<Begin Segment 23>

MN: So you came back, you got married, can you share with us a story how you couldn't find housing?

MO: Yeah, we got married in 1956, and I was going to get a job at Berendo junior high. And I hadn't gotten the job yet but we'd gotten married, and I was supposed to get the job in September. So we looked for apartments in the neighborhood, and we'd knock on doors and people would say, "We don't rent to Japs." Some would be kind, "Sorry, we can't rent to you," and thirteen places until we found a place to stay. So we lived on Ninth and Hoover, which is kind of a nice neighborhood because they had a little market run by some Japanese people there, the Westmorland Market. And the good part was we'd buy some meat there and they'd tell us how to cook it, they'd explain to us how it should be cooked. So it was nice.

MN: But how did it feel, because you just served in the U.S. Army, and you just returned, and now, just because you have a Japanese face, you're being discriminated against.

MO: The thing was, we expected it. We just, that's the way our lives were. We expected this system of discrimination. I remember when I first became a teacher and I was offered a job in Alhambra. And when I interviewed for the job, I don't remember, some person in the school administration says, "We want you because we need to have an Asian teacher," and this was before large numbers of Asians moved there. And there were only six, seven districts that would hire me because of my race at that time, and I opted for L.A. because they paid better. There benefits were -- well, they had no benefits, but it was a large school district, and it was considered the best school district in the U.S. at that time. Which it no longer is, but at that time it was. So I took a job with them for four hundred and five dollars a month, four thousand fifty a year is what I got paid. But it was... you work. You don't think of... all I know that in Los Angeles, if you're a minority teacher, they sent you to a minority school. They didn't send you to San Fernando Valley. I had worked there one year as a long-term substitute in North Hollywood High. And it was not a comfortable place to teach.

MN: Because...

MO: Everyone's white, and I don't belong.

MN: When you started with the L.A. Unified School District, how many Asian American men were teachers?

MO: Oh, when I went to Foshay, instead of going to Berendo I went to Foshay, and there were five Japanese American, one Chinese American teacher at that school, but it was predominately a black school. And I was very fortunate to go to that school because I had two of the best mentors that I've ever had in teaching. And we had a girls vice principal there who was the best administrator I've ever come across. Because she gave all the new teachers that first year one day off each semester. And on that day off you went and watched six other teachers work. Yeah, she would pay for the substitute to do that. Never heard of any other administrator doing that. And when she went to Chatsworth High School, she asked if I'd like to come there. I'm not moving out to the valley. [Laughs] I'd be the only non-white face on the staff. Didn't want that.

<End Segment 23> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.