Densho Digital Archive - Marion I. Masada Interview (denshovh-mmarion-01-0015)

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KL: Did your folks attend the Buddhist church at Poston?

MM: I don't think so. I don't think so. My mother, when she was -- she got married at sixteen, so I think she was fourteen when my grandmother sent her to Berkeley to help another family with, childless couple, and there was a Dr. Yoshiye Togasaki, and I happen to have her card here --

KL: I'm so glad because I don't have a strong sense of her, and of course she is part the visitor's center at Manzanar.

MM: Is she? Well, this --

KL: Yeah, so please tell us anything you can.

MM: I'd love to tell you about her.

KL: Are you ready to do it?

MM: Yeah. Now, Dr. Yoshiye Togasaki would come to this family's house that my mother was helping.

KL: And what were their names, the family?

MM: Ninomiya, just like my mother. But no relative, no relative. I don't have the name, the first name, but it was the Ninomiya family and so my mother went there to help them for one year, and Dr. Yoshiye Togasaki would come to this home and teach Sunday school to all the neighborhood kids. All the Japanese families would send their kids to the Ninomiya house, and my mother says, "She was my Sunday school teacher." Now, years later, I'm married now and my mother said, out of the clear blue sky, "Marion, have you ever gone to Mexico City?" I say yeah. Dr. Yoshiye Togasaki sent me. She paid my tuition and my airfare and everything to go, to attend the first International Women's Conference. And she said, "Dr. Yoshiye Togasaki? She was my Sunday school teacher when I was, when I was young." And I said, "Well I'll be darned." And so when Dr. Yoshiye Togasaki was going to retire, it was in the newspaper, Japanese newspapers, there was going to be a big party and the tickets were going to be fifty dollars or something like that, it's going to be held in San Francisco. I wanted to go, but I wasn't able to go, and so what I did instead was write up this story that my mother told me, "You were my mother's Sunday school teacher when she was fourteen years old," and she named all these names, my mother named all these names and my mother, she must've got a lot out of it because she lived like she, like a Christian person would. And so Dr. Yoshiya Togasaki wrote to me and she said, "Your letter was the most meaningful of all my gifts," that she received, "because you never know how people's lives were affected when you help them, because you never heard of it. And here I heard what happened." And she just appreciated so much my writing to her. That was my contribution to her retirement party.

KL: How did you come in contact with her? You said she funded your travel to Mexico City?

MM: I was part of the Asian Presbyterian Women's Group, and we were asked to participate in the National Presbyterian Women's Conference in 1975, I believe it was. So in order to do this we had to prepare one year in advance, a group of us women, Presbyterian women, pastors' wives or people who were, mostly were active, really active in the Presbyterian church, we got together at Alamo retreat place, and we had to tell our stories to each other because everybody had a tearful story to tell, about the prejudice, the discrimination that they faced in the work area of their life. And we all cried. I mean, we just, to hear these stories of, this woman from the Philippines, she came, she was a director of a hospital, when she came to America they didn't accept her credentials, anything of how she was a director of a hospital, all the education that she received in the Philippines, and so she had to go back to school all over again at this stage in her life. And we just, I mean, upon hearing that we just all cried. You know? How frustrating it was to have to go all over again, another education like that. It was awful. And then different kinds of prejudice and discrimination that, each of these women had a story to tell, and we had to get all this cruddy stuff out of our systems, because if we're going to participate, the leaders said, "We want to show strength, face, our faces and what we're doing in our churches. And we don't want anybody breaking down. We want everybody to be strong and tough, that kind of spirit."

Well, so that's why we shared our stories, and it took one year to do this. And the next step was to divide up what we're going to do. We need people to tell the story, we need people to man the bookstores with all our different books, we need people to show a video or, what do you call those 35 millimeter... it was nineteen...

KL: Film clip?

MM: Film clip, and be able to share, take care of that, answer questions. And we need a few to work with the executive board, who will do the, do holy communion for everybody, five thousand people. And we want a representative from the Asian women, so we need somebody who will do that. And I forgot what the other category was, and so we were to choose amongst these ten women, what we're going to do -- thirteen, thirteen women -- what we're going to do. So I said, well, I guess I'll be willing to tell my story then, because I'm not good in the other things, and so I said I'll do that. So now they had to, one lady needed to work with me to tell my story, to read it so that it'll be, what is it, politically correct or whatever you call it.

KL: I was thinking compelling, but there was a concern for how it would be received?

MM: Yeah. And so now I was to be the Asian American story. There was going to be a Native American story teller, American Indian, Chicano American, and a Black American. There was going to be four of us women who were going to be on the stage and were going to tell our stories to the church. This is what's, what our history is in the church. And so I told my story about being in a concentration camp, made to feel that I started the war, made to feel that being Japanese was bad. That's what I said.

KL: In 1975.

MM: Yeah, that's what I said. So that was my story; I have a copy of that, too. And at the end of the, of my telling the story, I put my head down and I was reprimanded for that. Remember I told you? We have to show, not to put our head down, but my head went down. I don't know, I guess I was, I was so nervous, and by then I was tired, I guess, because it was nerve-wracking. You're speaking to five thousand people and you know what you're doing? It's so dark you don't see anybody. You're talking to a darkness, that's what you're talking to. And the stage, you were way down in the pit, and when it came time for us the stage comes up, oh my goodness. They didn't tell us that was going to be happening. And we came up, the stage started to move up, my goodness, what a feeling that was. [Laughs] They didn't tell us that.

