<Begin Segment 27>

SF: So, now knowing what you do know about the Japanese American community, how would you explain why it's tied together as well as it has?

FM: Yeah. [Laughs] That is a very tough and interesting question. I guess any -- for one thing, the racial factor is obviously a factor. Asian populations in general -- Chinese, Korean, so on, as well as Japanese -- have a sense, in each case, has its own sense of identity separate from the Caucasian population, simply because of racial consideration, I think. The recognition that we are racially different from the larger population, and may not be fully accepted into the larger population, immediately sets us off, I suspect. However, obviously, it isn't ever a question of race alone. The nationality or the ethnicity is a factor. We don't cluster with Chinese, as much as the Chinese and the Japanese cluster within and among themselves. So there's an ethnic factor involved here, and it's hard to understand just exactly what it is that draws us together. One thought I have always had is that, those people who grew up associating with other Nisei, more than with the larger Caucasian population, are likely to come back and maintain their association with other Japanese Americans, would occur. That, I think, is in fact what has happened, but the Japanese Americans, the Nisei of my generation, were in many instances, much more in touch with other Japanese Americans than they were with the Caucasian population.

Now, in my case, I would say that my background of association was more with the Caucasian population within, than with the Japanese Americans. But that was partly because of my early experience, living in a Caucasian American community more than in the Japanese community. And also because, in the nature of my work, I lived in the relatively rarified atmosphere of an academic community, where I was pretty well accepted among Caucasian Americans, and therefore I assumed that I would be readily accepted in that area. I had little reason, in a sense, to remain identified as a Japanese American. But, for most Japanese Americans, they grew up within the Japanese American community. Their associates were Japanese Americans, Nisei in our case, mostly. And so in a sense it's not surprising that they go back to their association with other Nisei. And that having happened, the Sansei offsprings of that population have also associated to considerable extent with other Sansei of the Japanese American community. And it's that kind of associational background that I think is a factor in preserving the community. I think this is probably true in the black community as well, that the racial factor is a major thing, but also that one's associations have always been with one's own racial group or ethnic group, or to a large extent has been so, and you therefore continue association along those lines.

The other thing I would say is that the -- and I always thought this true, even when I was young -- that the Japanese American community, the Japanese community, socially is a more interesting community than the larger Caucasian community. That in the Caucasian American community, relations are somewhat more, somewhat impersonal. That people find it more difficult to organize things like baseball teams, for example. People don't hang together as readily and as easily. And therefore, that if you are interested in group activity of any kind, that the Japanese community is much more interesting community than is the larger Caucasian American, or the larger American society. And I think that this is a factor in why the Japanese Americans tend to hang together as they do, but something about Japanese society, or the Japanese style of relationship, easily draws them together into groups, whereas it is much more difficult to do so in the larger American community. And therefore, the Japanese community life is, in a group sense, more interesting than is the larger American community.

I look at my Caucasian neighbors -- I live in a Caucasian neighborhood. And what I see is that they, by and large, are not connected up with any groups or organizations. If they are in groups or organizations, it might be connected with their work, labor union, or an industrial group, engineering society, perhaps. But, other than that, their social life is largely constituted of those who happen to play golf, as they do, or those who like to do a few things, go out together to eat, as they do. But beyond that, they find it difficult to organize themselves into anything that might be the basis of social relationship, a larger social relationship. Now, in the case of the Japanese Americans, obviously we get together not only in our own ethnic churches -- I don't happen to be a member of an ethnic church -- but I think quite a number of Japanese Americans are members of ethnic churches. They get together in JACL. They get together in their sports organizations, golfing association, for example, or even business associations, a stockholders' group, things of this kind, much more easily than people do in the larger American community. And I attribute this, to some extent, to the Japanese culture, or the Japanese relationship patterns, which were brought over by the Issei from Japan.

<End Segment 27> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.