<Begin Segment 12>

AI: And then it was in February, I believe, that there, some parents of schoolchildren made some kind of protest about the employment of Japanese Americans like yourself. Can you tell about that?

MN: Yeah, it was amazing, 'cause it came out in the newspaper, reading about it, and I go, "Wow. If they only knew how dumb and innocent I was, they wouldn't even bother." But they even went as far to say that we may poison the food, the lunch food. But I didn't get there 'til after lunch, so there was no way I could get to the lunchroom, and it was ridiculous, the whole thing. But then we were the targets.

AI: I understand that one of the leaders of this parent movement was a Mrs. Sekor, Esther Sekor, that she had a child at one of the grammar schools in Seattle, and that she was one of the main organizers pushing to have you and the other employees fired.

MN: Yeah, she was pretty dynamic to start this protest, and she said they never had a Japanese clerk working at that school, I think it was Gatewood. And they had no Japanese in the school, "so they shouldn't have a Japanese clerk working in their school."

AI: And what other kinds of complaints did you hear? Other charges or accusations?

MN: Those are the only two main complaints I heard, but it's all what I read in the paper.

AI: What did you think was going to happen when you saw this kind of complaint come up?

MN: We had no idea what was going to happen, and finally, James Sakamoto got all these clerks together, there were (twenty-seven) of us, and I guess the superintendent contacted him and asked him to talk to us. And to this day, I know I went to the meeting, but it's a blank. I blocked it out entirely, and it was after the war, when we were getting a redress against the school district that I, "Oh, I was there. There's my signature on the resignation sheet." So I guess, I says, "I must have been there." But to this day, I've blocked it out of my mind, and I don't know what happened at the meeting, but I know I attended.

AI: Well, for people who don't know, tell a little bit about James Sakamoto, and what the significance was that he was the one who called you together.

MN: Jim was a community leader, and he was blind, but he was a dynamic person. And so from what I hear, he was very instrumental in getting all of us to sign our resignation.

AI: He was the, of course, the editor, the founder and the editor of the...

MN: Courier League.

AI: Japanese American Courier newspaper, he sponsored a lot of activities, including the Courier League sports, and he was also very active with the Japanese American Citizens League.

MN: Uh-huh.

AI: So those were all things that you knew about him. I'm wondering --

MN: So we all looked up to him, and says, oh, when he called us all to office, we all attended.

AI: Was there anything else that you recall about that period of when you were being asked to resign, who else was involved? For example, did your principal get involved in this discussion at all?

MN: No, he didn't get involved. The only person that I know was... can't recall her name now, but she was working at the administration building, and then the superintendent called her in, and said he knew about the meeting, because he's the one that had Jim set up the meeting for us. And he told her that, "You should persuade all the girls to resign, because otherwise, you're gonna lose your job anyway."

AI: And so you, there was this sense that you could either resign voluntarily, or if you didn't do that...

MN: We'd have been fired anyway. And so I remember the article that came out right after we signed our resignation, Mrs. Sekor said it was "very 'white' of those girls to resign." Yeah. That's blatant discrimination. I wonder if we were black, whether she would have said it was "black" of them to resign? [Laughs]

AI: It's, it made it very clear what her thinking was.

MN: Uh-huh. It was just discrimination.

AI: I, as you mentioned, later during the redress era, some information was brought out about what happened regarding your forced resignation. And we'll come back to the redress part of it later on in our interview, but before that, in this book, here is a copy of the letter that you all signed, and I wonder if you could just read it for us. It starts right there and continues to the next page.

MN: Okay. "To the school board: We, the undersigned American citizens of Japanese ancestry have learned that our presence as employees in Seattle School District system has been protested by certain person and organizations. Most of us have received our education in local schools, and have been proud of the fact as we have been proud of our positions as employees. We do not take this action in any spirit of defeat, but believe we can by our resignations demonstrate beyond dispute that we have the best interest of the school system at heart. We take this step to prove our loyalty to the school system and the United States by not becoming a contributing factor to dissension and disunity when national unity in spirit and deed is vitally necessary to the defense of and complete victory for America. We bear no ill will toward those who have protested our employment in the school system. We feel that is their privilege. We only hope that the welfare of the schools will be served by our action in resigning the positions we now occupy. Finally, we wish to express our heartfelt appreciation to the School Board, the superintendents, the principals, and teachers for the kind treatment accorded us."

I read somewhere where they said it was for the good of the war effort, but I still don't understand how it could be, help the war effort if we had resigned.

AI: Yeah, it doesn't really make sense.

MN: No.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.