<Begin Segment 31>

LH: Mako, I understand that there was an event that happened at the outset of the war where the Seattle school district clerks were forced to resign from their jobs and can you --

MN: That's a interesting story.

LH: Can you tell me a little bit about the background and then what happened in later years.

MN: I learned of it in such a weird way, but it's a interesting story. There was a woman at Gatewood Elementary School who goes to school and finds out that the clerk at the school is a Japanese American and decides that it's un-American to have a... and wants to get her fired just for being Japanese American only to find out that she is not the only clerk working for the Seattle schools that is Japanese American. There are twenty-seven other schools that have clerks and so she decides to start a campaign to get them all fired, and she uses the excuse that this is un-American. She says that how do we know they're not going to poison the school lunches? How do you we know that they're not going to interfere with the fire drill? And so she starts a campaign and then there were pictures in the leading Seattle newspapers, that, huge pictures, that show how they're proudly trying to rid the schools of Japanese American clerks. And the headlines reads, "Jap clerk." Jap, Jap. Ooh, it's so ugly. And they finally decide that if the Seattle schools doesn't fire these girls, they're going to bring their petition to the Army. And Seattle schools at that point is putting on a levy campaign, and they were kind of worried about the bad publicity that they're getting. The acting superintendent, Fleming, apparently calls the Japanese American community leader, Jimmy Sakamoto, and asks that something be done about this. And so there is a meeting that is called and all twenty-seven clerks come, and he tells them that this is detrimental to the Seattle schools. It's detrimental to the Japanese American community. He pleads with them and says it is your patriotic duty as well as part of their culture to gracefully resign from Seattle public schools, and he has a letter all prepared to help them resign from the schools.

LH: Why was this his responsibility to talk to them?

MN: Apparently he and Superintendent, Assistant Superintendent Fleming, were, had a relationship. Apparently the superintendent was once a teacher of Jimmy Sakamoto's and said that this was not good for the Seattle schools to jeopardize their levy, it's not good for the Japanese American community to bring such bad, negative publicity, and if they don't resign, they'll probably be fired anyway is really what the tone of the story was. So Jimmy Sakamoto did his, thought it was his -- I think he sincerely thought it was his public duty to try to bring as much closure to this in as less confrontational as possible.

LH: And so how did the clerks react to that?

MN: At that point I don't know. Ok, later on when we go through trying to bring some closure to this 41 years later, I heard some stories. At that point all I know is the stories that are in the papers. And so they turn in their resignation. Apparently the Seattle schools cannot accept that in mass, all twenty-seven clerks sign it. Seattle public schools cannot accept their resignation unless the Seattle school board approves of it so it's about a couple days later after that they are having a meeting. So meanwhile all this is getting in the papers and people are writing ugly things like... and the only reason why the Seattle schools at that point had so many Japanese American clerks working for the Seattle schools was that quote -- and this is a quote from the Seattle school district personnel officers -- say that, "good white help was going to higher paying war industry jobs," and the fact that they were paying these clerks seven and a half cents an hour less than the minimum standard wages at that time. Oh, wow. And then so they send in their resignation, all the people writing saying, "Good riddance. We never should have had them anyway." They're not citizens anyway. There was a lot of ugly stuff going. There were a few people that were standing up for them saying they were hard workers. They were only being fired because of their race and that is wrong. And it's really amazing, in 1942 there was a petition going around at the University of Washington where a thousand people signed asking the Seattle school board not to accept the resignation saying that it was a witch hunt, more or less. And so the day of the board meeting, the board goes into closed session, which is illegal today, but they go into closed session and they discuss it for over an hour, which is a long time for them to go into closed session. And when they finally come out, they announce that it was very gracious of the girls to -- it's always the girls -- to resign from their jobs. They worked hard. They appreciate the graceful act. All these kinds of compliments on the girls, but the bottom line is they accept the resignation of all twenty-seven girls. So the reporters go rushing to Mrs. Sekor, who started all this petition campaign, and say, "Okay. You don't have to get them fired now, the girls resigned. Their resignation was accepted. How do you feel about the girls now?" And the quote in the paper said from Mrs. Sekor is, "That was very white of them. I appreciate their graciousness," something like that.

<End Segment 31> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.