Densho Digital Archive - Saburo Masada Interview (denshovh-msaburo-01-0016)

<Begin Segment 16>

KL: Well, what directions did you take in life after high school, or is there anything else before your high school graduation that's important to you?

SM: I was active in school sports, and then I studied hard even though I had to, even though I didn't share all the workload that we normally would do at home, because I had to get my studies done. Because my grades didn't come from being smart, it came from just studying hard, really studying hard. All the way to college I had to just study hard. But I was getting straight As, and maybe that was the motivation. Let's see...

KL: What was your motivation for working so hard?

SM: I guess just we were brought up that way, since grammar school, study hard. And I think, I mentioned recently in a talk that because we weren't, we were like a second-class citizen, we tried to compete with the majority in ways that we had some control over, and that was studying and grades. So back in those days, most of the valedictorians were Japanese Americans. That's something we had control over, and so academically, not only were we encouraged to go to school and do all that, but that was one way of competing and staying at the top. Socially we were not accepted as well. Our parents -- and this is the Japanese culture -- were very prejudiced against other cultures, but they said that the Japanese people are number one, "You're number one. Don't forget it." And so that was drummed into us, intellectually, but emotionally we didn't experience that. We were treated like second-class citizens, and so there was a difference between what we were taught and how we felt. How we felt was don't rock the boat, don't speak up, don't challenge anybody. Just look the other way if they mistreat you, just smile if they call you names. So that was all very degrading to our emotional life. Intellectually, we would say, "Oh, they're just stupid. They're dumb. Don't pay attention." Well, that's, that was okay if you had a strong self identity like our Isseis who grew up in a majority culture, and the Kibeis who grew up in a majority culture in Japan, but for us who was -- like one minister friend, he quoted somebody and it was wonderful, it really rang a bell with me. He said, "What do, what's it like to grow up as a minority in America?" or anywhere, I guess. He said it's like you're walking along and every so often somebody notices you and you're aware of that and you interact off and on, but he said growing up as a Japanese American, or as a minority, you walk, you're walking down this path and it's lined up with people and they're all looking at you. And that's how we felt. Everybody's aware of you, looking at you, so don't make a mistake or don't bring shame. And so we watched our Ps and Qs, and so we were very self-conscious of ourselves, which wasn't too helpful because we were always worried about what people were thinking. But the Isseis, they survived that way, in a discriminatory society, because they said, "Oh, they're just stupid. They don't know anything." That's because they already had this strong self-image. But for us growing up, we didn't have that, so it was sort of devastating, not to speak up or not to say, "Hey, you can't do that." We'd just smile and just try to let it roll off the back, but it was getting us in our gut because we couldn't do anything about it.

So when the blacks were revolting in the '60s, very, very few Japanese who had the bad experience of World War II, who had the right the speak up, didn't say anything, just kept quiet. And I describe that as growing up in so-called society, well-accepted, not on equal terms with the majority but by kowtowing and accommodating. And so if they said anything about those blacks who were trying to fight for justice, they might be kicked off the hill again, so they just kept quiet and didn't really help the blacks like we, we had a right to do so from our own experience. So that was sort of tragic.