<Begin Segment 1>

HH: Today is Saturday, August 27th, the time now is five minutes after one, and I'd like to ask you your full name.

MW: What is my full name?

HH: Yes.

MW: My full name is Mary Ishimoto Watanabe.

HH: I see. And the name of your spouse?

MW: The name of my spouse is Warren Isami Watanabe.

HH: Okay. Do you have any siblings?

MW: Do I have any siblings? I have an older brother and a younger sister.

HH: So you're in the middle?

MW: I am in the middle.

HH: And let's see. In what city or town were you born?

MW: What city or town was I born? I was born in San Jose, California.

HH: I see. And what year was that?

MW: What year was that? 1920.

HH: 1920.

MW: September 29th.

HH: Okay. The name of your parents?

MW: What is the name of my parents? My father, Sataro Nishimoto, my mother, Umeyo Takeda Nishimoto.

HH: And they were born?

MW: They were born in Japan.

HH: And do you remember what prefecture or...

MW: What prefecture were they born in? Hiroshima.

HH: Okay. You said that you were born in San Jose, California. Is that where you were reared, in San Jose?

MW: You asked whether I was reared in San Jose where I was born. I was born in San Jose. My family was actually living in Cupertino, so I spent my early years through high school in Cupertino, California.

HH: Okay, I see. So you went through high school in Cupertino?

MW: Yes. Cupertino and Sunnyvale, California, yes.

HH: And you went to school beyond high school?

MW: Did I go to school beyond high school? Yes, I did. You want me to tell you?

HH: Yes.

MW: I went to San Jose State college in San Jose, California. Then after that, I went to Radcliffe College, Harvard University, in Cambridge, Mass. Then after we came to Philadelphia, I also did some study in Asian Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

<End Segment 1> - Copyright © 1994 JACL Philadelphia. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 2>

HH: And with all the schooling that you went through from San Jose State through Penn, where did the World War II fall in?

MW: With all my schooling, where did World War II fall in? World War II came during my senior year at San Jose State college.

HH: I see. And how did that affect your education?

MW: How did the war affect my education? I was not there for my graduation. During my senior year, my fellow students and I were all applying to get into graduate school somewhere. And I had actually been accepted at a graduate school, but in the meantime, we, of course, left San Jose, or where we lived, to go to a camp. I don't know whether you want me to go on or whether...

HH: Yes, I do.

MW: All right. So we went to camp, and in the meanwhile, I'm still agitating to see whether I can get into a graduation school which had really accepted me, which was the University of Wisconsin. Places like, on the West Coast, like Stanford, California, they were not amenable to accepting Japanese American students at that point anyway, because the curfews and then the news had started. On the other hand, Wisconsin was way inland, and they were willing to accept me. However, it turned out that there was some army or navy or some kind of war related effort, research going on there. And they decided that they couldn't take me as a Japanese American student. On the other hand, friends in Cambridge, Mass, had put in money, put forth their money, actually, for sponsoring a couple of students in Radcliffe, for the Radcliffe Harvard graduate school or whatever. And Radcliffe and Harvard were willing to accept me, so that's how I ended up at Radcliffe and Harvard. I think the interesting thing was that after I got to Harvard and was in the biology department, I'm working in a building shaped like a U, and the section that I was in was in one arm, and that the other U had been taken over by naval research. So I thought it was very ironic that Wisconsin was not able to accept me, but here I am at Harvard Radcliffe. I just thought that was kind of ironic. I think I jumped over a lot of your questions, okay.

HH: Now, while you were waiting for all this to happen, you were in a relocation camp?

MW: I was in Santa Anita and then at Heart Mountain, and I think writing letters all along, including someone at the National Student Relocation Council reminded me some years that I was agitating a lot. And she reminded me, "Oh, yes, Mary, you even wrote to Mrs. Roosevelt." And indeed I did, and I did get a letter back from her. Someday I'll have to find it, I don't know where it is.

HH: Oh, really?

MW: But, see...

HH: So all told, how many months did you spend in the two places?

MW: In camp?

HH: Yeah, in Santa Anita and Heart Mountain?

MW: I wasn't there very long, because I was in Heart Mountain from about May/June, I've forgotten exactly when we left. And then we left Santa Anita, I think, in September, to go to Heart Mountain. And then I left Heart Mountain towards the end of January of 1943. So all told, roughly six or seven months for me.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 1994 JACL Philadelphia. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 3>

HH: But you went to Cambridge?

MW: I went to Cambridge.

HH: I see. And how many years did you spend at Cambridge?

MW: I was there in Cambridge until 1950, many years.

HH: Were they good years at Cambridge?

MW: Yes, I thought they were good years. I mean, I felt very fortunate, of course, to be there.

HH: The academic community, of course, is very few peers, but how about the other climate? Was there any kind of racial, ethnic prejudice that you encountered over there?

