<Begin Segment 35>

EG: I'm interested in another issue that's a current issue. Some people are saying that the Nikkei community -- because the young people are marrying out in such large numbers -- that the Nikkei community is going to disappear in a matter of some few generations down the road. Now, your son married out, what do you feel about that whole issue?

TM: Well, it's, I think it's a difficult issue, but it's an individual choice. We cannot tell our children what to do or what not to do. The first generation was, you might say, narrow-minded. So they even thought that the second generation like us should not marry anybody outside of their community. In other words, our folks came from Fukuoka and they thought that we should find somebody from Fukuoka and not Hiroshima or some other place. They were against, sort of against that. Wellm that was one thing. Then they thought that then Japanese should stick to the Japanese, but the second generation didn't marry out. But when it came to third generation and fourth they had more freedom, independent thinking and Issei parents all gone, and the new parents were more broad-minded. So it's getting to be that way. I imagine something like half of the Japanese are marrying out and so...

EG: Yeah, I understand somewhere about 60 percent for the, for the Sansei, Yonsei.

TM: Well, could be. Could be. So one of these days there's going to be like South America, I guess. They were marrying their natives and the Caucasians and everybody. Oh, like Hawaii. So I guess that's what's going to happen. Whether that's good or bad, who knows. And then what are we to say, how are we going to judge? And it's a difficult issue... I don't know. [Laughs]

EG: People don't seem to have... the people themselves, individuals, don't seem to have a problem anymore in terms of prejudice to marry. Interracial marriages are gettin' so common, that the people themselves don't seem to be discriminated against. So as you say, it's happening and it's going on and maybe after a while we're going to be more like, like Hawaii.

TM: I hear Jewish people are still that way.

EG: They have the same issue going with them, yes. They just don't have the physical racial component that the...

TM: And they have religion, too.

EG: They have the religion, yeah.

<End Segment 35> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.