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Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Nancy K. Araki Interview II
Narrator: Nancy K. Araki
Interviewer: Tom Ikeda
Location: Los Angeles, California
Date: July 19, 2011
Densho ID: denshovh-anancy-02-0004

<Begin Segment 4>

TI: Let's go to San Francisco in school, so in summers you were pea farming, but during the school year you're back in San Francisco. And let's go into, like, junior high school. Tell me what your junior high school years were like.

NA: Well, it seems like I'm not the smartest kid in town, I'm not also the very bottom, but I was definitely track for college. But in those days they used to kind of track you, you're put into grade levels and then within the grade levels, the levels, right? So this, the classes or the room assignments, like homerooms and all, I was always probably the only JA kid, so my environment, or the kids that I was around, at least in homeroom and other classes, didn't necessarily have a lot of Japanese American kids. And I know that, I don't know how I got involved, but I ended up being the costume mistress for the drama class and took over that, and that started a kind of a long line of becoming later in high school involved in the rally committee and so forth.

TI: So how about socially? Dating? I mean, you're in junior high school and without very many...

NA: Oh my. Your father wants me to know about...

TI: [Laughs] Without very many Japanese Americans, so what, what did you do?

NA: Alright, what did I do? I was very, I was a very shy girl. [Laughs] Okay, I was a very shy girl. I was a very proper girl, and I think also part of the expectation experience was laid out, and if it was, if it weren't laid out consciously there was a time when my cousin -- and I should explain, before the war they were like, out of the, I don't know, thirteen cousins or so, there's only, at that time there were only three girls. So the oldest one was gonna get married, and she was marrying a non-Japanese. And I was like twelve, I guess, and boy, at the shower did I get it from my aunties. "Don't you dare..." You know. I mean, it was really --

TI: And this was kind of behind your cousin, I mean, they're not saying this directly to your cousin.

NA: No.

TI: But they're looking at the other girl cousins.

NA: The two of us, yeah. The next, where there're like two and a half years and I'm two and a half years younger than her kind of stuff, but it was just, it was there, anyway. Maybe there were more years behind here. But at the same time, my parents were very open to welcoming Randy, Randy Chung, and later on as the cousins, they had children, I know my parents, my mom especially, were the Auntie Masa who they could turn to and all that. That's, same as my cousin who had married a German woman and brought her back, and then Josie, even though they eventually divorced Mom made sure Josie and the kids were remembered at Christmas and other times, birthdays and things like that. So how do you make a message out of this, other than it ultimately counts who the person is or however it works out?

TI: Now, in the case of your family, so was it your mother, or did the rest of the family... I mean, initially there might be some hesitancy, but then they later on embraced, especially when children came? Or was there always this sort of --

NA: I think, I think the parents of the couple, the mother as well as the, Randy's family, and so their kids grew up trilingual, speaking Chinese to the Chinese grandparents, Japanese to the Japanese grandparents, and English to their parents. So yeah, I'm sure things worked out with that, but I remember that particular time of having that kind of pressure.

TI: And you were getting those expectations sort of clearly stated to you.

NA: Well, not clearly stated. The way it's stated is, remember, you're the big sister and you set the example, so all the unsaid is also coupled in being the big sister. And of course, in my mind it's like, yeah, like my brothers are gonna all follow my direction.

TI: So going through junior high school and high school, did you have any non-Japanese American boyfriends?

NA: No. In fact, I didn't have any... I never had a serious boyfriend. I mean, it that's, that's what, that's what...

TI: In high school and junior high school. Then, how about just dating then?

NA: We'd go out as a group, maybe, and within it, because by that time I'm really active with our girls, from the Girl Scouts we became Links, which became a social club and a basketball team. From age twelve on up we had this group called the Links.

TI: Was it ever a situation where you were -- and if I'm prying too much just, just tell me to stop.

NA: [Laughs] I haven't thought about these things. That's why I'm more like...

TI: But it's just so interesting, these kind of interracial type things, so I was wondering if there was ever a non-JA that you were attracted to but because of the expectations you just didn't go down that path.

NA: Yes. Several. Several. And it was partly, I mean, and we'd all go out as a group and stuff like that, but when they would ask me straight out and I'd have to kind of, without saying, "I don't know if my parents would approve," it would be pretty tricky. But I do have to say -- and boy, if this ever comes out I'm gonna scream -- as I got older I ended up working in the city while my family's up in the country, and part of it my parents thought it's a good experience for me, but so I'm maintaining, watching over the house. And of course, my brother or my father would come back every other night, so it wasn't like I could be doing something too wild, right? Although my brothers think that I did. But like periodically did run into a slumber party when they'd be driving in. [Laughs] But basically, so during the summertime I was on my own after a certain age.

TI: And any stories or anything you want to share about that? [Laughs]

NA: Why you laughing so hard? You're laughing too hard here. Your imagination is going a little bit... well, I did go out with a couple of guys that, who were non-Japanese, but they continued to be good friends more than just anything really hot and steamy or anything like that.

TI: But what's interesting to me was the influence of those expectations. I mean, I think of, perhaps those expectations aren't as strong these days as they were in your generation.

NA: Oh no, I think in my generation, the whole thing is as liberal as I think my parents were for their time and towards other people's situation. I wasn't sure about me. I wasn't sure because there were enough other kinds of expectation, and I guess I had, I don't know, my head was screwed on that way to really think about what's the balance here, what's the counterbalance, what's the... and regardless, you're still oki neechan, the big sister, as if that meant something to my brothers. [Laughs]

TI: Yeah, and I really appreciate you just being so candid about kind of lifting, there's so much that's unsaid in our community and this is sometimes one of them. And when those expectations were expressed, what were the reasons? Was it because -- I've heard a couple things. One was, well, Japanese are better than the others, and so you should marry a Japanese. Or the other side is, well, if you do that you're gonna be disappointed. They're not gonna accept you. Now I'm trying to think what, what were the reasons for those expectations?

NA: Well, I don't, I don't know if anybody ever explained that to me, but I don't know if I told you this about... I mean, my life lessons, a lot of things about how I perceive the world really gets grounded with my grandmother. And one time, I don't know why we got on this subject, but I asked my grandmother who makes the best husbands, and she says Chinese. I said, really? Why? She said because they are really, they place the women highly and they are very attentive and all of that. And I thought, oh, so who makes the best wives? And she says Japanese. I go, oh. And then she said, "But don't you dare marry a Chinese." And I said, "But, but if they make the --" "You just don't." So in my little head, and this is all before I was ten 'cause she dies when I'm ten, and so somehow I go like, hmm, this somewhat doesn't compute in my little brain, but okay. So some of that's in my head as I get older, right, remembering what Baachan said, so of course I'm kind of curious. And in my adult life, yeah, I've gotten to know some Chinese men and, yeah, they're very attentive. I mean, especially since I'm the senior person at the table. My god, I get all the wonderful bits of food and they take care of me. I love it. [Laughs] No, but so some of what she said way back then of course plays out as I keep, continue to grow older, right? But somehow it's, some things were not quite fully said, but somehow you know, okay, or at least it was in my head that I should kind of balance this somehow.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.