<Begin Segment 9>

JG: So it's interesting, this idea of sending you to a Christian church kind of as a way of promoting, I guess, Americanism or this kind of the quest of the Nisei after the war to put the war behind and really embrace this, the future, if you will. If that's the case, why send you to a Japanese American church? Why not join a church that wasn't kind of a predominantly ethnic congregation, one that was more, I don't know, for lack of a better term, a white congregation? Why send you here?

MN: Well, first of all, I mean, I'm tempted to say I don't think there were any white congregations in Crenshaw back then. There might've been, but who knows? Or at least close enough for us to drive to. But the reality was there were, there were African American churches, and yeah, I guess we could've gone there, but... your question's a good one, Jim, because I think that even though their quest was to make it easier for their children by assimilating them into American society as much as possible and that going to a Christian church, as opposed to a Buddhist or Shinto church or any other tradition, would foster that. At the same time, they had a desire, if not, or probably more of a need to still associate and have their children associate with Japanese Americans. Also, being in a Japanese American environment would still be more comfortable for them, and most likely for us, than if it would've been in a non Japanese American environment. So, right, there's kinda this Jekyll and Hyde psyche that was going on back then. On the one hand, they wanted to be good Americans and assimilate into society and be invisible, and for their children also, but at the same time there was this need to be comfortable, and the way they could be most comfortable was to still be in an environment that was a Japanese American environment.

JG: It's fascinating because there's this tension between being too Japanese and at the same time wanting to hold on to what's important about being Japanese American.

MN: Yeah.

JG: It's an interesting kind of tension.

MN: Well, I have a theory about that, and my theory is that the whole attempt for the Nisei generation to distance themselves from Japanese culture, anything having to do with Japan, really, while I think that is the bigger picture, at least up to a certain point that's the larger picture, I think when you look in that picture, and what I recall, experiences growing up, to me it was the Nisei men who really wanted to dissociate from Japan and Japanese culture, and not so much the Nisei women. I've always felt that Nisei women have had a soft spot in their heart for Japanese culture and things from Japan, whereas Nisei men didn't. Why? I think one is practical, one reason is practical. For Nisei men, the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the internment camps just stopped everything for them in their tracks. The few that were in college, on the West Coast at least, had to leave college. Those that had any kind of career aspirations, all that ended with Pearl Harbor and the internment experience. For Nisei women, I don't think that necessarily was the impact. Let's face it, Nisei women, their chances of going on to college really weren't that good in the first place. They were just expected to go out into the workforce, and maybe in some ways the war opened up some employment avenues for Nisei women that they might not ever have had. But I've always felt, to get back to my main theory, that while the larger narrative is that Niseis for most of their lives sought to distance themselves from Japan and anything having to do with Japanese culture because of identity confusion, that was more pronounced in the men, Nisei men rather than Nisei women, simply because for the Nisei men Pearl Harbor and the internment did end any hopes of going on to college, establishing a career, even though their career choices were limited in the first place, and anything else. I mean, the whole 442 thing really is an outgrowth of that. It was an attempt to prove your loyalty to America, and what better way to do that than to fight against America's enemies. And so I think that has a lot to do with it.

JG: Interesting.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.