MW: I think what happened in my case, and first, I was sponsored by Mrs. Edward Seeler, who were friends, Quaker friends, and they had their circle of Quaker friends who were very closely related or worked with the National Student Relocation Council, of course. And they had prepared, I think, so that the circle of people that I had to come in contact with at Harvard Square wasn't really that great. And I do not recall ever having come face to face with what I would have considered straightforward discrimination or prejudice. I have heard, however, that there were probably one or two professors at the biology department that were really not very happy about having a Japanese American student come in at that time. In the dormitories where I stayed, the dormitory present told me that the dean of the graduate school and/or the president of the college had made a specific attempt to meet the students that lived in that dorm to prepare them for the fact that here was this person coming. So it was made easier for me in that respect, anyway.

HH: It sounds like there were enough buffers to protect you from...

MW: There were buffers, yes.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 1994 JACL Philadelphia. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 4>

HH: At what point did you leave Cambridge to come to Philadelphia?

MW: We came to Philadelphia in 1950, September. Actually, I had finished my doctorate, got married, and Warren had a job in Philadelphia and that's why we came to Philadelphia.

HH: Oh, now you mentioned Warren.

MW: Yes.

HH: Okay. When did he enter your life?

MW: He entered my life in probably the year '48 to '49, because he was at MIT as a postdoc working with, postdoctoral fellow, working with one of the professors at MIT. And actually, we met, which is a subsequent question, at a meeting of the Japanese American Citizens League Boston. And now I've been forgetting to repeat your question.

HH: That's okay. I see. And was there any special circumstances involved in your meeting? Was it a natural easy meeting between the two of you? Or did you know of each other from California?

MW: Actually, did I know my husband-to-be at that time when I went to the JACL meeting? I did not know him. I am told -- and he may tell you this when you talk to him -- I understand that he knew Jin Kinoshita, a friend, and he asked, I guess he asked about other people who were in the community, so he knew of me. And he decided that was when he was going to come to the meeting. [Laughs] That's what he says, anyway. So for me it was just chance, and I went to the meeting and there he was.

HH: What is the year that you got married?

MW: 1950. What is the year in which we got married? 1950, September.

HH: That's about the same time you moved to Philadelphia?

MW: Yes, that is about the same time we moved to Philadelphia.

HH: And you've been living in Philadelphia since then. Was that a difficult decision to make, to move from Boston, from Cambridge, to Philadelphia?

MW: Was it a difficult decision to move to Philadelphia? Actually, it was not a difficult decision. There were very few options and jobs in September 1950. It was just at the time of the Korean War, jobs were not that plentiful, and I think Warren had two possibilities, Philadelphia or somewhere in Cumberland, Maryland. And we decided coming to Philadelphia was better because then both of us would have a better chance of getting... he had his job assured. But I was fairly sure that I could get one in Philadelphia, and I wasn't sure about Cumberland, Maryland.

HH: After you graduated from San Jose State, sounds like you had your mind set on doing your graduate studies in the east even at that time. Is that correct?

MW: After I graduated, or while I was about to graduate, then I had my mind set on coming to the East. Herb, I'm not sure that that would be the case, because I think that that decision probably came about because I knew I couldn't go to graduate school on the West Cost. And so the choices shifted. And were influenced by the professors that I had.

HH: Then if you were to speculate, had it not been for the war, chances are that you may have remained on the West Coast?

MW: No. If I were to speculate, were it not for the war, would I have remained on the West Coast? I cannot really be sure of that. I would say probably fifty-fifty. I'd say fifty-fifty because I think there was a very, there was a professor who was quite influential in my life, and he had already decided I was going to go to the University of Wisconsin or someplace else anyway. But I'm not really sure, because I think after all, that was a big move.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 1994 JACL Philadelphia. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 5>

HH: When you were teaching at Penn, that was a different field from the field in which you got your doctorate in.

MW: Yes, Herb. When I was teaching at Penn, I was teaching in a field in which I was not degreed, let's say. That happened because the labs for which I was working moved away. And there was a little period in which I was finishing up paperwork connected with the previous job, and then I learned that they were offering Japanese at the University of Pennsylvania. So I went over to Penn. And this is a time when you could go and take courses on PhD courtesy and not pay for them as long as you didn't want to take another degree. And at the time, I did that. I thought, oh, I don't need another degree. So I didn't pay for the courses, I took all of the courses in Japanese and related Japanese studies that were offered at Penn. The professor that I had for teaching -- and then I took these courses, and my Japanese language professor one year got a grant from the Ford Foundation to help with the development of the Japanese language program at Penn. And he's looking around for someone to instruct the first and second year classes. Warren and I were at Penn for a chemistry lecture, I think. And this professor, Dale Saunders, saw me and he said, "Mary, how would you like to come and teach Japanese?" I really thought he was kidding, and I said, "Oh, sure." He wasn't kidding, he hadn't found anybody that he quite liked, and he knew me, we got along in the classes okay. And I was a good enough student there, but that really was a tour de force.

HH: Any regrets for having done that?

MW: Not at all, because I did learn a lot of Japanese, and it got me reacquainted with a lot of areas of Japanese history, Japanese art, and all of these cultural aspects that have always been very important to me anyway.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 1994 JACL Philadelphia. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 6>

HH: Over the course of your time at Penn, being a teacher, you met a number of students and probably, maybe while you were there, the number of Asian students at Penn may not have been as numerous as they are today, but they probably still had quite a few. To what extent do you personally identify with the label "a quiet American?"

