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SY: There was how much of an age difference between the oldest and the youngest? It seems as if you were pretty, born like two years apart, two or three years apart?

TF: Yes, yes.

SY: So it was still a sizeable difference in age.

TF: Yeah, two, four, six, eight, so let's say eight years' difference. Nine, eighteen, sure. It would be about eight, nine years' difference between my oldest sister and myself. And, oh, I did have an American name. When my mother... you know, at one time it was very popular, you go to the dime store -- I used to love the dime store, I used to love paper dolls. You could go and buy a name, your name, Nancy or some very typical American name. And I always wanted the name Nancy 'cause I thought then my initials would be TNT. [Laughs] So stupid. But my mother came home with the name Doris. So it was... then a friend said, "Oh, TD is very good, touchdown, TD." So I became TD.

SY: So people actually called you Doris?

TF: Doris, yeah, but only for a short while. Because I didn't really, I didn't connect with that name somehow, and I liked my name. I always say my name Takayo, the way the characters were written, it's "high, tall, rich, rare, expensive." I was an expensive child. I was born in the Depression, they looked forward to a more prosperous world, and depending on how you write it, that's how it was described to me. And as I got older, right after, during the war, you want to be so American, you want to be so white American, everything that it stands for. But as I've gotten older, I mean, I was never ashamed of who I am or what I was. But somewhere in there, I know there was that desire to not be who I was because there was so much prejudice. I remember being shoved down on a sidewalk in New York saying, "Only a good Jap is a dead Jap," or thinking of my dogs being poisoned. And in high school when I was, you know, going to be going to a prom and a party, this tall, good looking, I don't even remember his name, boy was inviting me. And then he had to uninvite me because his family would not have me in the home. And so of course somewhere in there you're trying so hard to fit in. But I never denied who I was, because I remember soon after, no one would ever say to you, "Are you Japanese?" after the war. It's, "Are you Chinese?" because if you were Chinese you'd be insulting them if you said, "Are you Japanese?" And then when I was married and I had my children and I could hear kids, they'd say, "Oh, that's John, Juliet, they're Chinese." And I'd run out of the house and I'd say, "No, no, they're half Japanese and a quarter English and a quarter Irish." I had to get the Japanese out because I didn't want to try to pass for something I was not, and I feel it's important that unless you can accept who you are. And so then I worried about my children, too, but then I thought, "They're growing up in a time when it's more acceptable, more, maybe it's even an advantage to be mixed." But whatever you are, you better accept it because there's no changing it, right?

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.