<Begin Segment 1>

HH: This is October 23rd, Sunday, and we're recording this session today at Medford Lees, New Jersey. What is your full name?

AI: Albert Bunji Ikeda.

HH: And what is the name of your wife?

AI: It's Eiko Hada.

HH: And how many siblings do you have, brothers and sisters do you have?

AI: I have two brothers and two sisters. My youngest brother was killed in an accident in 1961, so I have one brother and two sisters now.

HH: As far as older is concerned, where do you fall?

AI: I was the oldest.

HH: Oldest of all the group. All right. And how long have you been married now?

AI: Since 1960, so that's thirty-four years.

HH: And how many children do you have?

AI: I have two sons and daughters.

HH: Where do they live?

AI: They live in Pennsylvania, one in Harleysville, Pennsylvania, and the other one is in King of Prussia.

HH: When and where were you born?

AI: I was born in Salinas, California, on July the 12th, 1934.

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

<Begin Segment 2>

HH: Will you give a brief history of your family's entry into the United States? Probably starting with your grandfather.

AI: Okay. Then you want to go into the story I talked about? Okay. My grandfather was educated. He's from Kagoshima, Japan, which is in the southern part of Japan, and they're kind of militaristic. I think they're in his era. And so they sent my grandfather to the West Point of Japan called Shikan Gakko, and he graduated there, I don't know when. But when he finished there, he started to teach in the military school, and I don't know whether this is true or not, but I've heard it so many times that it might be true. Is that when he was teaching a class, a superior officer came into his class and gave a karate chop over a student who was falling asleep and killed him. And the school tried to suppress it, but my grandfather refused to suppress it, and he quit the college and immigrated to this country, and that was in 1889 at age around twenty-four, twenty-five. And he traveled extensively. As my mother said, he traveled a lot, to the point where he may have been a spy, that he mapped the entire West Coast of the United States she thinks for the military of Japan. Because he went back to Japan when they had the war with Russia in 1905, which meant that he did not quit the military, that he was still part of the Japanese military because they still called them back for duty. When he did get back to Japan, the war with Russia was already over, so he came back to this country. So he started up a halfway house in downtown San Francisco, being a pretty educated man of Japanese descent, he operated a halfway house where these teenagers from Japan would come through this country and my father learning from all his, I guess, people that traveled through his halfway house where all the good jobs were within the United States. He would tell them where to go to find jobs in this country, and a lot of them would come back through his halfway house and tell him where all the good jobs where, and where all the newcomers coming from Japan where to go to find jobs to make money. And one was Mr. Shimomura who lives in Seabrook, his father used to praise my grandfather for finding him all the good jobs. And that was building the railroads across from Montana all the way to Minnesota. So he got enough money to buy a mountain, Mr. Shimomura, to buy a mountain in Japan, which was worth a lot of money to this day because he grew all these trees for lumber. So he made a lot of money there.

Anyway, in 1906, he got his hotel, it's built for my grandfather by these people traveling through his halfway house. And so he had a restaurant and an inn which he could house the people, and this was located down on Second Street, Second and Market in downtown San Francisco. But in 1906, he was in the earthquake and it wiped him out completely and leveled him, the fire especially, because they had oil lanterns back then. And just by the oil lanterns going over, the hotel went up in flames. But I remember him saying that the fire was so intense that the flow, the molten glass would go down the streets and create a lot more fires. But during that earthquake, my father was two years old, and he had an older brother two years older, four years old. And his younger brother Mit was only six months old during the earthquake. And so he had a big debt that he had to pay for. And so since he couldn't afford to raise his three children, his wife and he took my father and his two brothers back to Japan and his wife's side parents raised the three boys. But the one boy died of appendicitis, so there were only two left.

