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TI: Okay, before we go there, do you know where they lived when they first, sort of that 1919 time period?

MT: When we go back to 1919, I don't know, but in the late or mid-'30s, we lived right near Pacific school, which is where Seattle (University) is, dormitories built there. We lived there for a good many years on Eleventh Avenue between Cherry and Columbia.

TI: Okay, so Pacific... so that's --

MT: Seattle University, I should say.

TI: Seattle University's there now, yeah, not Seattle Pacific, but Seattle University. And so that's where you kind of grew up.

MT: Yeah, I grew up there for a while.

TI: And so describe the neighborhood in terms of who you played with.

MT: Well, I think in 1938 or so, we moved from there and we went up to, near the Providence Hospital area. So I lost contact, there were very few Japanese living in that area. So my only contact with the Japanese at that time was going to Japanese school. But all my friends were Caucasians, all my classmates was Caucasians. In fact, I went to T.T. Minor, and I think we were one of the two Japanese families there. There was one Chinese family, a fellow named Lip Mar, who was very popular, or well-known in the Chinese Cathay Post. Lip and I knew each other because I think they were the only Chinese family at the grade school. So in school, my friends were mostly Caucasians, and the only Japanese contact is, was with the Japanese school. So I really didn't have any close Japanese friends, say, during grade school and junior high, high school age.

TI: And so, sort of describe that in terms of, do you think, were you treated any differently because you were Japanese?

MT: Can't think of any prejudice or anything like that. I had some very, very close friends among my grade school friends. In fact, we went, got together several times with them.

TI: And so T.T. Minor's on Union.

MT: Yeah, Eighteenth and Union.

TI: Eighteenth and Union, and I kind of know that neighborhood, and there's a synagogue that's just...

MT: Yeah, Temple De Hirsch.

TI: ...a couple blocks down. So were there a lot of Jewish kids in that neighborhood?

MT: Yeah, so we were there, you know, a mixed Caucasian group, fairly strong in the Jewish population, very few blacks. I think there were only one or two black students in the whole school.

TI: And then you said around 1938, so you were a teenager, about thirteen, fourteen years old, you moved up by Providence. So what school did you go to?

MT: Went to Minor and then went to Garfield.

TI: Okay. And then when you went to Garfield, or when you moved to that neighborhood up by Providence, my sense was that there were (few) Japanese living in that neighborhood?

MT: Yeah, uh-huh.

TI: And so what was that like, moving to a neighborhood with (few) Japanese?

MT: I really didn't think about it, but even in high school, most of my friends were Caucasians. And like I say, my Japanese contact was because I went to Japanese school.

TI: When you were growing up, did your parents ever talk about being Japanese or being Nihonjin in terms of what that meant?

MT: I don't think they really stressed it, but we were aware we were Japanese. There's no question about that; we were Japanese.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.