<Begin Segment 26>

TI: So I actually want to go back... so it was really tragic about your wife dying in '74. But I'm, going back to how the church accepted you, you mentioned earlier how at the Draper ward, they weren't very friendly, then you joined the Dai Ichi branch, and they were much more friendly. Once you joined the, the church, how did you find, were they very accepting of Japanese Americans once you were a member?

NA: Oh, once I was a member, the Caucasians that knew me kind of made fun of me being a Japanese Mormon, and, but they wouldn't, it was just as a joke, they would tease me. They'll say they were teasing me, not discriminating me. And, but I got along good with them after that, especially with the Mormon people, even that Mormon attorney that got me the job at Hercules, he, he was working on me to join the church. But I wouldn't listen to him either, but after I joined, he did a lot of good things for me. And so, so it was a hidden blessing that I did join the church to be accepted both... well, mainly by the Caucasian people. But the total stranger walking on the street down in Salt Lake City, even back in '65, they didn't know, they couldn't distinguish a Japanese American from the Japanese people in Japan. Because one total stranger, he worked for the Salt Lake Tribune, the newspaper, and he got laid off because the computer from Japan, made in Japan, displaced him. Anybody that couldn't operate the computer -- when did it become popular that the computers would take over a lot of handwork and job in the newspaper industry?

TI: Maybe in the '80s.

NA: In the '80s? So even as late as in the '80s, a total stranger walking down, as I walked down to Salt Lake City, would come up and say, "It was all your fault that I lost my job at the Tribune. I got displaced by a computer." Well, if he's dumb enough to, dumb enough that he couldn't operate a computer, he deserved to be laid off, and he shouldn't pick on me. But like him, he's a total stranger. So I know a total stranger elsewhere would have discrimination against me because I look like a Japanese.

TI: So this was, yeah, in the 1980s in particular, there was a lot of Japan-bashing. I think it happened in, like, auto-making places because of Toyota and things like that, too.

NA: Oh, that's right, uh-huh.

TI: But, so let's go back to the LDS church. Did you get a sense, was there sort of Japan-bashing within the church, or how did they view other minority groups, ethnic minorities?

NA: Well, at one time, the headquarters here in Salt Lake City, the LDS headquarters, they, I think, did mention something about disbanding the Japanese LDS church, there's only one. And, but...

TI: I'm sorry, is this the LDS church in Japan, or are you talking about the one in Salt Lake City?

NA: In Salt Lake City.

TI: So the, kind of the ward or the branch you're talking about?

NA: Uh-huh. So they said, "Let's disband the Japanese ward and let us go to our local ward." Because the Japanese ward is in one locality, and the Japanese Americans would have to travel twenty miles or whatever to come to church. Well, the, then the Japanese leader of the Japanese LDS church said, "No, we don't want to disband because we're still getting people from Japan that are LDS, and we don't want them to leave the church because they have no place to go. They won't go to the American LDS church," so we were able to continue. But now, they have never said about disbanding the Japanese church. In fact, now they're saying that you cannot join the Dai Ichi ward unless you have Japanese connection.

TI: So it's almost reverse discrimination. You need to be Japanese or have a Japanese connection.

NA: Yeah, you have to be a, we're discriminating against the Caucasian now, saying, "You cannot come to our church."

<End Segment 26> - Copyright ©2008 Densho and the Topaz Museum. All Rights Reserved.