<Begin Segment 13>

MA: And when you moved to Chicago, what were your impressions of the city?

LN: Oh, I thought it was pretty dreary-looking, especially going from Honolulu, yeah. It was hard at first. But there were a lot of people in Chicago, so it wasn't so bad.

MA: What about the racial dynamics in Chicago? There was a large black population, there were more and more Japanese Americans moving there, and then whites, and I was wondering what that was like.

LN: Yeah, you know, when we first went out to Minneapolis, that was our first outside, the outside world. People in Minneapolis were extremely nice, open. Now, Chicago was less so because it's a big city, but people in Chicago were nice, too. I mean, they just, you know, no big thing as far as, it's no big deal. So wherever you went to work, applied for work, they kind of looked at you and they wanted to know about you. I used to hate that, but I guess for them, it's like, that's the first time they've encountered Asians. So they want to know what it's like.

MA: This is, like, white people would ask you about yourself?

LN: That's right, when you're working in an office. But after a while you get so used to it.

MA: How about like finding housing or apartments? Did you ever encounter people who wouldn't rent to Japanese?

LN: Oh, yeah. At first it was, we didn't know enough, we didn't know better. And they would say, "Oh, it's taken," and they would put the sign down. But the next day, you see the sign up again, so you knew that was their way of saying. So eventually, there was this, people who were in, I guess, kind of a business... yeah, they were in an employment business. But they were also, they would screen out all these apartments and everything, they'll tell you where to go. So people always went to them. And even for work, you'd go to them because they'd send you the offices that were already open.

MA: This was Japanese American people who...

LN: That's right. So the jobs that you got were usually where they were already... of course, you were exploited, I think. Like this insurance company, traveler's insurance, they hired all the Japanese. That was my first job. And I went there and I thought, "Hmm." They were nice enough, you know. Then I knew this other Japanese girl, she was in another department. So I went there, I went to the supervisor and I said, "I'd like to be transferred, 'cause I have a friend there." And she said, "Well, I don't know about that. You better go see the manager." And when I went to see him, boy, that was when I first found out. He said, "What are you talking about?" He said, "You want to transfer because your girlfriend is in that department?" He said, "You know, you're lucky we even hired you." That's when he really came out and said things like that. So he said, and I was shocked. I didn't know that there was this, all this kind of thing going on. So I says, "Oh," I says, "well, in that case," I said, "I'm going to look for another job." Because he was giving me a big old lecture, travelers being really good to Japanese, they were open and they were hiring Japanese, blah, blah, blah. I didn't want to hear any of that, so I told him, "Well, I think I'll just look for another job." And he says, "Well, you're very welcome to do that." But he was hinting at something about, "It's not out there what you think it is. It's going to be very hard." I said, "Well, I'll just go back to the agency." So I went back to the agency, 'cause I thought, "Yeah, it is hard." But things got better year after year, as the years went on.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.