Densho Digital Archive
Emiko and Chizuko Omori Collection
Title: Frank Miyamoto Interview
Narrator: Frank Miyamoto
Interviewers: Chizu Omori (primary), Emiko Omori (secondary)
Location: Seattle, Washington
Date: September 28, 1992
Densho ID: denshovh-mfrank-05-0001

<Begin Segment 1>

FM: And my name in Japanese is called Shotaro. And the reason it's Shotaro is that Sho is taken from the Taisho Emperor. And the reason I'm called Frank is that when I was a kid, starting with kindergarten, I guess it was, the name Shotaro got murdered by my hakujin friends.

CO: That's always the case... when you can't pronounce these Japanese names.

FM: And my sisters decided that I had to have an English equivalent or some American name and the American equivalent of Shotaro, which means "honest first boy," was Frank. [Laughs] So there you are. And I've gone by Frank ever since.

[Interruption]

CO: Professor Miyamoto, I know that you've played a special role in the course of the internment of Japanese Americans. But beyond that, even before that took place, I know that you did a special study of the community, Japanese American community in Seattle for your master's thesis at the University of Washington, which makes you particularly knowledgeable, I think, about life of the Japanese Americans, at least in Seattle and the Northwest in general. So, could you tell us your background and how you came to write this, this really groundbreaking piece of study?

FM: There are so many things that come to mind when you raise a question like that that I'm not sure just exactly how I should approach the answer, but briefly, when I went to college, I started in engineering, mainly because my father, my father knew that my interest was in literature and in humanities but he suggested that for a Japanese American -- a Nisei -- a field like English or literature or humanities, without specific goals was likely to be extremely hazardous as an occupational endeavor and therefore that I should go into something a little more concrete or something with a harder potential to it. And engineering is what I chose. By the time I got to college, my father had died and we had gotten into the Depression. And a year or two after I had started college, I had to drop out for financial reasons, and in the interim I made up my mind that engineering, after all, was not for me, that I should pursue something closer to my original interest in the humanities. Having gotten into that area, I found what might be called a "white angel," a person who took an interest in me, a person of the majority group, namely Dr. Jesse Steiner, who was Chairman of the Department of Sociology. And he encouraged me to pursue the field of sociology and by the time I graduated then, he made it possible for me to get a graduate scholarship in the department of sociology at the University of Washington. And encouraged me to pursue a study of the Japanese community, which I had offered as a possible thesis topic.

CO: I've read the study, and it's remarkably thorough, I think.

FM: Well, let me comment on that, briefly if I may. I think I became interested in doing a study of the Japanese community at least for two reasons. One, I'd grown up outside the Japanese community on Beacon Hill, which had only three Japanese families in those days, and with white school associates. But because my father had his business in the Japanese community, we also had a firm foot in the Japanese community. I was also required to attend the Japanese language school as part of my upbringing, the thought being that without a Japanese language background... or rather that having the Japanese language background would be an advantage in pursuing any career I might choose. So I had this connection with the Japanese community as well, for these reasons. Now, this situation gave rise to an interest in what the Japanese community was like because of contrasts I could see, as well as the similarities, but particularly the contrasts I could see between the Japanese community on the one hand and the white American community. I think that background situation contributed to my interest in the subject.

<End Segment 1> - Copyright © 1992, 2003 Densho and Emiko Omori. All Rights Reserved.