<Begin Segment 7>

AR: Was the attitude about interracial mixing and marriage kinder in Ohio that it would have been in your childhood here in New Mexico? Was it more open? Or anyway, not to put a...

RE: I think through time... you know, when my wife and I were going through high school, we graduated six months apart from the same high school. But it was a no-no that we could not ask any Caucasians to be going to the senior prom for example, certainly dating was taboo. But you know, that changed soon after, I would say, five, six years after I finished high school. And that would be into the late '60s, early '70s. Back in the '50s, my brother had come back from World War II, out of the army, he enrolled at Northwestern University while he was a student there. He met Nancy, and Nancy was his wife-to-be. Nancy was of German Irish descent. Her father I think was one time the mayor of Youngstown, Ohio. But they were dating, but they were literally stoned. I mean, they were cursed and everything else. It didn't matter that they went shopping in a black part of South Chicago, or the white part of Evanston, they were literally stared down at. So they suffered an awful lot. When they got married that was even worse, where both of them were shunned by both parents, my parents as well as her parents, so that went on for a while.

AR: It was tough for people that --

RE: For eleven years of their marriage, and it was so unfortunate. My father obviously realized that he was so wrong, but being an old stoic Japanese, did not want to tell him that he apologized. But instead he put away a substantial amount of money to give to his grandchildren there. [Laughs]

AR: Well, let me ask you this, what's the best thing about being a Japanese American in Cleveland, and the worst things about it over the extended time period?

RE: I think the best thing was that all the Japanese American families did well. Both kids did well academically, they were good members of the greater Cleveland community. I think we were recognized as model people. You know, the old saying goes, that cliche, we were model people, but that was true in a great sense, and it was always that we were always smarter, our kids were smarter than our counterparts. [Laughs] And so we were looked at as being able to achieve academically as well as...

AR: Smarter or harder workers, what do you think?

RE: I think we were harder workers, really, we weren't that much smarter, I don't believe, truthfully. But it was perceived that way. It was great.

AR: Are there any negatives to that? Like say compared to California communities that you've lived in, or certainly not, I don't think it would fall down compared to Clovis, but are there negative aspects of being that far east?

RE: You know, I think interracial marriage was more prominent the further you got away from the...

AR: West Coast?

RE: West Coast people. I think partly it was, the opportunity to rub elbows with other Asians of the other sex was not as easy. And so you saw families even today where it's all mixed blood, very few married within the race.

AR: Uh-huh. And what's the danger with that? Is it that you think that maintaining some ethnic identity and Japanese-ness is important?

RE: Well, in a way, when we want to retain some of the cultural things, other than martial arts, you know, like... Taiko and some of the refined things, the culture that was there. It's slowly being lost, I think. I think the only thing that saved it was the thing about taiko. But around Ohio you're lucky to find one person of Japanese blood doing taiko, you know, so it's interesting. But I don't really see too much negative today. The negative comes with the influx of newer people from Asian countries.

AR: So have your children and grandchildren taken an interest in Japanese American culture and history?

RE: Absolutely not. That's... I try to put things to my granddaughter or even my son and daughter about, "You should take pride in that," but they've never expressed interest in what went on. However, it was interesting. My son was running for a public office in western Michigan, I mentioned I think he was running for trusteeship of the township. But he, in his letter of resignation since he was now moving from Holland, Michigan, to Raleigh, North Carolina, he mentioned that, "Isn't it wonderful that it was just one generation ago, my father was incarcerated in a camp being considered an enemy of this country and here I am having the opportunity to run for public office and all you people accepted me so graciously?" He said, "Where else could this ever happen but in America?"

AR: So he has internalized it even if he doesn't want to tell Dad.

RE: Yes, but he does take pride in that I was always involved in community affairs but he takes pride in the fact that he is a Japanese American. And of course his wife said, "I married your son because I wanted to have bright children." I said, "Oh my gosh, that's crazy."

AR: Is she Japanese?

RE: No, she's Dutch, of Dutch descent, of western Michigan. But no, in actuality, she saw my nephew... I mean, yeah, my nephew Steve who practices medicine in the Seattle area, and his wife, Carol, is blonde and the kids are the cutest kids in the world. And she's... when they were married she said, "I want good-looking kids like them," and she got her wish. We have a great, nice granddaughter, yes.

AR: Let me ask, because I'm not sure if Tom addressed this in the interview, but how did your family go about receiving redress, was it as part of the big 1988 Civil Liberties Act, was it automatic, or did you have to apply?

RE: No, automatically. I think you filled out a form, who you were, where you were and everything else and you were alive, and to prove that you were alive, you were paying your taxes, Social Security, you filed your income tax and all that. But around before 1980, sometime before that, my wife's brother was... at one time president of the national JACL. Henry Tanaka was his name and Randy Shibata, and some of those involved with JACL in New Mexico knew him well. But he asked that I work with him getting in touch with local congressmen around the area of northern Ohio to impress upon them the need to have this redress issue brought forth. And so, some... many years before that we were involved in that. Unfortunately, there were numbers of Japanese American families that were opposed to that. They were doing well, they were comfortable. They didn't want to rock the boat. They didn't want to cause a public issue of this redress and reparation issue brought up. They said it would be too embarrassing and besides, they were doing well enough they didn't need a "handout," so to speak. But interestingly, the same people who accepted all that money were the ones who opposed redress and reparations. So we don't think about that too much but it did happen obviously.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2008 New Mexico JACL and Densho. All Rights Reserved.