<Begin Segment 27>

LH: Well, this brings me up to your work with the Seattle School District and the Multicultural Program. And we're skipping over a broad period so can I fill in just briefly that in the meantime you went to school here in Seattle and you got married, had children, did quite a bit of travel around the world and taught in several different countries. And then you ultimately settled back in Seattle, starting having some kids. Okay. And you were at the point where you are deciding to go back and further your education. Is that how -- do I have the time line right on that?

MN: We came back from Saipan and I finished my college degree, right. I was a pretty old lady by then, yeah. [Laughs]

LH: And so then when did you start getting involved in the multicultural program?

MN: I started teaching in '66 and that summer, there was a project that Seattle schools was putting on on doing a minority something. And my principal recommended me to be part of that because I was outspoken. [Laughs]

LH: Really?

MN: I think I was, like, kind of a loud mouth. I thought it was my duty to tell people. [Laughs] Oh, yeah it was kind of '60s mentality. I was very much influenced by this protest '60s movement. That was, the '60s movement was a big influence on my life as well. Martin Luther King, Martin Luther King to me at first he was a black man with a lot of balls, but he was doing something for black people in the South. That's kind of what I thought and when it finally dawned on me that this man was talking about all oppressed people and that included me, it was an eye opener for me, and it's okay for me to be who I am. If African Americans could be -- if black is beautiful, then we started saying hey, is yellow beautiful, too? It was an eye opener. Another thing that really helped me that you might laugh at is John Mitchell's wife, Martha Mitchell. Well, I thought this was a wife of a very, very prestigious, prominent white man, and yet I thought she was an idiot. That was my opinion of her at the time, and she could say what she wanted to say even though she is married to attorney general. Well, if she could say whatever she wants to out of her mouth with freedom and her husband hold a position like he does, then that kind of freed me up to say whatever I wanted to say. [Laughs] And the women's movement came into play. I started kind of playing around with the women's movement. I thought that was fascinating and I went to couple of NOW organizational meetings, and I thought I am going to join the women's organization, and the very first beginning of the women's organization was very, very racist. [Laughs] It was patronizing, racist, and I had a hard time with the women, but after I went with the women for a while all the sexist statements and sexist this, and I come back to JACL and stuff and I thought they were so sexist. I didn't belong in either camp for a while, [Laughs] but I think those were my awakenings idealistically as far as being able to identify -- that I can play role in this. I can do something to promote civil rights so I started...

LH: So the seeds were there.

MN: Yeah.

LH: But it took some event to trigger it.

MN: Yeah, to motivate it, to make -- my personal experiences were locked up in just me. It was not connected with the larger society somehow and...

LH: So how did you decide to express this, then?

MN: It just kind of grew at me. First you're experimenting around and then you start going to these organizations and say yeah, yeah, uh-huh, uh-huh. And then I started supporting. I joined a couple organizations, started trying to support in a quiet way, but I guess the first time I got vocal in the public way was there was the education association, the Washington Education Association, was putting on a work shop on multicultural. And they had a black speaker, they had a Native speaker, they had a Hispanic speaker, and they didn't have any Asian speakers and that kind of, I said what, with all the Asian kids here. So I got on my high horse, plus the fact that they were having it at the Hilton Hotel, and at that point the Japanese American Citizens League was having a sanction on Hilton hotels 'cause the kids, a couple young people that were killed and maimed in the Chicago National Convention. And we had this, we had this sanction on Hilton hotels, and they were having their convention in a Hilton hotel, plus the fact that the chairperson of this whole organization was a Japanese American. And I got indignant, those indignant days. [Laughs] I got indignant and so I started calling people up and saying, "Let's go down there and protest them" and all this kind of stuff. And I was pretty effective in getting a pretty nice turnout to go down there and protest it, but the problem was I couldn't get anybody to speak. So it kind of left it upon me to speak and I figured, "Oh, no." [Laughs] Oh, I was so scared. If there was anyway I could have called it off with any kind of dignity and pride I would have.

And so here comes the day that I have to make this speech, and I'm just scared stiff, and I haven't slept the whole night trying to write this speech. And even after I finish writing it, I'm so scared that I don't -- I just can't go to sleep, and so the next day we go down there -- It was a luncheon, I think. We go down there and we say, "We're here to protest your organization," and they allowed us to come into the luncheon, and they allowed us the microphone. [Laughs] And I said, "We are here because we are angry," and I made this angry speech, and I never in my life, I never dreamed I would ever be in that kind of position to make a speech like that and my knees were shaking and my voice was shaking and I was so scared. [Laughs] And I knew at the end of the speech, I was going to say, "If you agree with us, you walk out that door with us," and we walk out. And I thought what if nobody stands up and walks out that door with us? And when I finally said that, got to that point in my speech, there was a table of black people in the back, and they jumped out of their chair almost in unison. Oh, I was so thankful. Some people are going to walk out that door with us, and then they said no, they want some question and answer. So we did a little bit of question and answer, and then we said, "All right, let's walk out of door" and we vacated the room. It was a symbolic walkout. We said once we're out, go back in. We are not here to disrupt what you're doing so let's have a symbolic walkout, and they did walk out with us and that was, that launched my speaking. I was so scared and I guess my quivering in my voice, it sounded like I was quivering from anger and not from fear. [Laughs]

LH: You did a good job masking it.

MN: Oh, yeah. I have never enjoyed speaking, not then or ever. I still don't enjoy speaking. I do want to say some things. I want some things heard. I wish I could -- that's why I think I'd rather get into writing. I would rather hide behind the words and put on paper. Just this camera, it kind of worries me.

LH: But you're good at speaking.

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