<Begin Segment 25>

LH: But you really, at this point in your life, did come to some awareness about the situation, the camps. You started to, you started to form ideas about what it meant to be Japanese, Japanese American?

MS: No, I didn't know what that was. I really knew that there must have been something wrong with it, though, because we were put into these camps. And it was like, well, pretty much like a prison 'cause we couldn't come and go as we... and as young as we were, no one really stopped and told us anything. We just accepted what was our situation and our parents, heaven forbid, we could never talk to them about it. So I remember coming back to Seattle, and I remember starting school, and I do remember one incident where a young Caucasian boy came up to me. And I knew he was not friendly because he had this very, well, he had this face, a look about him -- and he said to me, "What are you?" And I knew what he was looking for, but I said, "I'm Chinese." And he looked straight at me and says, "No you're not. You're a Jap." And I recall that so much, I was thinking, "How did he know?" 'Cause I was using my name May, and Chinese and Japanese look the same. And that kind of still reinforced that there's something dirty or something bad about being Japanese. So I didn't realize how strong that was in me, but even when I got married and had kids, I didn't try to share with them too many Japanese things. And when they were born, in fact, I made sure that none of them had Japanese first names.

LH: It was a conscious decision?

MS: It was. I remember my parents asking me why don't I give them Japanese first names, and I said, "No, that'll only hurt them, so we'll just give them American names." And that's what we... later on, as I did go through this program on cultural identity and awareness which was started by Mako Nakagawa, I found that the depth of my guilt, or I don't know if you call it self-hatred, but I know I didn't like being recognized as being Japanese. And it took a while before I understood that that was okay. But I have to admit, it took into adulthood, that whole feeling.

LH: So from childhood and the time in camps, that's where it began?

MS: Uh-huh. 'Cause I had no reason to be...

LH: And that feeling, that feeling of uncertainty about your Japanese culture and heritage.

<End Segment 25> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.