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VY: Do you happen to know if someone was taking care of their property during that time?

MM: That's a very good question, I don't know. But I did meet Herbert Tokutomi's son, who didn't even know he had been assigned to Trenton Co-op (store) during his internment, he didn't know it at all. And he's still living; I happened to go up, my friend and I, so we went to this persimmon orchard where they peel the persimmons and dry them like dried Japanese persimmons for the shrines and so on. So we went there and I said, "Oh, you know this Newcastle place? Do you know the Tokutomis?" "Oh, yes. And you know, their son is right down the road here, let me give him a call." I said, "I don't know him." They said, "Oh, he would like to know you if you knew his dad," and so he eventually came and visited me. And it was, he's an insurance salesman or something like that. And it was very sad that he never knew about his father's struggles when he came to the East Coast, because he didn't even know he came.

And it was, it's a racist society in the 1940s. There was a man from Kenya named Kimani Waiyaki, he was blue-black, he was purple-black, and nobody would rent him a room. So while he went to college, he stayed in our house. And I was always fascinated because his skin was so purple-black. And I went to a Baha'i camp, and (Marie's) aunt and uncle were so prejudiced against him. They called me the "Jap girl," so there was some indication there. And they said, "I don't want you to sit" -- they didn't want their niece to sit next to him. So they decided to drive us up so I could sit in the back with Kimani Waiyaki and they two can sit in the front with their niece, so she wouldn't have to sit with him. So that's the kind of society I was living in. And when, later on, after the war, there were these divisions of houses, like Levitown, pre-fab houses. People would go in there, all white, but they had all come out of the war, but they were Polish and Italian and Jewish and all these different groups that were around and you heard a lot of these not-so-nice jokes about them. And suddenly it's the biggest integration project in the United States and all these new houses that are building up for the white soldiers that came back. And, of course, the Black soldiers could only rent, they couldn't buy a house with their GI Bill. So that was a big difference.

VY: Do you remember if there were any other families of color in your area? Was it just you?

MM: Well, yes, there was a colored family, the father was a big real estate agent in Philadelphia, and they had a swimming pool. So my brother and I would sometimes go over there and go swimming in their swimming pool. And I remember they had a four-year-old who was walking around the swimming pool and fell in, and the other boys had gone in already because it was a big rambling house. So I took her in, she was crying, and I said, "You know, she fell in the swimming pool. And good thing I was there to pluck her out, but I think you need to be careful when she goes out near the pool." Well, when my brother died, she came to his funeral. Of course, I didn't know who she was because he died at seventy-six and probably she was like fifty-five or something, how would I know her? But I knew Melvin, who was his good friend, he came to his funeral. And she said, "You were the one who saved me." And so it may have gone into the story that, you know, you have to be careful of the swimming pool, and I was saved by her.

VY: Wow.

MM: But they were the only family that we knew. The migrant workers were basically Black, because it was in Pennsylvania and they came up from Florida, whereas here, it's Hispanic, but there it was Black. And our public schools were township schools. So when the migrant worker children were there, they would put them in the public schools. Well, I remember, in second grade, Dorothy and her sister were very, very tall, and I was a young kid, so they must have been ten or something. And they were in the second grade class because they couldn't read or do the work, they could only do the work of second grade class. So usually about twenty people in the class, and then when the migrant workers come in, there would be about forty in the class. So I remember the principal came in and told Dorothy and her sister to stand up and come in front of the class, which they did. Then he said, "Take off your stockings." And I thought, "Well, that's not very nice, what is he doing?" So they take off their stockings and they had big holes in their heels, and I felt so sorry as the money was dropping out of their socks. They'd been stealing the milk money that was in where you keep your clothing. They were stealing the milk money and they finally figured out who it was. So they had them take off their socks and the money fell out and embarrassed them. And it embarrassed me for the way he hurt their feelings. Even though they stole, I think I, in my childish (self), knew it was so unkind that it was worse than the stealing in my mind.

VY: Do you remember where they stayed, where they lived when they were...

MM: They had, on the farms they had these little huts for (them). I'm sure they didn't have running water, I'm sure they had outhouses and it wasn't anything. I worked for the U.S. government, and in the U.S. government, they had to look out for the welfare of children of migrant workers, because there was almost nothing for them. And that wasn't just, Falls (Township) in Pennsylvania, it was all over the United States because they were treated so badly.

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