<Begin Segment 35>

TI: So in talking about rules and things but moving on, I guess, you had children also.

YN: Yes.

TI: And how many children did you have?

YN: My oldest is a girl, my middle is my, my son, and the youngest is a girl. And they all three have unique, they are different. It's hard to believe they come out of the same family. My oldest is a dentist, and now in Southern Cal, my son is in, not very intelligent like his father, he's in the retail business, earning nothing. And my youngest is even worse, she's a schoolteacher in elementary, and having a hard time keeping a job as they keep cutting costs. And the two bottom ones don't earn enough really to really make, say they make a good living. So I haven't taught them economics very well, because I knew you'll never get rich being in the retail business and being a schoolteacher, and I knew that being a dentist is the only business that's working themselves out of business. Dental care is now a different game.

TI: I'm curious; are your children or any of your children as outspoken as you are?

YN: That's a good question. I think that the one difference in my children than my era, they're much more comfortable in the Asian American world. Because so much of the third generation that my family is a part of, they're not ethnically defined by who they are, but by a broader term, Asian Americans. So already in my family, my son is not married to a Japanese American, he's married to a Chinese American. And if there's any difficulties for our family, it's in my wife and myself, it's not their problem. We have to make the adjustments.

TI: Because the problems that you have -- see, it's kind of interesting. Here you've been such a champion for breaking barriers, and yet you have difficulties with...

YN: Because I broke a barrier in religion, okay, which I, I was a part of -- in my mind, nobody else's -- but I was still married to a Japanese American girl. The barrier that my, Mark broke, is he married somebody outside the Japanese American family. So we never had that problem, but if we have a problem, it's our problem because they, they're able to do it.

TI: Well, so when your son married a Chinese American, was it with your blessing?

YN: Absolutely, but any of the doubt in my mind of success lies upon their doing it. I don't know if I could have done it. You asked me the question, why must things come to a closure? Because we only have limited skills. It's when we think our skills go for eternity, I said, "No. We all get old." And there's a time that I must give up all my empowerment to the next group, and it shouldn't necessarily look like me or agree with me. I should be able to say openly, "I trust the empowerment that you have that you'll be right for all people." The same thing I asked as a Japanese American had to get broader because the only acceptance from white America is not sufficient for me. I need the same acceptance from my Jewish families, my Hispanic families, my black families, and I think we got a lot of things yet that need to be resolved.

<End Segment 35> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.