MW: Okay. You're asking me to what extent I identify with the label "quiet American"? You have prefaced this with a lot of remarks about Penn, which I will not respond to at the moment. The label "quiet American," I'm not really sure what it means. To me, I would think that there are times in one's life when one is not going to stick out and say things. But I think my usual tendency is not that. I don't really identify as a "quiet American," at least, I don't think, if something came up and I had to be obtrusive and assertive in order to state my position, I think I would do that. However, it's clear that I did not go and fight the evacuation. And I think if you were really strong, "unquiet American," you might have done that.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 1994 JACL Philadelphia. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 7>

HH: The other label that you may have heard, "model minority." To what extent do you identify with that label?

MW: All right, how about the label "model minority," and to what extent do I identify with it? That label takes me back to all the years that I spent with the Pacific Asian Coalition where we were getting together a group of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders from throughout the country. And I think the trouble with that label is that one likes to be considered an individual and not to be considered a part of a large group. And to label them all is stereotypes, because by doing that, one tends to forget that there are all of this range of people, and you do not want to have those people that could really profit by having attention and their needs met as everyone else's needs are being met, simply by being shoved aside by being called a "model minority." I think it's just one of those labels that somebody else might look at you and say, but I tend to say, "Hey, wait a minute."

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 1994 JACL Philadelphia. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 8>

MW: I was teaching in the '60s, and I don't know when Hosokawa's book came out. I think when I was teaching, first of all, I didn't have that many Japanese American students in my class. I had one that I can think of, but she's almost a Sansei, and had come east as a child. She grew up in Swarthmore. I didn't hear it much when I was there, because I have a feeling it got a little stronger in the '70s, didn't it? I'd finished my teaching by then.

HH: To what extent do you find that your values, your personal values, and the way you live your life, is rooted in your Japanese heritage?

MW: To what extent do I think my personal values and my lifestyle are rooted in Japanese heritage? I would say that... there may be a few things about it, of course, but I think... I'm sure my mother would talk about, you don't want to do this or you don't want to do that because of the shame it would bring on your family, which comes later on, haji. Or else this feeling of on, which is, maybe you didn't specifically mention this feeling of gratitude towards people. I think those aspects, I think -- I'm not positive -- are probably stronger in the Japanese community of my mother's generation than they were in the average WASP or white community, I'm not sure. So they may have influenced me, but I think a lot of the other things that I can think of, like, conscientiousness or hard work or being honest, not being lazy, I can't say that they're necessarily Japanese traits, do you? I mean, I'm not interviewing you. So I'd say... so perhaps this feeling of being, remembering those who have done things for you, and maybe being influenced a bit by about not putting your family or yourself to shame.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 1994 JACL Philadelphia. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 9>

HH: By many standards, you accomplished a lot. And as you look at this, Mary, what might you count as among your most important resources that supported you through all the things that you worked on, and all the things that you achieved?

MW: Without agreeing or disagreeing with your premise, what have I used as the resources for my, for helping me get through whatever? I had to get through, I think, the friendship of people, like the people that helped me get through Radcliffe, these people are still friends. My sister lives with the remaining women of that family, I think the people that we grew up with in California, I think they influenced my life. I think that's an aspect, Herb, that, in my life, was a little bit odd for the average Japanese American. My father died, see, when I was just about seven and a half years old, and my mother brought us up. My mother was a housekeeper in a white family. And so I'm there doing all these things with that white family, going in and setting the table and learning all their cultural baggage, almost as much as I learned the Japanese baggage. I don't know whether I'm making myself clear, but I think it makes it rather different from if you grew up in an entirely Japanese community.

HH: I guess the part that's striking, Mary, is, throughout, there was a sense of confidence that you always seemed to have that you could do things.

MW: The question is...

HH: And you have. And not only that you believe in yourself, but you actually have gone out and done many, many impressive things.

MW: Thank you. Do you have a question in connection?

HH: And I guess the question, if there is a question here would be, speculate as to how one develops that kind of confidence?

MW: I suspect it's partially... how does one develop a kind of confidence to be, to continue to work along in a community? I think partially it's because you grow up poor and hungry, and you try harder. And in my case, as I say, my mother was the sole breadwinner for many, many years, and you become very self-reliant. And if you become self-reliant, I think that sort of helps you to believe you can do it. You sort of go ahead and try to do it, I think. And I think all along the way, there are certain teachers, key teachers or key friends that come in and tell you that, "Now, look, if you're an educated person, you should learn to be able to adapt to any environment in which you are, and try to render some good service in that community," or something like that, and that kind of sticks in your mind. I think the friends, people we lived with, communities that we had gone into, like the Horikawas and so on, I think those are the kinds of things that really helped.

HH: Thank you very much.

MW: Not at all, thank you.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 1994 JACL Philadelphia. All Rights Reserved.