<Begin Segment 5>

TI: Well, growing up, were there any examples of, like, overt prejudice because you were Japanese? Name calling or anything like that that you can recall?

PN: Well, I remember in college this little white girl said, "I have a friend, her name's Peggy, too, but she's white." I don't remember anything specifically, but I do remember always feeling different. And if you looked at my resume from high school, I was the all-American girl, except I didn't have blond hair and blue eyes. But I remember feeling different and thinking, not feeling accepted even though I had every indicia of being accepted. I think partly it was being different ethnically.

TI: Now, did you ever have this conversation with your siblings? Because they had to come before you, especially, I'm thinking of Linda and Jerry, and whether or not, what they faced and by being the fourth, was it different for you?

Well, I remember my brother was student body president when I was a freshman in high school. So you can't get more well-known than having your brother be student body president. But I remember also he wanted to date this white girl, and her family didn't want her to and my family didn't want him to. So I remember her calling the house and I would hang up on her. Things like that.

TI: Oh, explain that. You would hang up on her because you knew the family didn't want this to happen?

PN: Yeah.

TI: And so even though you were, I guess, a peer of your brother in some ways, you sort of took the stance of your parents?

PN: In that situation, yeah. My sister was voted the most shy in her class as a senior in high school, so she was quite different, I guess, than maybe the other three siblings, 'cause she was the oldest and she had a pretty hard go in terms of figuring out how to be an adolescent, liking boys and what that meant, and all that stuff. I think it was really hard for her. I remember that about my brother. It just felt like he was the student body president, he was captain of the wrestling team, he was third in his class scholastically, and it still didn't matter because he was Japanese, in some ways. That he wouldn't be good enough to date a white girl. On the other hand, my mother came in -- I remember I was eighteen, and my mother came into the kitchen and said, "You shouldn't marry somebody who eats different food than we do." That's what she said, and then she left. And I'm going, "Wait a minute." [Laughs] So it was, it was indirect messages, I think, both from the environment and from my family.

TI: But you, but I take it that how you interpret that was she wanted you to marry someone who was Japanese.

PN: Yes. But I didn't know anyone, really, Japanese. I mean, I dated somebody, one of the guys in high school, but he went to another high school, and I mean, there was nobody around. In my class, there was one guy, the class I had, then there were my brothers. So it was pretty interesting to think about doing that when there was nobody around who I could date who was Japanese.

TI: So you talked a little bit about your brother and how well he did in school, and you also described yourself as this all-American girl. Tell me how people would have described you in high school, in terms of the things that you did or were known for.

PN: Gosh, how would they describe me? Probably an overachiever, because I was both valedictorian of my class as well as a cheerleader, as well as the Homecoming Princess and the, I don't know, the Basketball Queen, kind of all those things, and a class officer. So I had friends who were very bright, at the top of their class, then I had friends who were cheerleaders, then I had boyfriends who were hoods. I said that the other day to some group, and they said, "We don't know what a 'hood' is." [Laughs] So not a great, you know...

TI: Well, so I'm guessing that your boyfriends were white?

PN: Yeah, white, Native American, mostly white, and then I dated one Japanese American guy who went to another school. But I dated him because he came to our farm and picked berries in the summer, so that's how I knew him.

TI: And so how did your parents react when you started dating either a white or a Native American?

PN: They were not happy. [Laughs] Yeah, and in fact, I dated this guy for a couple years in high school, and his parents, his mother always thought that we would get married. But not according to my parents. Even though socioeconomically he was more well-off than we were, he was very bright, honor society and all that stuff, he had all the pedigree, but he was white. And by then, I had gotten to know other Japanese Americans through Junior JACL. So I'd go to Junior JACL, most of the kids were from Portland, so I would be considered one of the farm girls. And there were a couple others, Patty Kato and Sharon Fujimoto, who were also from the farm and grew up in Gresham and that surrounding area, so we were friends, we were all the same age.

TI: And what would it mean by being called a "farm girl"? If a Portland Japanese American said, "Oh, you're a farm girl," what would that mean?

PN: Well, I took it mean, "You're not sophisticated, you're not from the city, you're a little different. You're sort of not in the in-crowd." That's how I took it. I don't know how they really meant it. But I said at a young age I felt different and separate from people, so I think that theme kind of carried through for me.

TI: And going back to your parents and your dating, other than you mentioned how your mom came in one day when you were eighteen and said you should marry someone who eats the same food, how else would they show their, say, displeasure in terms of who you were dating?

PN: It was pretty unspoken, you know, it was pretty indirect and high context. You just knew. You could feel the vibe when they were around, and definitely the boyfriends could feel the vibe. It just was not necessarily articulated.

TI: Okay, good.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.