<Begin Segment 10>

TI: Well, let me, let me ask you this: so you mentioned you went to the Baptist nursery school, so I imagine that was your first experience with the Baptist Church.

YN: Right.

TI: Were your, your parents Baptist? Were they Christian?

YN: No. See, this is the marvel for the Japanese Americans. I would say the preponderance, the preponderance of our population must have come out of a Buddhistic or Shinto understanding. That is our (Issei) parents and grandparents (...). Everything else that happened, happened because it was a part of Americanization. And in America, everybody didn't need to become Catholic or Protestant or Muslim. (Many) remained Buddhist, but some, because of the situation and where they were, became Protestants. And I have often wondered what my difference of my understanding religion is than those who are born into anything. When you're born in Buddhism or Christianity, you don't ask questions. I guess the same thing that I was the brat was the same thing they questioned me about my religious understanding. I had to think about religion, and I couldn't think of religion that exempted everything else. For I grew up in the community of people that weren't what I was.

TI: But before you even thought about these things, your, your parents decided to...

YN: To send me there because it's a convenient place to go. They were teaching them how to cook, learn English, how to adjust to society, they were called missionaries. They came to help the Japanese American community. They happened to be Baptists or Methodists or Presbyterians, and so out of loyalty (and gratitude), that's what they became.

TI: But then you're saying as you grew up and where you became cognizant of religion, you decided to stay with, with the faith, with the Baptist faith?

YN: Because, that's because of my understanding, not because I was born a Baptist. Do you understand? I was not assumed to be Baptist, but quickly, because I went there, it was assumed I was Baptist. But it was a thinking decision as time went on. Not at the moment. I didn't have that kind of sophistication.

TI: So at what point do you think that you decided you were Baptist? I mean, it was like --

YN: After the internment, because I began to wonder why did Reverend Emery E. Andrews do the things for my community that (many) people did not do?

TI: We'll get into this a little bit more, but I just wanted to say, so it was really his actions, his, the way he was...

YN: You're right on.

TI: ...made you consciously decide to become Baptist.

YN: Because of his influence. My influence of Gene Boyd, another white field house director at Collins Field House, had this tremendous influence on how I thought about people in sports, because we all played there as a mixed group. The other places, as you may have read, we were not allowed to bowl (along with whites). You couldn't go to the golf clubs, the tennis clubs, because they were only for one group. And you know your education, University of Washington, it didn't have athletes of color or students of color. They weren't welcome.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.