<Begin Segment 3>

AI: Well, let me take you back again. In fact, let me back up a little further and ask, when were you born? What year was that?

AK: 1925.

AI: 1925.

AK: Seventy-two years ago.

AI: And so you really grew up in the Elnor Apartments, from a very young age. That's where your family lived, and that was your neighborhood. And tell me more about, you were just starting to explain about how, really everyone was welcome at your house, you were in a very diverse neighborhood...

AK: And you know, I still get together with my girlfriends that I grew up with on Eighteenth Avenue. This, the Jewish girl just called me yesterday, Rita Hirschberg, and we went to grade school and all the way up together. And we've kept in touch.

AI: That's wonderful.

AK: Yeah. And Charlena Sefus, she's a black girl, and we've gotten together and we were just talking -- she calls me Akiko -- "Akiko, we've been together for over sixty-five years." And I said, "That's true." [Laughs] But we never differentiated groups of people or anything. We just got together and did all kinds of things together.

AI: Well, that makes me curious. Can you tell me more about, did your parents, your mother or father, did they ever emphasize any particular values as being Japanese values, that you should be like this or act a certain way?

AK: Not as much. In fact I felt cheated, not cheated so much as I would say, "Gee, my folks never told me about things like that." I never heard about eta being, as a negative person. And I never was told you can't play with people because they're of a different group. And my dad was a real union person, I know that. So he believed in unions and organizations, co-ops, he was a real co-op person. But other than that, he didn't emphasize that we should belong to any set, particular group. And I know some of the Nisei girls were in these clubs, like Taiyo Club, or they, I guess they went to meetings every month and saved money, so that they were gonna go on a trip to Japan as a group and things like that. But we never got involved in it. Because my folks didn't seem to... and a couple of times I thought, "How come I don't get to join it?" And I asked Mom and she said, "Well if you want to..." But, it didn't...

AI: It just wasn't an emphasis.

AK: Emphasis, no.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.