Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Sharon Tanagi Aburano Interview I
Narrator: Sharon Tanagi Aburano
Interviewers: Tom Ikeda (primary); Megan Asaka (secondary)
Location: Seattle, Washington
Date: March 25, 2008
Densho ID: denshovh-asharon-01-0028

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[Ed. note: This transcript has been edited by the narrator]

TI: So anything else unusual happen at Broadway during this time period before you --

SA: No, we had some wonderful active people, now in girls sports, the Takahashi girls were in there. We had John Okamoto and them in basketball, Shig Murao, they were outstanding. And in Garfield we had the Yanagimachi boys in football, big, burly guys. Gee, we were finally assimilating to some extent, I thought. We had a debater, couple of debaters that were outstanding at Broadway. So all that got dashed, of course, and I think we all started crawling into our little defensive shells. Being more wary and almost paranoid, because we didn't know what people were really thinking. It was pretty subtle, this racism.

TI: Did you ever have conversations with non-Japanese Americans at school during this time about these issues?

SA: No, very little. I think they didn't know what to say to us, either. It went both ways.

TI: How about Japanese American friends, did you ever talk about how you felt and how they felt during this time?

SA: It's a curious thing, I don't remember speaking to anybody. I think we were all on edge, but we, none of us knew. I mean, what could we say?

TI: And teachers' reactions, did they ever say anything about the situation?

SA: No. We went on as usual, but everybody's on guard. You can sense that.

TI: So it's so interesting, because so much unsaid during this time when all this uncertainty was going on.

SA: It's the fact that no one knew anything. [Laughs] No one knew what the future held. 'Cause I know I wrote in a book, and I had written something about the fact that maybe that's, you know, it's like a river flowing -- me and my rivers -- that I didn't know where it led to, but we're on a journey.

TI: So was this like a journal that you kept?

SA: No, I just used to write little bits, and then after the war, Bud Fukei ran the North American Post, and I used to put in little poems now and then. The only money I ever got was from the Post-Intelligencer, I think it was. I had written (a poem), and I'm kind of amazed, but I likened this whole situation on race prejudice to the fact that, you know, we're all in this fog, and maybe out will come the sun of enlightenment, and lift it. I don't know. Anyhow, I got five dollars for it, that's all I remember. And they spelled my name wrong, (as "Shar Tenagi").

<End Segment 28> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.