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MA: So when you were, though, little, and you said you were always conscious of being Japanese, what are you, can you talk about that a little bit more?

IK: Well, conscious in the sense that I knew I was Japanese. But it wasn't in terms of that I was Japanese-Japanese, but I knew I was Japanese and the other people were white. I grew up in Torrance, it was all white. The largest ethnic group as far as visually -- again, I'm not sure about actual numbers -- were the Mexicans. And at that time, Latinos were Mexican, you know, they weren't from the other countries yet. Just as everybody in our area were Japanese. I don't recall any Chinese or Koreans. And so if anyone, if we talked about others, not in a racial sense, but identification, all the Caucasians, all the hakujin, would be American. But we would be Japanese. And in that way, I was conscious of not being American, but actually, I was conscious of not being white.

MA: Right, because "American" equaled "white," right?

IK: Right, exactly. And so then that hit me, so twenty-some years later, I go to San Fernando Valley to teach. And because I'm the Japanese language teacher, for some reason, they all thought I was from Japan. If they thought about it, that'd be kind of hard at that time, because I wouldn't have a credential and I wouldn't have the coursework and all that, and I spoke English well. [Laughs]

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.