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TI: But going back to your... and we started this because you moved from the West, spent time with the West Coast, got know the Japanese American community, and then you were off the West Coast in Wyoming, New York, and then Cincinnati. How did that change your writing? How did that change your work, if instead you had stayed at UCLA?

RD: I'm not quite at all sure. I know it did. How it mattered, I don't know, but I think it gave me a different perspective on some aspects of it. I think I was more aware, effectively, of these people than Harry was. Harry really felt, down deep, that those folks were kind of peculiar. That's unfair. But nevertheless, he didn't have a good understanding of them. For instance, one of the things that I loved was that I was closely associated, for almost thirty years, with the Cincinnati Japanese American community. I knew, on a personal basis, large numbers of them, met with them regularly, observed eventually and concluded that one of the things that sociologists assumed was just not true. And that was that exogamous marriage reduced ethnic activism. Actually, I talked at some length to a large number of exogamous married Japanese American couples. In most of the families -- we're talking here ten or twelve families. In most of those families, the Japanese American member, either male or female, did not really have deep roots or deep personal concerns about the Japanese American community. When those couples began to have children or a child, there was an increasing concern in the family about, "What do we need to do for these kids?" And it seemed to me, from the interviews that I had, the discussions that I had, that more often than not, it was the Caucasian partner -- and all the partners were Caucasian -- it was the Caucasian partner who said, "This kid's got to have some..." and I got increasing insights from my experience with Asian American Cincinnatians. One of the most charming is a story that a colleague of mine who was Korean-born and who had two political scientist distinguishments, had two very, very bright daughters who went on to Harvard and such places. But he told me one day, coming back from a visit to Korea, on which for the first time he was accompanied by one of his daughters, who was either a pre-teen or at the low end of the teenage age. And in those days you couldn't fly to Korea; you had to fly to Japan first, or at least that was the rule, or you could go around the other way. And so they had to change in Haneda, and you've been in Haneda?

TI: I have.

RD: It's a mess; it's hectic. And he'd gone to Haneda, from one airport, to a Korean Airline, and the positions of Korean Airlines in Haneda are not, for some reason or another, optimal, easy to get to, etcetera. So he's got a place to go and this sort of thing, and he's tugging, "What's the matter with the bag?" So he bends down, and she whispers into his ear, "Why do all these people have Asian faces?" And that, I think, is a kind of metaphor for what it's like for people to be raised -- because there was no Korean American community there. There were others, but there was no community. But for what it's like for people east of California who grow up in communities where there were not... and I think she intellectually -- he talked to her about this a great deal on that trip, and she understood what was happening. But nevertheless, the shock, the cultural shock of being surrounded by what seemed to be nothing but Asian faces was very disturbing to her. Even though both of her parents were Asian, and she knew this. And they were really Asians.

TI: I've heard that similar story of, again, a Japanese American growing up in a predominately white community, and for whatever reason, or maybe it's more rural on the West Coast, but then being sent to camp and for the first time seeing so many Japanese faces was a shock. You hear that in their interviews. And to complicate it even more was realizing they were all there because of how they looked is another part of that whole complex identity thinking that they had to go through.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2013 Densho. All Rights Reserved.