<Begin Segment 22>

IM: I had a few follow up questions, especially about your time in Japan. So I was curious, you mentioned that they had all of these meetings that, with all the Japanese women smoking cigarettes and things like that. I guess I was just wondering if you could say a little bit more about what influence that had on you. How did that change what you thought of Japanese women at the time, and were you also, you said that there are some things that, when you were in these meetings, you didn't follow everything, but how aware were you of the political situation in Japan while you were there?

KM: You know, I think I was pretty apolitical in terms of understanding. I could hear what they were saying. In my mind, I was thinking, "This is so different from who I am." More concerned about being a non-Japanese, and just thinking how interesting these women are, or how different they are, and not like a Japanese woman. I was really trying hard to be Japanese, so I didn't think I fit into what they were, for sure. I was trying to be more the other way, kind of. So no, I did not identify with them much.

IM: So all of the things around, like, women's liberation that were happening at ICU at the time, it wasn't really the concern for you at all, it was more about fitting in as a Japanese person, not necessarily as a Japanese woman?

KM: Yeah, exactly.

IM: Also just for posterity's sake, I was wondering if you could mention some of the names of the folks that you met during your time in Japan and the people who you were friends with?

KM: Okay. So my good friend was Nobuko Soeda, and then she eventually ended up marrying... she went on these things called caravans, and I never quite understood that, to Osaka. But she eventually ended up marrying someone that she met down there, and he was from the burakumin, and her family disowned her for a time, for marrying a burakumin. And it's funny because I had no conception earlier, or at that time, what she was going through, what that meant. But, yeah, so she was really my good friend that I maintained friendship with. The family that I lived with, the Furukawa family, they were a very nice family, and she is a woman that a lot of Japanese cultural things like the stitcheries, and I have some of that. And she also did tea ceremony, and it's funny because the father, Mr. Furukawa, he was kind of a character. When he would drink at night, he'd walk around the neighborhood -- and maybe this is typical male -- but in his underwear. [Laughs] Hot summer night. But then we would exchange packages after I came back, and my parents, my parents were like that. They felt they had to continue something. He took on the name, one time a package came and his first name was Dick Furukawa. It was my father's name. [Laughs] And I think he took on an American name, and the American name he knew was Dick, my father's name. So that family. And I saw them again when I went back to Japan, and they had two daughters, and one of them came here for some reason, some church thing, and I think I took her to Chino prison for an event we did there, and it was kind of alarming to the host family, but anyway. So that family was very good to me, very, very kind, and then, of course, Nobuko's family was very close. They never came to the United States. Her father was lost coming to Tokyo, because I remember one time they came to Tokyo and said, "Oh, I have to make sure that he was okay, because he was from the country, and Tokyo was a big city for him." So they were that kind of people, they didn't want to come to Tokyo. Her mother continued to make the hantens for me, would send them every once in a while, and I'd get a nice, new hanten. So those are the friends I made in Japan. I didn't make a lot of friends, but I feel like... this is interesting, because I feel like friendships in Japan were different than friendships here, and I can't really quite describe and put words to it, it's just that I feel like there was a deeper feeling. Like there's an emotion that you share, a deeper place that you go to, than you can go to here. Even with friends that I know here, I don't have that same, it's not the same. I can't explain it.

<End Segment 22> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.