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TI: Yeah, so I'm interested because, having grown up in Seattle, the schools I went to, they always had quite a few Japanese and their community events. But it sounds like your background is a lot different in terms of... so like Monday through Friday, when you went to school, you were the only person of color.

PN: Yeah, in my class except for my siblings. So I grew up wanting to be white, because everybody around me was white, and we didn't go to a Buddhist church, we went to the Haley Baptist Church, so it was a southern, conservative Baptist church that I grew up in, and Jesus didn't look like me. So I really pretty much grew up in a white world. And to me, it's a long journey back from a white world to a Japanese American identity.

TI: When did you start noticing or feeling that you were different than your classmates?

PN: I think from a young age, because we were poor. So after the war, they came back. My father's family came back, and then my mother and father got married in '45. But we didn't have indoor plumbing 'til I was fourteen, and there were some winters where we ate, you know, government surplus food, the cheese and the eggs and the peanut butter and butter and all that stuff. So I probably mixed the two things. Being poor, to me, was shameful. Because how could you invite your friends over if you didn't have indoor plumbing? So I think in my mind, it sort of, kind of morphed together, Japanese, I didn't quite understand what had happened to them, they went to camps, they talked about Block this and Block that, but for all I knew it was another kind of camp. But I think I felt differently because we were poor. And because, like, I remember in the first grade, I had this car coat, and it had fur trim around the hood, and they called me the Eskimo. And there was nobody else that looked like me in that class. And it was a pretty harsh and hard life growing up, for my parents.

TI: Well, going back to that story of being called the "Eskimo," describe that. What did you feel when people, sort of, said that to you?

PN: Ashamed. Like called out to be different, not the same as, not as good as. I remember that story. I remember in the seventh grade, by the seventh grade, maybe I had more of a voice. But I remember in the seventh grade where they talked about the bombing of Pearl Harbor and they talked about the evacuation or internment. And the textbook said it was for the safety of the Japanese Americans, and I was so angry at that, and at the same time, still sort of ashamed of who I was.

TI: And as a seventh grader, when you heard that and you felt that anger, what did you do with it? Did you say anything?

PN: I don't remember. I do remember getting hit in the seventh grade. [Laughs] Not for that, but for something else. The teacher said, "Well," to this other kid, "I hate to have to do this to you, but I have to paddle you." And I said, "Well, if you hate to do it, don't do it." And he said, "Okay, you're next." And part of it, I think, was, well, maybe I didn't speak out, 'cause I can't remember if I spoke out about that. I then started to get my, sort of, anger and my voice and just speak out on things. It was also, I can't remember what year that was, but it's got to have been the '60s.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.