<Begin Segment 18>

TI: Yeah, so I want to go back to you a little bit. So here you were in Little Rock High School, which, besides you and your sister, was all white. So describe when you went to Pasadena. What was the makeup of your new high school?

MS: [Laughs] Well, it was mostly white in those days, Muir High School. And there was, well, a sizeable Japanese community and some black children. Not too many, but they were... but it was so, to me, cliquish. All the Japanese kids ate at one table at lunch and kind of stuck together all day long. I didn't understand that, that was really strange for me. But I still meet with some of my friends, my Japanese friends who befriended me in those days, and they all, they tell me how they thought that I was very snotty, that I wouldn't sit in the back of the bus. I said, "Well, I just came from the deep South. How would you expect me to sit in the back of the bus?" But they still tease me about that. [Laughs]

TI: Oh, that's interesting. Because it was such a, probably shock in terms of culture shock, from coming from the deep South, segregated society, then go to a high school where not only whites but blacks, Japanese. So at lunchtime, where did you sit?

MS: Well, I sat with the Japanese kids because the Japanese kids weren't really close to the white kids. They were still a step down. So I adjusted to that, but that was an adjustment. I was not comfortable with that for a long time. But then that's the way the whole system worked in those days. You had little clubs, not in school but outside of school that were social clubs, the girls clubs and boys clubs, had dances, and that's how you met, met other people.

TI: So I'm curious, so as a senior, did you start dating? Did you start dating Japanese...

MS: Yeah, I did. But there was... well, Pasadena was Cal Tech and there were a couple of guys at Cal Tech that used to come over, so I had a boyfriend. [Laughs] So that was okay, my dad was okay with that because he was a Japanese guy and he was at Cal Tech.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.