<Begin Segment 45>

MA: Okay, so you had moved to Connecticut, gone through school for nine months, and then after it ended --

GM: After that I went to New York City --

MA: -- moved to New York City.

GM: -- for a year, uh-huh. And there, of course, you see discrimination in a true sense.

MA: How so?

GM: Well, in my, in my camera shop, my teacher's friends were all members of the retail union, and they used to hang around the shop, and when I opened it up, they came and this group was definitely against Jews. And very surprisingly, they were against Jews just as much as they were against blacks and everything else. But somehow, they weren't against me. I didn't fit into anything that would make 'em hate me, even though we were at war with Japan before, that didn't matter.

MA: But you saw more of the discrimination towards Jews and blacks?

GM: Yes, between other, whites and blacks and whatever. So the Japanese had their problem in one sense, but not, not when you moved out of their own area. Like you go to New York City, you get lost in the city.

MA: Did the Japanese Americans have a, a community in New York City at that point? I mean, they had a church.

GM: Not that I know of. They did live in certain areas, but not that close. Up around the end of Central Park someplace, around 105th, I think, they had a larger community up there. But it wasn't part of that elite class of whites that lived along Central Park. It was near the Central Park.

MA: Did you get a chance to interact with the, with the Japanese Americans in New York at all in their community?

GM: Yeah, at the church, one of the requirements that if you paid, stayed there was that you had to go to service on Sunday. [Laughs] Not being a religious person, it was nice going to church, because in New York City, it seemed like no man came to church; all women, young women came to church, and we got to know quite a bit of people. Being Sunday, after church we'd pair off and go to the Central Park or go to Coney Island, depending on weather, we'd take off to Times Square or stuff like that.

MA: Now, were these Japanese Americans, were they mostly born on the East Coast, or were they --

GM: Yes, born, yes, uh-huh. The ones that I associated with were born in the New York area.

MA: How were they different from maybe your friends, your Nisei friends back in Seattle?

GM: Well, they're different in the sense that they lived in a different area without the Japanese. And, of course, my friends were a little bit on the more well-to-do side, because one of 'em was, I served time with him in overseas. He was in my platoon, and his father owned a gift shop right in Radio City Music Hall called the Miyako gift shop, or Mikado gift shop, I forget the name. But the other one was Yosh Ito, who lived in Long Island, that his sister owned a lamp and shade company in Times Square. So, but most of 'em were local people that stayed there, that they were no different. Interests was a little bit different, but they're more curious about us than we are about them, I think.

MA: I'm curious if they knew about the camps, you know, and they knew what happened to the West Coast Japanese Americans?

GM: Well, you know, if you don't experience, it's hard to tell somebody what's it's like. If you told somebody you were in the camps, that's about it. But they might ask you how was it, or something like that, but it's pretty hard to explain to somebody what you go through. Some people listen to it and some people pass it off. Even today, if you told somebody you're in camp, well, they're not going to say, "Tell me all about it." But they have their own discrimination that's always there, even today, so they're used to it, too.

MA: What types of things do they go through?

GM: Just the normal, normal things that we experience every day ourselves. I don't know if you are affected by discrimination yourself, you know. Some people are, they're more sensitive to it when they, somebody says something bad and it affects them. It's like saying, some guys say, "Well, I know a lot of Japs around here," okay? And either saying something good or bad, if you know a lot of Japanese, that means he's friendly with them, to be able to know 'em, but he used the word 'Jap' because he used that, that term so many years. Now, I worked at Tall's for twenty years as a salesman, and for twenty years I had the same guys says, "You Japs are really good," and stuff like that, and he doesn't realize what he's saying. And I'm not about to correct him because I don't want to criticize anybody, 'cause I know what he means. You understand what I'm saying? Whereas some persons might get mad right away when he hears that. I might tell a person, "Don't use that word because it's not good for you because somebody might get mad and beat you up." Other than that, as far as I'm concerned, the meaning of it is what concerned me. It's not like when they come in and say, "Well, I won't buy from a Jap."

<End Segment 45> - Copyright © 2005 Densho. All Rights Reserved.