<Begin Segment 18>

SF: So, on the other hand, you have this really severe discrimination of some sort, or obvious discrimination.

FM: Yes, yes.

SF: So you have Niseis coming up to this, and they're coming of age in the '30s.

FM: Yes.

SF: And so you have, I guess, what some people would call the Nisei problem. What's the future of the Nisei in, in America in the '30s? So, what are the different... what did people think? I mean, you had discrimination, you couldn't go into certain kinds of jobs, professional jobs. They were just simply closed to the Nisei at that time. I understand there were some ideas that people could act, Niseis could act as a bridge to Japan in some kind of trading company thing or something of that sort. So what were, how did people think about what, what was going to happen to the Niseis and what role they were going to take as they matured and so forth?

FM: Well, I think the Nisei at that time, in the 1930s, in a sense were too young to know what the reality was going to be like. By the late 1930s there were a fair number of Nisei who have grown up to the point where they're looking for jobs and so on, and they realized that in this white world, at least on the Pacific Coast here, their chances of getting anywhere is virtually nil. You know, the barrier is very strong and high, and when you come up against it, no opening that could conceivably be attacked. But in the early 1930s they're too young to realize that this is so. This is the world in which they're... by the late 1930s, you've got a fair number of Nisei who either butt their heads up against this and give up. They begin to sell produce on the public market, and there are cases of that kind. There are a handful of those who decide that the West Coast is not the place to be. Minoru Yamasaki, the architect, goes off to New York City because he finds that having received his architect degree from the University of Washington, he gets nowhere here. Nobody will accept him. Of course, part of it is that this a depression era. Seattle is not a great place for architects, simply because there was not that much construction going on and finally because there's this barrier. His friends are getting jobs, but he himself cannot. So he goes off to New York City and makes a name for himself in New York City. And then there are those who go off to Japan because they can't make a go of it here. My cousin, who, one whom I thought was such a great hero because he was a great tennis player, baseball player and so on. Very smart guy, gets a degree here at the University of Washington. Very smart fellow, but he finds that there's nothing for him to do here, and rather than give up, he goes to Japan and gets some kind of position in Japan. A fair number of Nisei did that sort of thing.

SF: Is that a fair, was that a fairly easy thing and comfortable thing for Niseis to do to go to Japan?

FM: Go to Japan? No, I don't think so. But it was one possibility. And if they were smart enough, there was a chance of their getting a job in Japan. Therefore, it was a possibility. Whereas here, their chances of getting up in Boeing for example. If you have an engineering degree, might you get into Boeing? No. Zero possibility. You couldn't even get a mechanic's job. Or if you had an education degree, could you get into a Seattle Public Schools? No. There might have been, but I don't recall that there was ever in the pre-World War II period.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.