Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: George Morihiro Interview
Narrator: George Morihiro
Interviewer: Megan Asaka
Location: Seattle, Washington
Date: December 15 & 16, 2005
Densho ID: denshovh-mgeorge_2-01-0044

<Begin Segment 44>

MA: Were there other Japanese Americans in the school, or other Asian Americans?

GM: Yeah, there was about three or four, a couple Chinese kids, or three or four Japanese and a couple Chinese kids. It was kind of interesting because my, my roommate in my dorm where I, where we stayed at -- there was a dorm, but it was, it was a house that we stayed at, belonged to the owner of the Argo cornstarch, and it was quite a building. It was, had, I don't know how many rooms it had in there, but it used to belong to the Argo cornstarch family. And my roommate was -- one of the roommates -- was a member of the Ku Klux Klan. [Laughs] So it was quite interesting, and...

MA: What was the interactions like between you two? I mean, wow. [Laughs]

GM: We were very close. We were very close, and talking about the Ku Klux Klan, the first question I asked was, "Why did you join?" And it made sense to me because he said, "If I didn't join, I would have got beaten up." He said, "The whole family would have got beaten up, see. And it's kind of hard to believe, but I guess in certain parts of the country, everybody belonged to the Ku Klux Klan, and if you don't join up, you're gonna get beat up by your own people. So he said to stay on the safer side, you joined up, but you didn't have to believe what they preached. And this is a kid that, telling me a story, he's friendly with me and he's friendly with blacks, and he's telling me, just openly that he belonged to the Ku Klux Klan, and he couldn't get out of it.

MA: That's interesting.

GM: Yeah, to me it was really interesting because I just couldn't believe it. But he told me, he says, "Well, we didn't do anything bad or anything, but we belonged to it." And another thing, too, is when you move out of this area, go to places like New York City. New York City is a place of different people, but they're not mixed. The Irish live in one area, the Italians live in another area, the Negroes live in one area.

MA: You mean it's very segregated, the communities?

GM: It is segregated. And the boundary might be just one block, one block will be black and the next block might be Puerto Rican, and they're close together.

MA: How did you fit in, then, as a Japanese American?

GM: Well, I didn't fit in, because where I stayed was a church that was on East Fifty-seventh Street. Now, East Fifty-seventh Street was probably the most exclusive area in New York City, and East Fifty-seventh was lined with penthouses and museums and art galleries and things like that. And the Japanese church there had a six-story building in-between all the other buildings along the street. And I know when I come home from work or going away from my place of residence there, each place, each building will have its own doorman, and coming home from work I would greet each doorman as I walked by him, and then walk into this little church.

MA: Oh, I see. So you, you stayed in the Japanese church?

GM: Yeah, and they gave me a room for ten dollars a month.

MA: What year was this?

GM: That was 1947.

<End Segment 44> - Copyright © 2005 Densho. All Rights Reserved.