location: Seattle, Washington
Date: June 24, 2004
Densho ID: denshovh-helaine-03-0015

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AI: [Photograph of Ralph Hayes] So, so this was your husband Ralph Hayes.

EH: And I guess I'm just showing you what a good part of my life gets involved, because we did a lot of, we got involved with a lot of things that, in common.

AI: And I wanted to go back a little bit and ask you, you had mentioned while we were on break that it might have, your relationship and your, the fact that you were married to Ralph, might have affected some of the attitudes that people held towards you as, as a Japanese American who was administering a program that really was founded with a purpose to assist the black community, the African American community.

EH: And I suppose the fact that he, he was who he was, certain number of the administration and people would have confidence in his philosophy or my picking up his intuitions and philosophy that, the fact that he was a teacher. And, and the other thing is that we knew Walt very well. We were in the church when he was recruited, so we had a lot of the common foundations. I think, on the other hand, we lived in Central Area, and that makes a lot of difference. Those were exciting times, I think, particularly... maybe it's true of other communities, but I think in Seattle, it was an exciting time. And the fact that we were in Madrona, I think, was particularly valuable, kind of endearing as far as, we considered ourselves Madronites for a long time. And I still see friends, and we still get together, despite the fact that we're gradually thinning out, and we've moved, but we still keep in contact. I often wonder if the community's still the same. Some of the same people like Roger Sale still live there. Potentially, it's also geographically an ideal model to have half of the community coming up from Twenty-third, west, and the other half coming from the lake.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.