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TI: Growing up in Nebraska, I'm wondering, did you, how did you think about being Japanese? Did you think about, or say to yourself, "I'm Japanese, I'm different," than your white friends? Did your parents ever talk to you that by being Nihonjin or Japanese, that you were different than people? Do you remember anything like that?

AM: Yeah, you know, there was... it never occurred to me except when I was around white adults, and they would make a comment, "the little Jap boy" or something like that, and I wasn't allowed to do something because, "we don't want that little Jap boy hanging around," and stuff like that. And I remember as a little kid, crying, said, "Why was I born Japanese?" And I didn't understand because you're young, you're immature, and you really don't have anybody to ask. But my sisters used to tell me, says, "You shouldn't pay any attention to that." Says, "You was put on this earth as Japanese and so you should be proud that's what you are." But you know, when you go play with your friends and this and that, and their parents are, whatever, calls you down like that, it really hurts your feelings. "Why was I born Japanese when there's all these hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of other people laying around?" But you don't understand the other part, where, see, there was very, very few blacks in our town. Most of 'em were dropped off because of the railroad or something. And I can't remember, maybe two families in the whole town. Mexican people are really looked down upon because they were the hired people from all the farms and this and that, and they were, at that time, they were really unreliable. When you get older, you understand why they're unreliable, because they had no future.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2008 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.