Densho Digital Repository - Mary Jane Mikuriya Interview (Densho ID: ddr-densho-1000-504-6)

<Begin Segment 6>

VY: So let's see. Have your parents met yet? Not yet. Let's talk about when your parents meet.

MM: Well, my mother, after one year of medical school she decided she didn't know, after she took the scholarship from this Christian church in Philadelphia, what would they expect of her. So she wasn't sure, so she went into science. So after she went into science, she was ready to go to work and could have a social life, right? So she was very interested in the International House in Philadelphia, it's one of the first ones. We have one in Berkeley here, it was one of the first ones, and the one in New York, of course, it's Rockefeller money.

VY: Can you describe, just really quickly, what the International House is?

MM: Oh, the International House is a concept for international development where people from all different countries come together. They live in this building, in these small rooms, but it's set up so there are a lot of activities within the house, opportunities to eat together and study together. Because the rooms are so small they have to study together and have these common things. And I know in Berkeley, eighty percent are foreign born and twenty percent are American-born, I don't know what the percentage was in Philadelphia, but I know that a certain proportion had to be American-born. But the problem was, with the American-born, is the International House only allowed American whites. But they would allow Africans in, why wouldn't they allow American Blacks? So at that particular time, both my mother and my father were demonstrating for the house to enable American Blacks to be members of the International House. And at that time, some of the people had taken the International House social time off campus as a demonstration against this... no American Blacks. They said, "We'll come back when you allow American Blacks to come in." But when you rent a house or buy a house, there's a covenant at that particular time that says you cannot have this house used or sold by Blacks, Negroes, colored. So they had to figure out a way to enable the American Blacks to be able to come into there, and it took several years. And during those years off campus, that's when my mother met my father, fighting for the rights of African Americans.

So they were both social activists, and as a married couple, it worked out very well because they always had something to talk about in our house because there were so many people that didn't allow people of color anyplace. Like we had a, Herbert Tokutomi came to our house out of the camps. So he was working in the co-op stores, the produce, he couldn't get a place to live. So he lived with our family during the whole time he came to the co-op 'til he left.

VY: How long was that?

MM: I think that was about two years. And I remember, before he left, he wanted to go see the Statue of Liberty. And you know, he's from California, the farming community in California. So he said, "Would you like to go?" So he took me as a guest on the train to New Jersey, and you go to the Statue of Liberty, although it's in the... people think it belongs to New York City, it belongs to New Jersey. So you have to get a boat from New Jersey and go to the Statue of Liberty. And then you climb all these stairs up to the crown, and then there's another set of stairs that are even smaller into the hand. But we went all the way up to the torch she was holding up. And it was one of the highlights of my youth.

VY: Oh, I bet. I don't think you can go into the torch any more.

MM: Oh, really? The stairway gets so narrow because the hand gets narrow, so I don't know. But it was, I was exhausted. But what a gift for somebody to give to you.

VY: Yeah, really. Let's see. So your dad... well, I know you said your dad was involved in the JACL, but maybe we'll talk about that a little bit later even though it started early on. Because we were talking about your mom and dad, they'd met. How long did they know each other before they got married?

MM: Oh, my, I don't know. Maybe a year or two, I don't know.

VY: And then what happened once they got married?

MM: Oh, then my grandpa Mikuriya had a heart attack. So because it's required that the oldest son light the funeral pyre, they took a boat. They took thirty days to go back to Japan and lived in Japan until he had his final heart attack, and then they could come back to the United States.