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TI: And how well accepted were you at this school? Here you're Japanese American. There probably weren't very many Japanese Americans there.

MB: There were hardly any Asians to begin with.

TI: Yeah, so how were you accepted?

MB: So anyway, he, the principal had me room with this young girl from Atlanta, Georgia who happened to be the niece of Walter White, who, NAACP was just coming up and he had just started NAACP. And he, principal, felt that none of the other students would want, their parents would want their kid to be rooming with a black -- she passed the color line, was very fair, but her hair was frizzy and she was obviously Negro -- and so I roomed with her and very nice. They were middle class from Atlanta, Georgia, and next door to MLK, and Atlanta and L.A., I guess, were the two cities at that time to be, for the blacks to have fairly good economic jobs and living in reasonably good areas, although was in black areas.

TI: And so why did her family send her to this school in Poughkeepsie, New York?

MB: Wanted her to get away from the black areas, and they had the money. He was the president of the black insurance company and mother's brother was Walter White. They just wanted the kids to be raised like other normal kids.

TI: And so how did you get along with your roommate?

MB: We got along very well. She invited me to spend the Christmas in Atlanta, so I was there about two and a half weeks, and I knew nothing about the prejudice against the blacks. They'd take me downtown on the streetcar and I'd just sit wherever there was a seat available, and they'd grab me, took me back, to the back of the streetcar. I didn't know about Jim Crow and all that. And they had their own community, like, oh, I forget what they called it, but they had their own social group which held their own Christmas parties and their -- of course, these are not the poor blacks. They're very well to do, and they, I had to accept what prejudice that they were faced with. And one was a professor of social work, Atlanta School of Social Work, one was a banker -- I think he half owned a bank -- and one was a lumberyard owner, and they're all very wealthy. And her aunt, let's see, I forget what their relationship was, but she was a partner to this, it was a pretty well known designer, manufacturing company in New York, and there were really very few in that capacity, the blacks, but somehow Atlanta got better, improved their ways.

TI: So I'm curious, did they know where you had come from, in terms of the Amache camp or anything that happened to Japanese Americans?

MB: No. No, I don't think so. Not really.

TI: Now did you share any of that with, with them in terms of --

MB: Did I share with them?

TI: Yeah, like what, what happened to you.

MB: I don't know. I don't remember. You know in schools how kids have their own little groups and not everybody accepted into most popular group, and we were outside that group, although we also had nice friends. I still communicate with my friend from Vermont country. They had a farm out in the country.

TI: But did your, did any of your classmates know that your family had been removed from Walnut Grove and sent to Amache camp behind barbed wires?

MB: No.

TI: None of, no one?

MB: Although the principal used to take me and the Jewish kid and the, I forget who the other one was, but anyway, to tell the story, but I don't think kids in our, the school I went to, knew about my background.

TI: How, how about your roommate, the one that took you to Georgia? Did she know?

MB: Not the real story. I really didn't, wasn't aware that, how traumatic it was. I just carried on every day what other people were doing, and it wasn't that bad.

TI: How about the information about your mother dying, did people know about that?

MB: Did she...

TI: Did your roommate know that your mother had died?

MB: Yeah, she did.

TI: So she knew that.

MB: Uh-huh. And her family was really very kind. They, they lived very comfortably compared to what I, where I came from.

TI: Now your, now your roommate, being African American, how was she accepted in places like Poughkeepsie, New York, and the Quaker school? Did she have discrimination?

MB: She tried to hide herself. Her hair was frizzy, so she always wore tight, close type, and I noticed that when we got to Atlanta that all the porters and the black help on the train seemed to know everybody, and she, people came to meet, other black fellows knew each other. And I really didn't know that she had black background, and her uncle, Walter White, was the first, the person who started the NAACP.

TI: So I want to back up a little bit. Did you, did you know that she was African American?

MB: No.

TI: Oh, so you didn't know until she brought you to Atlanta, or Georgia, when...

MB: Well, yeah. Pretty much.

TI: So was that kind of a shock to you?

MB: Well, I guess it was because they were able to provide me with real middle class function, taking me here and there and everywhere and introducing me to all these different things, and they had a comfortable home. Of course, I didn't realize 'til when Martin Luther King died that they lived next door.

TI: Oh, so she knew, she was neighbors with Martin Luther King?

MB: Huh?

TI: So she knew Martin Luther King Jr.?

MB: Yeah, just right next door. I mean, how I found out was my friend Charlotte B. Haynes, who's the wife of the (pastor of the) Third Baptist church here in the city, went to Coretta King's home to help her when Martin Luther King died, and I said, "Will you please call my friend" -- hadn't been writing -- "call her, tell her about me, that I know you," and so forth. And she came home and said, "Oh, they live right next door." [Laughs] So, I mean, they, they have different class and neighborhoods. This obviously was a middle class neighborhood that they lived in, Martin Luther King and my friend.

TI: That's a good story, that's interesting. When you returned after the holidays in Atlanta, Georgia, and went back to New York, did your roommate ever talk about being black in America? Did she ever talk about the discrimination and segregation?

MB: Not really, except she's very mixed up, her parents are trying to make her deny the black background, and very confusing. And she was even, she lived in San Francisco, went to Stanford and then married this guy and lived here for a while, and she didn't want to go see, what's that opera singer? He's a black opera singer? (Leontyne Price.) Anyway, had written her a note, said, "Come visit me," gave her a free ticket, but she didn't go. She didn't want people to know any connection with a black person where everybody else would be so honored, and so she was very mixed up. And I'm still in contact with her sister. My roommate died earlier, she had brain cancer, and her sister's husband said, "You got to get that tumor removed," and she didn't want to and she just died. I guess life was not too happy for her.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.