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BS: What is inferior? I feel inferior because... I wouldn't describe it as inferior. I would say I'm comfortable knowing that there's something different about you, yet you are American and you're American born, but your culture is not what whites experience, for example. Having gone to college and having a college experience and being exposed to other families, you kind of, I think for myself, that's when I realized my family was real different. And I think that's when you realize that that, it's not good enough, what you grew up with and what for all your life had been most comfortable, was not what was acceptable by a majority of people. You're looked at or your culture is seen to be strange. And you don't want, you don't want to be perceived as that, because everybody wants to be acceptable.

JS: I don't feel inferior, but I know growing up, I definitely did. When I was in, going through grammar school and high school in a predominantly white school, kids would make remarks about me being a "Nip" or a "Jap." And then during the time that the U.S. was involved in Vietnam, it changed to being a "Gook." My folks, one of the impact, I think, that the camps had on Sanseis was Niseis knew that they were interned because they were Japanese. They did not want this to happen to their kids, so they brought us up to be as American as apple pie. We didn't know our language, we didn't know anything about our history or our culture. And so we thought we were Americans, but then we weren't accepted as Americans. People looked at us and saw Orientals, and treated us, I was never treated as one of the guys, and always felt different and never accepted as an equal. I think that the, that's true for a lot of Sanseis and that, that sense of feeling inferior made a lot of Sanseis question their past, and it gave rise to Asian American Studies where people began to understand that the educational system didn't teach people about the realities, about the concentration camps or the discrimination that Japanese or Asian people faced. And there was a need to teach ourselves and the broader public as to, you know, the realities of our history. And that was the beginning, I think, of the Asian American movement and the search on the part of Sanseis to regain their sense of identity and pride of being Japanese and Asian American.

BS: But I think it's still a continuing struggle. I don't think it's something that we will ever resolve; it's a continual process of being. And even now, I mean, at least there's some awareness with, between Janice and I, I would say, but it's a continuing process.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 1983, 2010 Densho and Steven Okazaki. All Rights Reserved.