<Begin Segment 11>

SF: Okay, if we go back to the 1930s, late 1920s, did the Japanese in Seattle have a kind of an understanding about where they could go? I mean was there kind of a gentlemen's agreement about places like restaurants and things of that sort? Like you just knew that you wouldn't or you shouldn't go to this restaurant because you, you might get something embarrassing, embarrassingly handled or something like that?

FM: I think, very definitely in terms of residence. In Monica Sone's book for example, she tells about venturing, or the family trying to find a home in an area outside the Japanese community and the strong sense of the hostility they might encounter. And that kind of feeling was very definitely present. If you're going to look for a home outside the Japanese community, chances were you would run into one kind of prejudice or another. Now this, we happen to meet in the post-World War II period as well. So, it wasn't something that ended quickly and suddenly, but in the pre-World War II era, outside, anything outside of what you might call the Japanese community area -- and that would run from Skid Road up to maybe 24th on the east side, and anything south of Dearborn Street and north of well, Madison, for example -- if you got outside that kind of boundary, you very well might encounter prejudice, in terms of the possibility in buying homes. People, there were Japanese all over the city, but invariably, they were near what, the transportation lines for example, where grocery stores and dye works and cleaners were established by Japanese, and then they would have their residences nearby, in those kinds of transition zones where residences were not strictly regulated, as they would be in a purely residential area. There was a very definite understanding that you could not possibly hope to buy a, as a Japanese, place in Laurelhurst for instance, or Mt. Baker or, various areas of the city where there was no question that you would be excluded. As for barber shops for example, people just didn't try. You might get turned down going into a barber shop. Restaurants, there were a lot of Japanese restaurants. That is, not only Japanese food restaurants, but American foods, served by Japanese cooks and so on. So, again, there were a lot of choices made without going to someplace where you might run into difficulty. I don't recall that we ever tried any restaurants here in Seattle that we felt might be troublesome. But... well, even in the movie theater, I remember that as a youngster I went with some other Japanese and we would, were directed to go up to one of the galley, gallery areas, you know, upstairs area. We didn't know why, but we had the supposition that it was because there was discrimination. So, unless you pushed and tried definitely invade certain areas of participation, it's difficult to know whether you were excluded or not. Every now and then you would run into something that would tell you, yeah, this is an area of exclusion. But you in a sense had to try it out. By and large, I think the Nisei were not disposed to try out, test the limits of what they could do.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.