<Begin Segment 31>

TI: Okay, so Maynard, we're going to start up again. And where we left it off before the break was, you're back in Maryland, Lucius is in Vietnam, this is about, during the Vietnam War, and you're raising Brian.

MH: Yes.

TI: And then eventually, Lucius comes back to Maryland. But tell me what it was like in Maryland during this time period.

MH: Well, my health was still not all that good, but I was able to take care of Brian, and he started in this, in school, Carderock school, which was nice because it was a completely new community, of course. It was a new school, a new community all around. And the modern design aspect of it drew a lot of interesting people to that area, too. Someone commented on the fact that there were more Phi Beta Kappas in that area than there were normally in any place. [Laughs] And so... and it was a good school. And they, at one point, they invited me, or they asked me if I would consider becoming the editor of the newsletter for the Carderock school, and I did become the news editor and remained that for three years, which I enjoyed very much, getting back into my editing skill again.

TI: Well, it sounds like, too, it was a great opportunity to put some roots down.

MH: Yes, uh-huh.

TI: Not only for you, but for your son, Brian.

MH: Well, Brian, of course, considers that his prime home, and for years, he would go back there and look at the home after it was sold. He would look and see what it looked like there. And his friends from that era are still his friends today. Many of them, several of them were present at his wedding here. So he's kept his close ties to that area. And the time when Lucius was in Vietnam was sad for Brian. He missed Lucius very much. But he did say, once when Lucius came home, he said, "I used to love Dad more than I loved you, Mom, but now I love you the same." [Laughs]

TI: [Laughs] And how old was Brian when he said that?

MH: Well, it was when Lucius came back from Vietnam and he said that, so how old would he have been Lucius?

LH: Probably seven.

TI: When you were in Maryland and again, probably interracial marriages between a Japanese American and a Caucasian was not that common. Did you ever get questions about your last name, Horiuchi

MH: Absolutely not in Carderock, because it was a very savvy community there. They'd traveled, they, and they were, you know... it was quite a cosmopolitan community, including, there were people of other races there. I think one of Brian's best friends was, the father was originally, I mean, at least his family was from where, Lucius? What would it have been?

LH: Who are we talking about?

MH: You know...

LH: Kami?

MH: Hm?

LH: Kami?

MH: Yes.

LH: Iran.

MH: Iran.

LH: He was with the World Bank.

MH: Yes. There were, it was a cosmopolitan community there, there was no question there.

LH: It was an upscale place.

MH: Yes, definitely.

TI: Okay, so very accepting of things. Did Brian ever, did you ever have discussions with Brian about his sort of mixed heritage?

MH: Well, in the sense, yes, in the sense that we told him the family histories, yes. And didn't make a big thing of it to him, you know.

TI: And would he gravitate more towards, when you looked at your family history, more towards your side or Lucius' side? Did he show an interest one way or the other?

MH: I didn't find that, I didn't see that. He was accepting of all, of all the relatives, and of all the background, yes.

TI: So about the time --

MH: Oh, I do remember, excuse me, but this was, this was much earlier when we went to the Philippines. We stopped, well, we did stop in Seattle on our way to the Philippines, and then we, and then we stopped in Honolulu. And Brian said, as he looked at these people on the street, he said, "They all look like Uncle Ed." This was Lucius' brother. [Laughs]

TI: So he was very surprised that there were other people that looked like...

MH: Yeah, there were all these other people who looked like Uncle Ed.

TI: Oh, that's interesting. Well, now he lives in Los Angeles, so he's probably around a lot more. So when he's, when Brian's around sixteen, the family goes to Japan.

MH: Oh, he didn't want to go to Japan. He didn't want to leave all of his ties there. Quite naturally. He was just saying he wasn't going to go, wasn't going to go, up to the last minute. And Lucius was thinking up these various places he could stay, which I just... I, as a Navy Junior, who immediately moved and didn't question it. When we had to move, we moved, and I didn't have any say in it. So I was really taken aback by this attitude. I should have expected it, but I didn't, on Brian's part. And then eventually, he said, at a dinner one night we were having with various friends, he said, "Well, I'm really going to go with you. I love you, and I want to go with you." So he did come, but it was, his feet were dragging all the way.

TI: To the point where you were looking at possible boarding schools for him to stay?

MH: Friends' where he could stay. But he said he would come. And he still dragged his feet all the way in going, and reached Japan and was very snooty about the place. And we went on this train trip from Tokyo to Kobe, and all these flat plains, he just, on the way, on the train, even though -- I don't remember if we saw Fuji that time. But he was still sort of, didn't think much of it. Then we got to Kobe, and Kobe is, of course, it's hilly, it's right between the mountains and the sea, and we were living on the side with the mountains, and this began to reconcile him, I think, a bit.

TI: Just because of the beauty of the area?

MH: Yes. And then he, but he hated the Canadian Academy where he went to school there. It was a, of course, it was an international community school, but it was started by these, I believe, Canadian missionaries. And it was rather stuffy and very, very different from his, the atmosphere of his high school here in the U.S., so he wasn't happy at all. And I didn't learn until years later that he used to skip school and come down the hill from where -- our house was halfway up the hill to the school. He'd come down this hill from the school and go into the Japanese, the Japanese temple that was down there, or he'd travel around. And he came to love Japan just completely, just completely.

TI: That's good.

<End Segment 31> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.