<Begin Segment 26>

TL: When George proposed to you -- your second husband, George Bartholomew -- were you at all concerned about marrying someone of another culture and race?

YB: I was raised, even as a child, with nothing but Caucasians. And went to high school with the Danish children that came from Solvang, and they included me as one of the Japanese "square heads." That's what they called themselves, square heads. And I didn't know what it meant, I never asked them, but I was a square head. And went around with a red headed little Danish boy while I was in school, and I might have married a Spanish, or a Danish, or Caucasian, any other Caucasian, 'cause at that time I didn't think myself as a Japanese; they didn't treat me as such until I went to high school. An Irish boy began to call me "Jap" then, and I thought, "Now what's beginning?" I couldn't understand it. I felt a little offended and it hurt. But somebody caught him and they really pinned him down. And it took him about a month, but thereafter he couldn't do enough to make up for it, so I had no problem at all. But I think he had never met a Japanese, and he felt offended to think that there was a person that was completely different, one only in the school, you know. But two more followed after that. But in the meantime, I was the only Oriental in both grade school and high school.

<End Segment 26> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.