<Begin Segment 15>

SY: Well, all this has been sort of training, too, for what was to follow, right?

TF: Yeah, and then when I was very young, I think I was fifteen or so, I went to some, one of those local dances and I won a contest. I was Miss Teen Queen. And then I went to another dance, and I was like Nisei Queen. But they just, I happened to be at the dance and then they chose me, and I remember I had a black/red eye, because I threw a baton up in the air, a lady walked in front of me, it was going to hit her, and I tried to move her, and it bounced on her shoulder and then it went into my eye. And so I was surprised when it happened. But it got me a scholarship at a modeling company. And so then I did modeling after that. I took the course, I got a number of jobs modeling, I worked some of the trade fairs.

SY: That must have been unusual for an Asian.

TF: Probably. I remember some, I remember some man from one of those Middle East countries who wanted me to be part of his harem. [Laughs] No thank you. I remember meeting the owner of the Ajinomoto company from Japan. And I brought him home to meet my mother and father. He wanted to have me live with his family in Japan as one of his children. Didn't do that. So modeling got me a lot of interesting little jobs and I met a lot of very interesting people. I met, at that time, when some of the first sumo wrestlers came over I got to meet them.

SY: So all of this is probably, is your head getting bigger and bigger as all of this is happening?

TF: No, not really. Oh, I remember when I won the Nisei contest, they had a photographer take pictures, and we did some with a bathing suit that had holes on the side and another one that was like a make believe bikini. I got such hate mail. It was in the newspaper, and terrible letters, terrible. That I was an absolute disgrace to the Japanese community and I should be so ashamed of myself...

SY: And this is from other Japanese.

TF: This is from other Japanese. I got a lot of hate mail.

SY: Really? Wow.

TF: But it gave me an appreciation of -- during that time I also worked in a beautiful jewelry, wholesale jewelry store, so I got to learn all about jewelry. Well, they hardly ever had to pay me 'cause I always wanted something, I was putting money down on it. I went to work in a pint-sized store where they sold clothing for short people. So when I'd see something, it gave me an appreciation of nice things, I must say.

SY: When you started buying things.

TF: And then knowing that I didn't want to just buy anything now, just wanted one thing rather than ten things.

SY: I see. And all this time your mother and father are fine with it, or being a little careful?

TF: No, I was still contributing to the household. I'm still coming home at a pretty reasonable hour. I don't think I gave them any cause for alarm, but I think I was probably, you know, if they were, had control to know what I was doing, they would say, well, they don't want me going to some of these places. But on the whole, most of the time I wasn't, it's just I loved to go listen to the music. I didn't see anything wrong with it because I was very naive about sex. I wasn't having sex, I was just doing things I enjoyed doing.

SY: But it sounds like you attracted a lot of attention, so that must have been, how did that feel when people gravitated to you?

TF: I didn't think of it as anything different, or didn't seem like a whole lot of attention to me. It didn't happen all at once or wasn't...

SY: I see, spread over, yeah. And your mother, at the same time, were you still thinking of the interest that you had in Japanese theater?

TF: I still sometimes was taking Japanese dance and doing all of those... I was very active. Even when I went to high school I was very active. I was a majorette, I was a cheerleader, I always -- and then I was still working early in the morning before I went to school, after school, I'd work. I remember when I worked at the cleaner's there was a lawyer who came from Seattle, he wanted to talk to my mother and father about my, he had seen my picture in the paper when I won something and he wanted to marry me.

SY: He wanted to marry you?

TF: You know, like an arranged marriage. And I said no, I'm an American, I really want to have, fall in love with someone and marry them.

SY: Yeah, that's amazing.

TF: And then also turned out my sister met him and she liked him, so I didn't want to certainly go with someone... and he was older. And I never dated like a traditional dating like people. In those days, the Japanese didn't date like that, or I didn't. I think that kiss scared me off. So I would go a lot of places, I would do a lot of things, but very safe and very friendly, but not any more than that.

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