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TI: Let's talk a little bit, just about growing up in Oakland, for you. So you mentioned earlier in terms of a really nice childhood.

DT: Yeah, I think we did. We belonged to a Japanese American Methodist church. And again, the way the organized religions in America dealt with minority communities is kind of interesting. They treated, because their own congregations were pretty much segregated, they pretty much established, they called 'em missions. Kind of like, to me, it kind of reminds me of, you send the missionaries to a foreign country just to sort of convert or proselytize or extend their religion to these kind of outcast communities. And at that time, Japanese Americans were certainly one of them. And so we grew up in an all-Japanese American church and had, as they do now, sports leagues and baseball and basketball, many of our friends were there. So we were connected to the Japanese American community largely through the church. And at that time, then the church plays a function, I guess spirituality is certainly one, but the other one is just networking and social support and other things from people with a common history. And, but I went through public schools in Oakland during that time.

TI: And when you think about your public schools, were there very many other Japanese Americans?

DT: There's a few, and quite a number of African Americans. Oakland at that time was kind of at a rare point in history where it was very multiracial. And "white flight" had not set in in the city yet. Not lots of Latinos, but certainly numbers of African Americans, middle class African Americans as well. And it was an interesting place to be. I think from a minority point of view and from a child's point of view, though, it was, these were the '50s. So what do I mean by that? People pretty much did what they were told, people generally did not question authority, people were very patriotic, I mean, this was just following World War II. Japanese Americans as a group were often cases, in many cases now, returning to the very communities that exiled them in the first place. And some of them, when they came back from the camps, were homeless, they had no jobs, they had no businesses. And so the ideology was to keep your mouth shut, don't make waves, and I'm sure you've heard this many times: "You be 110 percent American." And so there was a pretty -- although we belonged to a Japanese American church, there was lots of disassociation with Japan. And at that time, Japan was a defeated country, and poor. And so the products that kids think are so high-tech coming from Japan didn't exist at that time. Japan was known for cheap products that broke easily. Toys, trinkets, things that are more associated with third-world countries. And so there was the identity thing where Japanese Americans did not want to associate with being Japanese, and Japanese American was very strong. So we were, kind of didn't know who we were.

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