Densho Digital Repository
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Amy Iwasaki Mass Interview
Narrator: Amy Iwasaki Mass
Interviewer: Brian Niiya
Location: Emeryville, California
Date: March 12, 2019
Densho ID: ddr-densho-1000-470-11

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BN: Then you went on to, I think you mentioned Belmont school.

AM: Yeah, I went to Belmont. And then for college, I went to Pomona College for two years, and then I transferred to UC Berkeley and got my B.A. there, then I went to, I wanted to go to social work school, so I came back home to USC and got my MSW there.

BN: Was that, when you started college, did you already have a sense of, that that's what you wanted to do?

AM: Yes. And that's a story that's very related to camp. And when we got into camp, my brother and sister, as you know, left right away. And next door to us in 1-9-A were the Abes, and they were an elderly couple with a very beautiful nineteen-year-old daughter who was pregnant and not married. And you can imagine, in camp, where there's rumors galore and not much to do, and in 1942, a Japanese American girl, let alone any girl at nineteen, is not "acceptable" if she's pregnant and not married. So my next-door neighbor was very nice, and she taught me to knit, and she didn't have friends, so I spent a lot of time with her. And she would have a social worker who would come and visit her to help her decide what to do about the baby, whether she'd give it up for adoption or keep it. And she decided to keep it, and she left the baby with her parents and, I think, went to Chicago or someplace outside. And it took several months because the baby was walking by the time she called her parents and they came and they went and lived with her. But I think, for me, having a Caucasian professional woman, who was kind to me, who talked to me, who didn't act like she hated me because I was Japanese, must have had a tremendous influence on me. Because when I was in high school and we were supposed to put down what we wanted to be, I put down "adoption worker." I had no idea why I chose that, because in my memory, I didn't know any adopted children. But once, when I was a social worker and working in adoptions, I thought, oh, this is what I always wanted to do, and it's because of that woman.

BN: Interesting.

AM: Yeah, so my camp experience had a lot to do with my becoming a social worker.

BN: Then, at a certain point, did you not also work with a lot of Japanese American, have a lot of Japanese American clientele?

AM: Yes. I was in private practice, and at a certain point I was in private practice, and that was my main clientele. And then at that point, not just Japanese American, but Asian American, because some of the decisions that people were struggling with about, "How Japanese am I?" "How much of my parents' cultural values do I need to follow?" "How American am I?" Those were issues that all Asians were working on. So many of my clients were Asian.

BN: And then there's also, among Japanese, and, I think, other Asian Americans, too, kind of this cultural, you're not supposed to seek help in that way.

AM: That's right.

BN: How did you deal with that? How would even people get referred to you?

AM: Referrals came from people who knew I was in practice, and knowing people who wanted help. Some people were very ambivalent about it. I remember one person that I worked with, I think she was Chinese, and she came for maybe about two or three months trying to decide, and she finally decided in terms of remaining Chinese, more Chinese, but that was fine that she made that decision. And I felt it was not my place to tell them which they should be, but to listen and help them weigh what made sense for them. So I had a clientele that was Asian, which was gratifying because I was in private practice. My husband was in practice with a couple of other men, and all three of them were very competent, they're well-trained and such. But I found that if I referred my patients to one of them because I was going on vacation or I didn't have time or something, they didn't last as long. And so obviously there's something I knew about how to talk to people where I wouldn't, I was more sensitive to what make work for them.

BN: There probably were very few other Asian American women doing this at that time.

AM: Yeah, I was in practice fairly early.

BN: Then you also taught, right?

AM: Yeah, well, I ended up teaching because when my kids were in elementary school, I wanted a vacation schedule like theirs, because it was so hard to switch people around. And so I found a job at Whittier College, which they were looking for a half-time person, they had a small social work department, and they were looking for a half-time person who would do field placements. And since I'd been working in the community in different agencies, I had a lot of contacts, so it was an ideal job for me. And then I found out, oh, I really like college teaching. So then I went back to UCLA after some years to get my doctorate.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.