<Begin Segment 13>

TI: Okay, so May, we're going to get going again.

MH: Okay.

TI: And at the last tape, we sort of ended up, you were in Ellensburg going to college. Before we go back there, I just wanted to go back to Seattle. We were talking about some of the racism, discrimination that you felt. But I just wanted to go back to the other side, where you spent time interacting with other racial groups, and some of the, perhaps, positive things about that.

MH: Uh-huh.

TI: Can you recall friendships that you had with either Chinese, Filipino, Jewish, Caucasian friends, and describe some of them for us?

MH: I had a very close Chinese girlfriend, and we used to go back and forth. Mara Chin, and I'd walk blocks and blocks to be with her. So she was a good, Mara was, Mara was a good friend, but we lost touch with each other.

TI: Well, I'm curious, as Chinese, during this period of time, Japan and China were actually fighting each other in a war. Did that ever come up, or was there any sort of tension about that?

MH: No, none of that. I was very ignorant about what was going on in the world, really. I'm surprised at how little I knew when I was high school, even beginning college. And then I have a --

TI: Well, how about your parents? Did they ever talk about, about that with you?

MH: Uh-uh.

TI: Like having a Chinese friend, did they ever mention?

MH: There's one incident where I had a Jewish friend, and she came over to visit, and my mother, who's such a staunch Christian, my dad wasn't, but my mother, everything was "God this" and "God that." And I had this Jewish friend come over. My mother was very upset. She said, "Why do you have a Jewish friend?" "Because I like her." She says, "But the Jews killed Jesus." I said, "So what? Jesus was a Jew and you like Jesus." So my mother and I used to argue, and then they were about to sell their house and she said, she said she'd sell to anybody except a black or Jew. So I said to her, "Mama, you know, you're a Christian. Why do you talk that way?" I said, "God made the black people just like the Jews." But she would argue with me, and then, so then she went to see Reverend Tsai, you might have heard of him. Wonderful minister of the Congregational Church, and she said she told the Reverend, "My daughter tells me all this crap. What do you think about it?" And Reverend Tsai who was so sweet, he's like Jesus, he was very gentle and says, "Obasan, your daughter is right." So my mother, I hand it to her, she came back and she said, "May, I'm sorry. I was wrong. Reverend Tsai says that what you tell me is right." But I don't think she ever came to a point where she was willing to accept them, but at least verbally she, she said that. My mother was -- I must say she was prejudiced, but she's a real Christian. [Laughs] I say that sarcastically.

And, but I remember as a teenager, I went to a summer camp of teenagers, Christian camp. Went to Orcas Island. I think we were there two weeks, 'course I made many good friends there, but I have one friend that has remained my friend, and what, this is how many years? About seventy years or seventy-five?

TI: So you were about how old?

MH: Seventy-five, I was about fourteen.

TI: Yeah, seventy-four years ago.

MH: This friend, Flora Lee Millner and I talk on the phone every other day. She's now widowed and lives alone, and she's eighty-, she just turned eighty-nine. So from fourteen years of age until now, we've been friends, moved to California, she sent her daughter down to live with us for a while. Yeah, it's a nice friendship.

TI: Now, was that a friendship that stayed constant from that time?

MH: Pardon?

TI: Was that a friendship that, you stayed in contact with her ever since that, that camp?

MH: [Nods]

TI: So even, how about, like, during the wartime and things like that?

MH: Well, when evacuation time came, just as we were about to enter the gates into the assembly center, she and her husband brought me, brought us a chicken dish as a farewell. So yeah, I kept in touch by mail, Christmas cards, and now, her children are grown and we're both great-grandparents, and it's wonderful. So she's still my good friend.

TI: That's good. That's a good story. I just wanted to go, also go back. There was one point where we talked about how when your father was doing lots of hotels, he would tell you and your other siblings to, "not go down to Papa's hotels," because he thought they were perhaps dangerous or things like that. How did you think about the, sort of what we now call the International District and where those hotels were, sort of by Seventh and Weller and down there. Was that sort of a dangerous part of the city?

MH: Uh-huh.

TI: And what type of things would go on down there that you had to be afraid of?

MH: Well, the Filipino men didn't have women, and Dad was afraid they would want us, and so having six girls, he didn't want any of us down there. Well, I'll tell you what happened is he hired one of the Filipino men to man the hotel, be the manager of the hotel. He was a very nice man, and we'd go down with our parents once in a while. We'd never go alone. And he seemed so nice, but one day we were out in Auburn at a relative's, having Thanksgiving dinner, and all of a sudden on the radio we hear that the guy that's the manager of the Midway Hotel is running amuck with a knife in his hand and slashing at everybody as he ran down Jackson Street. Well, that was the manager; he just went berserk. Poor guys, they just, their lives must have been horrible. They'd come over, nobody wants them there, they don't have a wife or a girlfriend, they can't eat what they want to eat. So this man went amuck, and I think he ended up in jail. Terrible. So those things happened; it was a hard time.

TI: Okay, yeah, good.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.