<Begin Segment 13>

SY: And you said that's where met your wife at the --

PS: No, I met her in the Holiness church.

SY: So you met her in the Holiness church.

PS: Back in the mid-'50s, so we became... so she was baptized in the Holiness church so when I got my job in '58 in the valley we came out, we continued on with the Holiness church, both of us. And so when we pulled apart and became Methodists, Marion was with me the whole way. But she has a Buddhist background.

SY: So she was the only one in her family that was in the Holiness church?

PS: Yeah, largely because of my influence. Yeah, I was really wrapped up in the church and she probably felt that she either became part of the church or maybe we wouldn't have had a relationship. I don't know. I haven't thought about that very much but everything turned out.

SY: And when you were part of the Holiness church that's when you started your family?

PS: Yeah, our daughters were born in '61, '62, and so we didn't break away from the Holiness church until the mid-70s.

SY: So they grew up in the church too then.

PS: Yes, and our younger daughter had some bad experiences with the theology, so to this day she doesn't feel too kindly towards what happened to her in the Holiness church. Whereas the older daughter, the attorney in San Francisco, she's with an evangelical Chinese church and so there's certain things we don't talk about very much, one of them is homosexuality. She's pretty liberal... she's very liberal in all other ways but when it comes to that field.

SY: And that's influenced by the church, by her church do you think?

PS: Yeah.

SY: So is that part of the evangelical --

PS: Basically, yeah, they feel that homosexuality is not a choice if people chose their lifestyle to be that way, so it's just completely -- but anyways we don't talk about that too much. But ironically that's the one issue that I feel most strongly about and that's the direction that I'm headed now with my faith, that I think is important to help people come to grips with who they are and feel okay, feel good about who they are and not feel that they have to hide it the rest of their lives. And I run into people like I found out recently about this man Mel Fujikawa, age fifty-six he finally came out of the closet last year. When he was a minister at the Baptist church, the Evergreen Baptist Church in south San Gabriel he was choir director at that church and I guess there were rumors about him being gay so he finally got in front of the church and said, "No, I'm not gay." And then last year he had in the meantime moved up to northern California and on "coming out day" which happens in early October every year he came out and he's just a changed man. He doesn't have a job but he seems a lot happier. And I think I see that as kind of the tip of iceberg. And I met last week with Iku Kiriyama's daughter, Tracy. And we met at Mitsuru Restaurant in J-town and we talked about this thing that you mentioned, the intergenerational meeting that's going to be sponsored by the historical society. I think it's a great idea because this one area is the one area that we need to get the generations together because... I think largely because of the internet. Young people are pretty comfortable going in the direction of openness and they meet together and all but their parents and grandparents, they're out of the loop. And unfortunately at the meeting that we had at Mitsuru last week, I asked them what's happening with them. He said, well, typically what happens is that the kid who's gay or transsexual will get on the internet and they'll make connections. So they meet at restaurants and different occasions and so amongst themselves they're fine and that's good. The breakdown comes when there's no connection with the family because the same kind of "don't ask don't tell" thing. With the Japanese families there's a lot of feelings well, I don't want to embarrass them, you don't want it to get out to their friends, they're going to lose friends, friends are going to discriminate against them, just not rather. And on the other end, the parents are thinking, well, this kid is different, he doesn't date girls, he's only hanging around so I have my suspicions but I better not say anything, I don't want to upset him. And so this whole code of silence just continues and it goes on and on and on and so you wind up with this fifty-six year guy who's just coming out now.

SY: Right.

PS: That's tragic.

SY: And do you think it's particularly bad among Japanese Americans?

PS: Well, I went to a meeting at the legal center, the Asian Pacific Legal Center on Wilshire Boulevard, and they have a group of Asian gays and LGBT there and they put and Q in there too now. I asked them about that but -- for "queer."

SY: For "queer," yes.

PS: But it's mainly Chinese so I said, "What's going on here? Where are the Japanese, where are the Koreans, where are the Filipinos." So I asked one of the people at this meeting, Tracy's meeting and I said, "Well, is it because they don't get along with one another?" He said, "No, it's just a difference in approaches. They just rather get on the internet and socially meet with other Japanese who are gay." So these are the kinds of things that I think it would be helpful at this conference to talk about. How do we get people to come to grips with this so that we don't have these dual lives? Like they said, what happens is that typically is that these young people will move away from the area so they're out when they are moved away with their friends. Soon as they come home they're back in the closet again.

SY: It's probably largely having to do with their parents then.

PS: Yeah.

SY: Definitely generational an issue.

PS: Sure.

SY: So as a person in the parent's generation or the older generation, what prompted you to come up with this sort of desire to broach the subject which is probably a little, it's highly controversial, I would think.

PS: Oh, yeah. Well, it's something the Japanese don't want to talk about.

SY: But why you? Why did you come to this point where you feel a real need to talk about it?

PS: Well, I think it's largely a faith issue. How can I profess to love people and not deal with an issue where so many people are hurting? And the Methodist church, I've been active with the Methodists for Social Action, it's kind of a splinter group with the Methodists where we push for unpopular causes and that's one of our unpopular causes. Equal marriage and that sort of thing. In fact, I was very impressed with this group -- I wasn't there but two years ago at their annual conference that's held in Redlands every year, they got that group to vote to support no on eight.

SY: Proposition 8.

PS: And they did it because they worked on it for years. I mean, not specifically that issue, but working on helping people to understand the issue and putting a face to the issue. Like last year I had Harold, Harold Kameya, I don't know if you know Harold but he has a lesbian daughter, and there was a man by the name of Ed Hanson who is a retired minister who is gay, and he organized this Telling Our Stories project that went on at the annual conference where he had these gays and their partners who were in the church tell their stories. Very powerful. And I had Harold come out with Ellen... Ellen participated, too, telling her story about dealing with her lesbian daughter, because they were the only nonwhite people who were there but I thought it was important to let the conference know that there are Asians involved here too.

SY: So is that something that your church, the Methodist church is open to as well?

PS: Well, the church as a whole, the annual conference. But my church specifically it's not necessarily open. I had, during Lenten time last year before Easter, I had Harold and his wife come out and we had a small group discussion about their experience. So we had them come out, we had people from AA who meet at our church, they came out and told their story about recovery from alcoholism, and so these are the issues that I feel strongly about.

SY: I'm curious what kind of discussion you get from people when you broach these topics. Is there a general openness to it?

PS: Oh, yeah. The people who show up are the ones we are supporting. If somebody's anti they're not going to come through the door.

SY: So you haven't had much --

PS: No, it's one of those things.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.