KL: Did Dr. Togasaki go to that conference?

MM: No, no, no.

KL: What was her interest in funding... was it, did she choose you? Did she know you, or she just funded this scholarship?

MM: No, the Asian Presbyterian Women's Group asked for a donation so that somebody could represent us and go. So I went, and that was an experience. That's another experience. Should I tell you about that?

KL: Well, I have two more questions first, and then yes. But my first question is what, did you ever hear from people in the audience what their reaction to your story was?

MM: Never. But I heard one -- Judith Jamison, do you know who she is?

KL: I should. Her name is familiar, but I can't place her.

MM: She's a very tall, slender dancer

KL: Yeah.

MM: Alvin Ailey.

KL: Oh, she's the artistic director, yeah.

MM: Yes. Well, I found a picture of her in a magazine, advertising stocking, she is the most longest-legged person and she's tall, slender, and she had on this white dress and it was fitted on the body but the bottom part was flared. And after I finished speaking, I was the last speaker, she told the lady waiting to dance after our talk, "I can't dance. Those stories were so compelling I can't dance." And the lady that was with her said, "Judith, you've got to dance because you have to show that there's promise, there's hope, there's, there's strength in women, and we can come back." And with that, she came out on the floor with a bang and a flare. I tell you, it was the most fantastic dancing I ever saw in my life. Being so slender and tall, the white dress, the flare, and she twirled around and she put her arms this way, I tell you, it was just, it was fantastic. It was glorious.

KL: The Ailey's amazing, that company. I've never seen her dance, but I've seen them in performance a couple times.

MM: Yeah, Alvin Ailey Dance Group.

KL: Wow, that's really cool that she was there.

MM: That was the only comment I ever, because the lady shared it with us.

KL: And you said it was an international conference?

MM: Yeah.

KL: So were there similar panels from other countries, telling about --

MM: No, because this was the National United Presbyterian Women's Conference, but there were delegates from all over the world. There were five thousand women.

KL: What do you recall about the other three narrators?

MM: The black lady said, I think she was next to me, she said -- I spoke maybe one or two minute long. We were supposed to speak to the minute, but mine went a little bit over. But she said her talk was cut short because, I don't know how it worked out, but hers happened to, she remembered so much and I guess she cut it short, and so everything was right to the minute when it was over. And when it was over, the curtain draws or whatever and we go down, I mean, these women are so precise in their planning. It's mind-boggling.

KL: That was a while ago, but do you remember any significant commonalities or differences in your story, the African American woman, the...

MM: Well, I was told that each of us women were supposed to tell personal stories. Not one of them told a personal story, not one. The black lady told a black history, of blacks in America. The (Chinese) American chose one incident of prejudice in Texas that happened to a Chicano American, that's what she chose. And then the Native American told about the life of Native Americans, how they, they only use what they need and then they move on when, and I remember that very distinctly, she told the history of the Native Americans and how many tribes there were in America.

KL: Was Dr. Togasaki affiliated with the Presbyterian church, you would say?

MM: I think she, that family was Presbyterian, and so when they approached her for money, finances, she just gave, yeah.

KL: What else do you know about her biography? I know she was with the army for a while.

MM: Let's... [reaches for notes]

KL: That's okay. If you, we can look together at that stuff later.

MM: Okay.

KL: You said you had some experience that you asked if I wanted to hear.

MM: In Mexico, when I went to Mexico? Well, my neighbor in Stockton had a very dear friend, Jose Leben, in Mexico City. He was the mushroom king of Mexico City, and they told me to look him up. So because they were prisoners of war, Italians, prisoners of war in Stockton during the war, and so after the war was over they were shipped back to Italy, but these two jumped the ship and went to Mexico. But Louis, Louis Donada, my neighbor, he had, he wanted to marry Norma, who came to visit him in the prison.

KL: Libon?

MM: My neighbor. So he came back and married her and was my neighbor. But Jose jumped the ship and stayed in Mexico City, and he became, he grew mushrooms and became the mushroom king, and he grew mushrooms so big it had eight hundred spores. You know that little thingy underneath the mushroom, eight hundred spores. Delicious mushrooms, oh my goodness. Well anyway, they came to see me at the hotel, because Louis told me to look them up, and he, now he speaks to me in English, then he speaks to his wife in Spanish, and I understand Spanish because I took it two years, and so he tells his wife, "Shall we bring her to our house?" And she says, "No, it's okay." And then he talks to me again, and I asked him, "What do they do in Mexico City for mentally handicapped people? Because I have one." And he said, "Nothing. Nothing. What do they do in America?" And I told them what they do in America, because my daughter was, Alisa was in the program and, adult program now and all that. And so now he translates to his wife that, "She has a mentally handicapped daughter." Well, I didn't know that they had a son who was in an automobile accident and now he's, he doesn't have his mind. He's just sitting there at home staring into space, not able to communicate or do anything because his head landed on, he was riding a motorcycle and no helmet. So now, beautiful, handsome young man, twenty-three years old, to see him was heartbreaking. So what they, they said, "Let's take her to our house," she says to him in Spanish. "Oh, I guess I'm going to the house." So I made my way to the house and they introduced me to Alex, the boy, and I tried to communicate with him. And then I searched my purse and I found a music box, a little Japanese music box, and I took it out and I wound it up, and I let him listen to it and he liked it, and he smiled. I said, "You can have it. It's yours." And the mother was happy, so I was able to just communicate a little bit and show him some compassion.