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VY: Well, I'm wondering, so you moved from that area to Rainier Valley, and it sounds like the racial and ethnic makeup was very different in the Rainier Valley.

MM: Yes.

VY: I'm wondering what your feelings were during that time, if it was an adjustment for you to make, and I'm also wondering if you could talk a little bit about where you lived. Like did you move into a house, an apartment?

MM: We moved into a house. Where we were, it was, you might say, on the wrong side of the track. Rainier (Avenue) is the dividing point. The people that lived on the east side near to Lake Washington, of course, they were wealthy. One of my best friends that died a couple of years ago, she lived right above Lake Washington, I mean, you could see her family. And she has a sister that will not move from her, that she has a houseboat, she's lived in it all her life since she was an adult. And she has Alzheimer's now and she's four years older than I am. She will not move because she likes the water. And I'm always afraid she's going to fall in the water, but I've been reassured she'd be fine. So we lived on the side that didn't have all that fun stuff, and so they were mostly, they were probably mostly white, but there were some kids that were like maybe mixed. I don't know what they were, I didn't pay attention to that sort of thing in those days. But my brothers had, I think, some friends that were, like, half Native Americans. I don't think they had any Black friends, African American friends. But my best friend from that side of the tracks, so to speak, was white, but that was about it.

VY: And the white kids you happened to know, were they Italian, Irish?

MM: Oh. No, let's see, I have [inaudible], I think she might have been Swedish or Norwegian or Scandinavian of some sort. And she had brothers, and I remember playing with her. But one of my best friends was from the other side, and she... I don't know what she... might have been German, I have no idea. But anyway, her brother had a crush on me. [Laughs] And he used to ride his bike. Every time I'd see him coming, I'd run into the house.

VY: It wasn't mutual?

MM: No, it wasn't. Yeah, it was kind of funny. I mean, really, I would be so shy about that. I don't know what we... you know, just played together, probably. His sister and I were really the best of friends. It's interesting. But yeah, mostly they were white. And then Franklin at that time had a lot of Italians, and I was so involved in music that really I didn't make a lot of really close friends. But my very best friend that I kept until, in fact, she was one of my bridesmaids when I got married the first time. And she just died a couple of years ago. She's Jewish, but she never talked about it very much. I asked her some questions, she didn't like to talk about it, so I just quit asking her. And she was Sephardic Jew, so I don't know what that means exactly. But the rest of the kids basically, I think there were a lot of Italians at Franklin. Some Japanese, some Chinese, hardly any Blacks as far as I can remember. Yeah, it was mostly what I considered white. I mean, I'd never really thought about ethnicities in those days, I mean, that was not a big thing on my radar. I mean, I was into music and everything having to do with music. So most of my friends actually were not from Franklin. I played in the all-city orchestra, which saved me because Franklin had a crappy orchestra, it was really bad, so you wouldn't even call it a group, practically. So it was a good thing it was in all-city, and I got to sit concertmaster from when I was assistant, I was sharing concertmaster, but I was a freshman. But then after that, I sat concertmaster for a couple of years. So when you get to be a concertmaster, everybody wants to be your friend. So I had all these friends from there who were from Roosevelt High School, Ballard, Lincoln, all these different high schools where they had a really good, I mean, I wanted so badly to go to Roosevelt High School. I could not stand high school because I wanted to get into the university where I would know more people in music.

And every summer I would go to Summer Music Institute at the university, and so I knew my way around the university all over before I even went there as a student, as a regular matriculated students. So it was really a fun thing for me to see all these people, but they were all white, just about all white. In fact, there was one person, Gary Nakayama, who was Japanese. Other than that, there might have not been anybody else that was other. And even our conductor, I remember one time... you know, god bless him, Dr. Chapel, he is loved by everybody, I mean, he is really amazing. But I was really shocked, I was sitting in the orchestra. I was not sitting first chair, I was sitting somewhere in the first violin section. And we were waiting for this soloist to come who was from the Japanese consulate, he's Japanese, and he sits in front of everybody. He was a little late coming, this kid, I mean, he was just a little, he was a kid, he wasn't like high school or college or anything. And so Dr. Chapel says, "Where's that that Jap kid?" Everybody... and I'm going, oh my god, and I could hardly look him in the face. And for a long time after that, when I saw him in the hallways, he'd be friendly, it was just his way of speaking, I guess. I could barely look him in the face for a while until I realized that he doesn't... I don't know if, maybe he wasn't trying to have a racial slur there, but it came out as such, and the rest of the kids knew. I could tell that they knew that that was not right. And I knew for sure that that was not right. I thought that was really terrible. So anyway...

VY: That must have been so shocking.

MM: It was, because I thought we were all over that kind of thing. And by then, I knew about racial inequality and racial slurs and that sort of thing. When I was younger, I didn't really pay attention to it that much. So I didn't know where these... as a musician you sort of are aware of certain feelings, but you can't necessarily place a name to it. So I think I've always had a sort of feeling, if somebody is antagonistic or not friendly, I could tell, but I would never know why. And I never put it together as a racial thing, and in fact, when I bought my first house, I was shocked. When I thought about it later... well, first of all, when I bought house, it was in 1973, okay. The person that helped me buy the house, I mean, the real estate, he was a real estate agent, he just lived a few houses down from where I bought the house. He says, "Oh, well, you'll probably be married in a couple of years." He says, "You know, a few years ago, you wouldn't have been able to buy the house, because they didn't let women buy houses then." And then I found out later, you (couldn't) even have a credit card when you were, in the 1970s. Okay, so that was one part, just being a female is shocking. And then, but more to the point of racism, it was after I'd lived there a few years, this neighbor across the street, Dick, it was a couple that lived across the street, Dick and Jane, anyway. So Dick, bless them, they're both dead, they both died. But he told me that there was a person up the street who wanted to know "who that Jap gal was." Luckily, I didn't know that person. But for the most part, they were nice, and I moved into that area because I wanted Jim, my son, to go to View Ridge School, elementary school. Because I knew he was smart, I didn't want to have him just slide through in a public school, never studying, because he didn't have to. I mean, he could just slide by and get away, probably straight-As. So I wanted him to go to View Ridge (Elementary). Of course, that summer, they're talking about bussing everybody and I'm thinking, "I just bought this house so he could go to View Ridge." If he's bussed to a south end, I'm going to be really pissed off. I was very young, and I looked really young for my age in those days, I probably looked like I was sixteen. And anyway, everybody else, all the other mothers looked their age. So I was thinking, well, I should probably go talk to somebody and say maybe he can stay because he's not, he's a minority. He may not be Black, but he's a minority. But I didn't have to, because they made it so that View Ridge didn't have to go. But you know why? The mayor lived in that district. I don't know if it had anything to do with that, I'm just wondering. It's just something I thought about. But I didn't have to do anything about it and he did go to View Ridge. But it was a mostly white neighborhood and I don't know if it was good or not for him, I have no idea. Because I wish he knew more Japanese people, but one of his best friends is a Chinese.

<End Segment 23> - Copyright © 2024 Densho. All Rights Reserved.