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TI: Today is Tuesday, August 20, 2013. On camera is Dana Hoshide, the interviewer is me, Tom Ikeda, and we're interviewing Joanne Oppenheim this morning. We're in the Densho studio in Seattle. And just as a preface to the interview, the reason we're interviewing Joanne is you're the well-known author of two books, Dear Miss Breed and the Stanley Hayami: Nisei Son book, and it was just an opportunity when you were in Seattle to do this interview. So we're going to do a life history interview, so I'm going to actually start from the beginning of your life, and we're going to kind of walk through focusing more on your books and some of the other work you're doing. So the first question is just tell me when you were born.

JO: I was born in 1934 in Middletown, New York.

TI: And tell me, where is Middletown?

JO: Middletown is in the foothills of the Catskills. I actually grew up in Monticello. I lived all my life until I was in my late forties in Monticello, New York, which is the "borscht belt," the former "borscht belt" of New York state. It was a resort area that New Yorkers came to before there was air conditioning, airplanes, and a lot of tourism.

TI: And how did your family first go to Middletown? Why were they there?

JO: Well, they never went to Middletown. I just happened to be born there because there was a hospital.

TI: I see.

JO: But my grandfather arrived in this country in 1900, I believe, and then my father and grandmother came to America. So I always say that I'm something of a "Nisei daughter." My father was seven when he arrived, but he arrived on the East Coast, so he had the good fortune to be able to be naturalized as a young man at the same time that many of the Japanese Americans were arriving at Angel Island (and denied citizenship). But my grandfather was a baker, and he didn't settle in New York as many immigrants did. He was sent to the Catskills and he began a business. At the foot of the hills there was a sign: "No Jews and no dogs." But my grandfather always said he came into town on another road to pass that sign by. And my father grew up in the little town that we ultimately were born in, in Monticello. He went to night school with my grandmother. She spoke many languages, but he went to night school with her when he was seven years old, because my grandfather, being a baker, was out at night baking, and my grandmother couldn't leave him alone. So schooling was always very important to him. And my mother came from New York City, and they were married in 1927.

TI: Going back to when your grandfather first came to the town, and there was that sign, did your family face much discrimination by living there?

JO: No. Actually, by then, the Catskills was a place that people were sent to who had tuberculosis, who were living in the slums. And people, my (maternal) grandparents in New York were suspect of my father's family. (They feared that) anybody that lived in the Catskills probably had tuberculosis, and they weren't sure they wanted to send their daughter who was eighteen and in love with my father to live there. So fortunately that wasn't part of the reason they were there. They were there because it was a good place for him to ply his trade. My (paternal) grandmother worked in the bakery with him, and shoveled the coal in the oven, lost an eye doing it. But they prospered. (...) My grandfather liked to embroider, and I remember when I was a child, he lived with us after my grandmother died, and he embroidered a pillow with the flag that said "God Bless America." That was one of his favorite songs. He'd always have me singing that for him.

TI: And did he ever talk about what it was like... I guess the issue I'm trying to get at is maybe things like prejudice or race relationships. Did he ever talk about that, or being Jewish, anything like that in terms of what America was like for people who perhaps weren't at the top of the pyramid in terms of society?

JO: No. [Narr. note: As a child I was not aware that there was a lake 5 miles away that was restricted -- and a resort 5 miles in another direction -- also restricted, no Jews, and an active KKK in a town 15 miles away. Funny how even now I blacked that out!] And there's another way in which my relationship with my grandfather and my father, who was seven when he came here, and that was another parallel. They never spoke of the past, it was about the present. They never spoke about why came. And being so young, we didn't think to ask. It wasn't until much later that we found out why they came. The only thing my father would say was that he never would go back to Europe. He wanted to go to Asia. He went as far, he went to Mexico every winter, but he would never go back to Europe. And I remember once wanting to go to Amsterdam, and he said, "Why would you want to go there?" And I said, "Well, I want to see it." And he said, "They have bedbugs there. It's dirty." What he was remembering was really his departure, which was from Rotterdam. He was remembering the ship. The only thing I ever heard about was the trip on the ship, that he was one of the few people who didn't get sick, according to him, because his mother kept him on the deck, and they had left with hard rolls, and he ate the rolls. He didn't eat any of the food, and he was not sick. Other than that, no.

TI: Now were they leaving Europe for any particular reason? I mean, why did they leave?

JO: Oh, I'm sure they left because they couldn't make a living. My grandfather left because he was about to be drafted into the Russian army or the Polish army, they lived in Poland or Russian Poland, wherever it was. And he always said he ran away from being taken from his family. And he came to New York at least three or four years before my grandmother and my father came. My father really didn't know him. And he had had his mother exclusively to himself, he was an only child. And he had had his mother exclusively to himself, and I don't think he especially was happy to share her with his father when he got here.

TI: Oh, that's interesting. Now, did your father and your mother and I guess your grandfather, I mean, your grandparents, did they have very much family that stayed in, was it Poland?

JO: Well, yes, and of course, I know almost nothing about them. There was a brother who came at the same time as my grandfather, and they had some relationship but they didn't live in the same town. He was also a baker. But we had almost no contact with them because my grandfather didn't drive a car. My father was the first in his family to drive a car. He was the first in his family to go to college, and he trained as an engineer at RPI. And education was very important to him. And I think a sense of... well, he was too old to serve in the army, but he served as the air raid warden, he was the head of the Civil Defense, and he developed a radio system so that you could talk from cars to the courthouse. And we used to spend our Sundays going out testing how far from the courthouse we could go (and be heard on the radio).

TI: Oh, interesting.

JO: He introduced television to Sullivan County with an antenna that was twice as high as the building we lived in.

TI: So he was sort of like an electronics kind of buff.

JO: Yes. My children always say that their grandfather is on their shoulder when they're dealing with new technology.

TI: Interesting. That's a good story.

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