<Begin Segment 17>

SY: So I was asking you about your parents and the way they treated other nationalities or how you felt about other nationalities.

NG: You know, that's what was, my, they always treated people, like, always graciously, and I never saw them treating anybody any way but good. But out of their mouths -- not, my dad never said anything. My dad never said anything, but my mom, "You're Japanese and your friends and your, if you get hakujin, white friends that'll lead to other things, so it's better not to do that." So our whole life was all... I was talking to somebody about, and it was, like, part of me. I never even, it just never occurred to me that it would be any, it would always be Japanese people. And I remember being at UCLA, there was this African American in my class and he'd follow me around and he'd say, "You know, we could go out." I'd say, "I can't go out." And then, but how insulting it was to him, but I didn't even, I didn't even, I was just oblivious. I said I, "My mother would kill me." I wouldn't go out. "Well, what if I become very successful?" I said, "It wouldn't matter." Oh my god, I just can't believe that I would talk to him that way. [Laughs]

SY: Yeah, somehow it, they didn't, so in other words, they didn't really look down on other people so that they... or did they?

NG: They didn't. I mean, they're just, 'cause they're...

SY: It was just that we're different and not that we're better.

NG: No. And then he, my dad was never like that. He was never, "We're better," or "Japanese..." but there was my mom, I think, and probably my grandmother too, but no, 'cause he ran a gas station. All kinds of people came in; he never, he was always, he had friends. They all loved him, which is -- and my mom too. People would come, she would invite people, different race of people, come into our house. Never, I never saw anything. She never treated anybody, but that was like a given.

SY: Yeah.

NG: So I told her, I go -- we all happened to marry Japanese, my brothers and me, but I told her, it's not gonna be the same with the grandkids, you know? [Laughs]

SY: You warned her.

NG: Yeah. Well, my older one married, happened to marry Japanese, but my other daughter married a Chinese, Chinese American.

SY: That's, yeah.

NG: I mean, it's just not gonna... forget it.

SY: Right, right.

[Interruption]

NG: No, I was saying how things have changed so. Like my grandmother, my cousin married this German, German American. Oh my gosh, how awful. Well he, my grandmother was, all of them were horseracing fans, and so he was off certain days of the week and he loved the races too, so she'd call him to go to the racetrack. So pretty soon after there was, other people started marrying in, it just didn't, was no issue anymore.

SY: And that was how long ago?

NG: She was my age, so, she was my age when, we were the same age. So when she got married, what, in the... she got married later, so maybe she got married in 1970.

SY: Interesting.

NG: And no longer.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.