<Begin Segment 28>

TI: Yeah, I want to go back now to Garfield, and I wanted to actually talk about, I think it was your junior year, that was when you got a part-time job. And want you to talk a little bit about this, because this opened up a huge career for you.

YN: Tremendous. Garfield High School in its uniqueness, the time of the late '40s and the early '50s, was considered the model UN school. Very interesting that I would fall again into something, we were made up of equal amounts of Asians, blacks, whites, and the Jewish community. We had enough to remain and be identifiable, so none of us had to be a token to the majority. We also had something very unique. From the International District and the Yelser Terrace (area), we had poor whites, poor Asians, to the wealth of the Seattle Tennis Club, to Broadmoor through the yacht basin of Montlake. We never knew, but we got along. Some fifty years later, we have to put it into perspective, but that was my background of a school, that I wasn't lost having to be one of a group that I wasn't a part of. There was enough of us to know my identity, but there was enough of the others that I had to appreciate their presence. The greatest thing I have learned at Garfield was (...) I would forever know my identity, because I was always hyphenated (as a Japanese American). I never knew the weakness from the majority was they were not hyphenated, so I never knew of what (ethnicity) they were a part of.

TI: So let me get clear about this. So when you say you were "hyphenated," you're essentially saying that you knew you were --

YN: They were Americans.

TI: But you knew you were Japanese American.

YN: Japanese American, Chinese American. We looked alike in their eyes, but we were all hyphenated.

TI: And you said that was your strength?

YN: It was our strength, I thought it was our weakness.

TI: But that is your strength.

YN: My strength.

TI: Because you knew who you were and where you came from.

YN: And I knew then I can contribute for who I was, not what I wasn't. The terms that came out that bothered me the most were the words "banana," "oreos," all it was trying to say is my skin color was this, but I was, inside, something else. I don't have any comments to that. We all play that game, but when I found (strength in my identity) it was no longer a negative.

TI: So I guess I'm, I'm not clear about this. So...

YN: Because (...) the (new buzz) word (...) was "assimilation." We're all going to look alike, think alike, and we're going to be alike. I found that, as a social scientist, that was why my whole five years of college education went down into the dumps. That theorem didn't work out.

TI: So what you're talking about is this concept of the "melting pot," where we all become assimilated, versus --

YN: To one culture.

TI: Right, versus, and you're saying that there's, there's a fallacy to that because, a weakness to that because you need to know who you are and where you come from. There's a strength in that, so that --

YN: Because we're the microcosm of the world. We are not homogenous. Other countries think they are, but one day they're not going to be homogenous either.

TI: Right. And so going back to Garfield, you said, in some ways, the --

YN: That was my strengthening of who I was (and exposure to many cultures).

TI: And did, being in an environment like Garfield, which you, earlier called sort of like a UN school, because there was such diversity, was it easier to see that?

YN: It was not only easier to see that, it (raised) more questions in my education. Now, what is the presence of the Jewish community? Are they my religious enemy? You see? Are the blacks my threat? Are the wealth of the white people something I cannot accept? All those questions I had to (learn and) become a part of that community. But I couldn't become a part of the community, because I could never be black or white, (etc.), other than what I was. And the strengthening of my identity, when I could tell the people who I was, was a new beginning which took me into another world that I had to understand (and be a part of).

TI: And so when did that awareness happen? When did you know...

YN: All the way through high school, when they would say they knew my mother because she was a domestic (in their homes), the question was in my mind: could their mother have been my domestic? [Pauses] I've no other comment.

TI: So, so I'm trying to get an understanding of this. So here you are, just years removed from coming away from being incarcerated.

YN: Right.

TI: Having parents or a mother who is a domestic, whose English probably isn't, isn't the best, and here you're talking about the strength of being what you call hyphenated, Japanese American. It seemed like such a contradiction. It's almost like you would feel a sense... I mean, it'd be in some ways, a difficult time to be Japanese American, or feel really, being proud of being Japanese American.

YN: Because... I'll share where I was coming from. The most important facet of life is lot of things we don't understand, we hold to ourselves, because we all want to be successful. And so we will give up much of who we are for the success because we got family, want to get married, you want to have a job. And because, if the empowerment is of one group, they hold all the marbles. If they don't want to play the game anymore, they could pick up their marbles and leave. I began to understand diversity because I could remember a classmate that was in school at that time by the name of Quincy Jones, one of our greatest musicians that came out of that school. And he has a story of his own, just like the Japanese Americans, but I don't think many of my black community and the Asian community (are aware of) his story. His (story is) an American story as mine is an American story. But it doesn't make any sense if it (is interpreted only as) the story of white America (by the understanding of white America. It must be understood by both groups or cultures).

TI: Okay, no, I, I think I get that.

YN: And that's why my identity had to be -- my affirmation for you (is I) know you're a Japanese American, my affirmation for you to do your job is if you don't do it (as a Japanese American), who will?

<End Segment 28> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.