<Begin Segment 26>

TI: Now, during this time period, in those months when you're dating and getting lots of letters, back in, in the '50s, it wasn't that normal to have interracial marriages.

MH: Yes.

TI: So did, how did you think about that? Did you think that was going to be a problem?

MH: I didn't even think about that. Oh, and I didn't say that when we got engaged, it happened my sister Elizabeth was up from Taiwan, and staying in the Imperial Hotel. And so I went around to tell her as soon as we got engaged, and she was very positive about it. We'd taken her out to lunch, I mean, actually, no, I think it was after I told her that we took her out to lunch, and then, then Lucius's sister and her husband were also in Tokyo, and had invited us -- not, invited me, because Lucius was with them -- to their house for a small party with friends, 'cause I'd met her before. And as it turned out, it turned into our engagement party. And we, we went to this, the engagement dinner was at a very prominent House of Tofu, which was, had been a tofu center for, I don't know, probably centuries. And as it turned out, my sister didn't like tofu. [Laughs] But at any rate, that's where our engagement dinner was.

TI: That's a good story. And so you just started talking, that Lucius had to make his way back to Washington, D.C. He was going to stop on the West Coast and see your brother.

MH: Yes. Well, see his family, and then he met my brother, yes.

TI: He met your brother and later your father. And so probably you're getting word that he's going to meet, see your brother, meet your --

MH: I knew he'd meet my brother, and, I mean, of course, I gave him the introduction to my brother. And as it happened, while Lucius was in Seattle, my brother had his engagement party to his, to the woman he later married. And so Lucius was present at that. And then -- pardon me?

LH: Best man.

MH: No, but later best man when you came back through, Darling.

TI: But while this was happening, you're in Japan, and Lucius is meeting your brother and then later...

MH: And telling, my brother was telling my father his impressions of Lucius because I had already written to my parents about it.

TI: So were you a little nervous about, about this time period with, in some ways, Lucius meeting your family without you there.

MH: No, I wasn't at all, but I knew that, I didn't know how they'd take it at all. And as it happened, my mother had been quite ill, so my father was picking up all the mail and bringing it up here to the ranch, which is where they were then. And he opened the letter in which I announced my engagement, and he didn't show it to Mother right away. Because he didn't know what her reaction would be, and she was not that well, and he didn't want to show it to her. But he wrote a very positive thing back to me about it. And then, as I say, then Lucius went to Washington --

TI: Going back to your father, so when he wrote that positive response, what was your reaction? Did that...

MH: Oh, very, I was very happy. I was not proposed, I was not going to break this thing up regardless of the reaction from my family.

TI: But yet it was really nice to have your father be encouraging.

MH: Oh, it was. It was very good. And so --

TI: Now, was this before or after he had met Lucius?

MH: Oh, before. Before he'd met Lucius, because Lucius came back to Seattle and was best man at my brother's wedding, and my father came up to it, my mother was still not well enough to travel up. So he met Lucius at that time, and they both flew down to Sonoma together, and that is when Lucius met my mother. And she met him very guardedly, and introduced him around as a "friend of Maynard's," and that was that. Dad was very positive about it. And then he came back to Japan, and, let's see, that was in, he came back, I think, didn't you come back January 1st or something?

LH: December 31st.

MH: December 31st, and we wanted to get married legally right away. And the first time that the Japanese offices -- well, we were going to get married at the embassy, and then would have to also register our marriage with the Japanese government. And the first time that they, the first day that they opened was January 6th, which was Adult's Day. And we got married on, we got legally married at the embassy and also at the Japanese offices on that day. And then our, our religious marriage was on January 15th, which was Martin Luther King Day, in those days, actually. [Laughs]

TI: Well, actually, that was even before Martin Luther King Day in that it was in the '50s, so later on they...

MH: Yes, later it became that.

TI: So when you celebrate your wedding anniversary, you have all these different dates, January 6th or January 15th...

MH: We celebrate both. [Laughs]

TI: [Laughs] That's good. So during that -- boy, it's so fast.

MH: Yes, it was.

TI: And a flurry.

<End Segment 26> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.