<Begin Segment 27>

AI: Well, now, so in the meantime, though, your first son had been born.

MN: He was born in Portland while he was in dental school.

AI: In 1950 was it?

MN: Yeah, I worried, "How am I gonna raise this child when we're barely making it?" And then I looked around and I said, "Oh, the dogs and cats get fed, so I guess he'll get fed, too." [Laughs]

AI: And that was Ralph?

MN: Uh-huh.

AI: And then after you moved to Seattle, then you had the rest of your children.

MN: Uh-huh.

AI: And so next was Jim?

MN: Jim was next, four years later.

AI: And then you had twins?

MN: Uh-huh.

AI: And then your last son was...

MN: Dean.

AI: ...born in 1960?

MN: Yeah. I wanted a girl real badly from the very first. First girl was going to be Nancy, and the last one was going to be April. He made April because he was born on April 30th, but (he) was a boy. [Laughs]

AI: Well, and tell me about the naming of your, of your kids. Did you and Tom talk about the names, or did you consider any Japanese names at all?

MN: No, we didn't consider Japanese names. And all their middle names are from the uncles, and that's how we chose the middle name. But I think the hardest one was picking names for the twins, and Gary and Larry is a big mistake. They're too, too alike. So you should name your twins differently.

AI: Well, what were some of the mix-ups that you had with those names?

MN: Well, they're too close. You don't know... and one is, Gary is with one "r," Larry with two "r's," for one.

AI: So you raised your boys in that same house there in the Greenwood area for all that period? Well, tell me, do you think that the boys faced any experiences of prejudice themselves as they were growing up?

MN: I don't know. I don't think they knew prejudice at all, because they were always living among the white people and went to school with the white children. And they'd bring them home all the time, and we had no difficulty with them.

AI: So it seemed like they had good childhood friends and they were accepted by their friends.

MN: Yeah, we didn't have any difficulties, except one time I was trying to explain to Ralph that -- he was a teenager in high school, and they used to go up to Dick's Drive-In, that's still there, and after football games, it was a hang-out for all of them and so they, I always called him a "Rah-Rah Boy." Anyway, they used to hang out there. And then after a Ballard or Ingraham game, they would ensue, a big fight would ensue. And so one day I said to Ralph, "You know, if you're in that group and you're running away and the police are after you, they'll spot you right away because they'll recognize you right away." And he goes, "Why? Why am I so different?" He thought he was just like the white boys, and he didn't know that he was any different, which shocked me.

AI: Were you able to make him understand?

MN: I don't know, because he was well-accepted, and all he had was all these boys, white friends.

AI: So as far as he was concerned, he was the same.

MN: He was just the same. He didn't see, he didn't think he was any different than the, than they were.

AI: And why was it shocking for you?

MN: Well, that he didn't realize that he was different, 'cause I didn't ever emphasize that he was different.

AI: And so you and Tom didn't really talk to the boys about being Japanese American or...

MN: No, they just accepted it.

AI: And had they, did they know about your camp experience, or did that come up at all?

MN: Very little. It's funny how we never discussed it. I remember one time we were having dinner, and one of the boys had brought a girl for dinner, and we were discussing a little bit about camp life. And she thought, "Oh boy, this is a good family to get married to. They go camping." [Laughs] How little she knew that that isn't what we were talking about.

[Interruption]

AI: So we're continuing our interview with May Namba, and May, just as we were finishing before the break, you were telling that funny story about one of the girls that one of your sons knew, misunderstood and thought that when you talked about camp, that you were talking about summer camp.

MN: There's another thing about discrimination. My boys all played football at Ingraham High School, and he was in the backfield, and one lineman on the other team said, "I'm gonna get you, Chinaman," and pointed at Larry. And the rest of the team felt real offended about that, and they pounced on him and pounced on him, and they said it was brutal the way they attacked him after that remark.

AI: Wow. So, so his teammates really stood up for him.

MN: Uh-huh. He was one of them.

<End Segment 27> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.