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MA: So going back a little bit to your residency in Detroit, I'm curious how patients or other doctors reacted to you, if you ever encountered any sort of discrimination being Japanese American and a woman during this time.

KB: Yeah, I felt a little bit of discomfort, but I think after they know a person, then it's a little bit more comfortable. I think they feel somebody with a different face might be their enemy, I don't know. We did have problems after we were married, we were looking for an apartment and this one place had a big sign, "Apartment for rent," and knocked on the door and a woman looked out the window and said, "Japs, we don't want Japs here," and that was the end of that. So I think there was still some feelings about the Asians back then.

MA: What about your husband? Did people sort of view him as white or Caucasian, or how did people view him?

KB: Yeah, I think he was viewed as a Caucasian. I don't think... I don't know why, I guess she saw me and decided, okay, you know, that she didn't want any Asians in her apartment.

MA: In Detroit during that time, what were the race relations like in general, I mean, between the African American community and the white population? Was there, you'd mentioned earlier in Philadelphia there was some tension. How was Detroit?

KB: I think in Detroit also, there was a black, more of a black community. We didn't see any race riots or anything like that. I think the blacks were sort of, at that time, living separately. There was also a big white community which had immigrated from the South, Kentucky, Virginia, and they were working in the automobile industry, and they were kind of different.

MA: Right, maybe had some different prejudices because they were from the South.

KB: Right, yeah. There were also some very rich black people, actually, near, not too far from the hospital where I was working. And we had a chance to visit some of them, because they, some of the mansions that the blacks were living in were not too far from the hospital. And one of the dieticians, I think, invited us to visit a friend of hers who had this huge house, a beautiful home, and he had a lovely kitchen where they cooked dinner for us and kind of impressive. Actually, I think we visited two homes that were owned by prominent black people.

MA: It seems like in Detroit during that time, it must have been a pretty well-off city, with the automobile industry in its heyday.

KB: Oh, it was, right exactly. So we didn't see the, the conditions that came up later when there were riots and so forth.

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