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TI: Let's talk about some other things. Outside of school, were there any incidents that made you feel as if you weren't viewed as an American? You told me a story earlier about something you did with your brother once with the B-17 incident? Can you talk about that?

HM: Yeah. My brother was a model airplane enthusiast and you know, he'd make, spend hours making these model airplanes and flying the things. And they were really hip on airplanes as such. Unfortunately, there was no job prospects in any of the aircraft production areas because Asians at that time in general were forbidden from being employed in any of those companies, Boeing especially. Boeing didn't hire their first Asians, I don't believe, 'til after World War II. Anyway, they used to make these model airplanes and they're all enthused about airplanes and whenever they saw a P-26, which is a Boeing fighter airplane, they used to you know, go out and look at the airplane. In fact, they tried to get down to Boeing Field to see it land and all this kind of stuff. But this one occasion they had a report on the radio saying that the prototype or the first B-17 airplane had crash landed at Boeing Field, attempting a landing.

So anyway, all the kids in the neighborhood were yelling, "Hey, let's get down there and let's go see that airplane." And so, I wanted to go and I was the youngest kid in the group there. And my brother said, "They won't let you go, you're too young. They don't want you around, you can't keep up with us," and all this kind of crap. So I said, "Yeah, I'm gonna keep up with you guys. I walk more than you guys do because I walk back and forth to school," and all this kind of stuff. "I'm in better shape than you are." Anyway, they reluctantly agreed that I could go. So we rode the street car down to the mud flats, and this is down Airport Way when they had the streetcar down there. We could see the tail of the airplane sticking up. It was about a mile walking through that mud flats and here, there's a whole bunch of people around the darn thing. They got a rope cordoned around the place and the police are there, the Seattle Police Department's there. So as we were approaching this whole area, this one cop says, "Hey you Japs and Chinks aren't allowed in this place. You better go back home where you belong, keep yourself out of trouble." After coming all the way down there, one of the guys says, "Hey, let's go around to the other side where that cop isn't around." Well, the cordon was all around that airplane and as we walked around to the other side the guy followed us around on the cordon and he said, "Now you guys get the hell out of here."

The other incidents about being Japs and Chinks, well that was kind of a disturbing element. I was learning all of this stuff at Bailey Gatzert and how American we were and all this kind of stuff and that was the first instance where I thought gee, maybe there is something different here. [Laughs] We were in a kind of protective environment because we were living in Nihonmachi really and there was no instances of people coming and raising Cain with us because we're Nihonjin. I was kind of protected by my parents about all this, this discrimination and this kind of stuff, and I was kind of naive about this whole thing.

TI: When the police officer said that, "Japs and Chinks get out of here," can you remember how you felt? Were you shocked?

HM: Well I was kinda taken aback because I didn't think people would be shouting at us like that, not knowing us. I had seen words like "Japs" in the newspaper and stuff like that but this was the first instance where I saw a policeman tell us like that. Because when the policemen used to come to our grocery store, they were well behaved. They were well behaved primarily because my father used to give them a lot of stuff for free. Like apples, and they wanted to cut up some oranges he would say, "Help yourself," and they'd pick up a couple of oranges, or couple of apples and stick it in their pocket and that was their normal behavior, and they would treat us very well. My father would say, "He is a policeman so you have to treat them well. He's looking after our neighborhood," and so forth. So the police never said anything like that before and here this guy is hollering at his top of his lungs to have us out of there.

TI: What was the reaction of your brother and his friends? At this point, they were young teenagers.

HM: Yeah, well they were more realistic about the thing. And they had incidents like this occur before so they took it as one of another events. I guess we'll never get into The Boeing Company, things of this nature.

TI: What about the reaction of others around? Were there other people gathered around? Was there any reaction from other people when the police officer said this?

HM: No, they just looked around, turned to look to see who we were and that was about it. There was no utterance or anything. They were more interested in seeing what had happened to the airplane. It was a nose down crash. They had a stall and they stalled right into the ground. That was the early B-17 so it was a large prototype. They had a bigger wing span and it was relatively under powered. But I learned about this when I started working at Boeing and trying to do the history of that airplane to find out what had happened.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.