<Begin Segment 38>

MA: How do you see, I guess, the future of the Japanese American community in Spokane and maybe in general?

GY: Well, for Spokane, I could see the Japanese slowly dying off. This is the picture in my own mind. I could see the Japanese slowly dying off, a lot of intermarriages, all my kids all intermarried. They in turn would mostly likely marry another Caucasian, and I could see the Japanese in my family slowly being integrated. And a hundred years from now, it'd be just, what, half a percent Oriental, and you won't be able to tell the offsprings were any Oriental blood in them at all.

MA: How do you feel about that? I mean, do you have an opinion?

GY: It's, it was the life that I chose for my family. Naturally, my family had to follow suit. It would have been nice for them to have married a Japanese, for instance, but that was not the case. So I accept all my daughter-in-laws and my son-in-laws. The only thing is the Caucasians, we get together and I've heard 'em say, "Hey, we're outnumbering the Japanese now," you know, at the dinner table. [Laughs] In a joking way, of course. But once in a while they do outnumber us, the family, in my own family. It's just a big joke, is what it amounts to.

<End Segment 38> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.