Okay, so my grandfather then, to pay for this big debt, got a job at a resort in Reno, Nevada. And they operated a hotel complex because he had experience in hotel work, so he and his wife worked for twenty years to pay off the debt. And at that time, he got religion. He got religion to the point where he really became a devout Christian. And then that was around 1922, in that era. Because they had a cutoff of Asians to this country during that period or my grandfather heard of it, he and his wife went back to Japan, picked up the two sons, because one had died, and brought them back to this country. And he sent the two boys to, well, the younger one had to finish high school in this country. And then my father was sent to a bible school in downtown Los Angeles. And then two years later, Mit, his brother, also went to two years of college at the bible college. And then my father said he quit because there was too much prejudice at the bible college, and so he returned to San Francisco, it was kind of a "city slickers" of San Francisco. Then they heard of these people down where my mother lived, down in Salinas, California, heard about my father. Because he was born in this country so he was a citizen of this country, although he was not educated in this country, he still was a citizen because he was born here. And they liked him because he could speak, he was bilingual. And then the people who wanted to buy the farms were also from Kagoshima, that same neck of the woods where my grandfather had come from, so they looked up my father, they offered my father the farm. Said, "If I could put, I think three or four farmers," if he could buy these farms for him, or put these farms under his name, they would give him this piece of property, I think around 40 acres or so. And so he farmed, my father became a farmer, and at that time, he met my mother who was a farmer at the time, because not one of those four farmers. And that's when they got married, so that's how, and then they got married in 1933, and I was born in 1934. So that brings us up to speed. I don't know if you want to get on my mother's side or not.

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

<Begin Segment 3>

HH: Before we do that, so you were born in 1934, and so you went to school in Salinas, California. That's where you were born, in Salinas?

AI: Yeah.

HH: What kind of town would you say Salinas, how would you describe Salinas?

AI: Well, Salinas is a rural town, but it is the, Salinas is the lettuce capital of the United States, of the world. Because if you look at, if you go to any major supermarket and you pick up a head of iceberg lettuce, it'll say Salinas, California.

HH: Even today?

AI: Even today.

HH: So you went to, what grades did you go through prior to evacuation?

AI: [Laughs] I started kindergarten at Lincoln school in Salinas, and as a farm kid I walked two and a half miles as a five year old kid to kindergarten. And to me, as I look back, I said, "Boy, I would never let my son travel, walk that far." And my mother as a child used to do that, walk two and a half miles to school. So I went there, I went to kindergarten, and then during that time, we had to move, my father wanted, I guess my father wanted, I guess, a better farm, so moved about five miles up the road in the same kind of farm, 40-acre farm, something like that, and we raised sugar beets and lettuce there, in a town called El Sal. And then we switched from Lincoln School in Salinas to grammar school in El Sal, which I attended first grade and second grade. And during my second grade is when Pearl Harbor occurred.

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

<Begin Segment 4>

HH: What happened to you and your family with the series of events that took place from that point on until you reached Philadelphia?

AI: Well, Pearl Harbor occurred December 7, 1941. I was at church. I had just come out of church, here I am, I guess, 1941 I was seven years old. I'm waiting in our 1941 Buick, waiting in front of the church. My mother's in the car and we're listening to the radio, and we hear this bombing. And to me at the time, didn't strike me as anything significant. But when they announced the bombing of Pearl Harbor and it came over the radio, my mother screamed. And she jumped right out of the car, she ran into the church, I could still see her running into the church, Salinas church, I forget whether it's Presbyterian or Baptist. I think it was Methodist, I'm sorry. And all the people came running out of the church, and I could just see the hysteria. And then when my father got in the car, my grandfather got in the car, we drove home and we turned on the radio and pulled down all the shades. As a seven year old, I felt this traumatic experience just by sensing the urgency from my parents.

HH: And you had to move.

AI: Okay, oh, you wanted to go into the... okay. So at that time, my father was given two weeks to sell his farm.

HH: Two weeks?

AI: Yeah. My father was given two weeks, so in that two weeks' time, he sold his farm, but he didn't have time to sell the other farms. And those were the lucky people. Fortunately, my father was able to sell his farm, which was dirt cheap. But he had just bought a 1941 Buick that summer, and he was offered five hundred dollars for this two thousand dollar Buick. So he said no way, he said he's going to get rid of the Buick, and he was too proud of the Buick. So he took the Buick and took it to my grandmother's farm and put it in a garage at my grandmother's farm. And my grandmother didn't have to sell her property because a Filipino worker said he would take care of the farm. So she didn't have to sell her farm, and so she was one of the lucky ones, too. And then I remember the big bonfire out front because my father was a kendo person and he had all these masks and all these shields. I remember that going into the fire, and all the pictures, anything related to Japan that my grandfather had, it all went up in flames. And then I just remember going into assembly center, Salinas Assembly Center, and carrying these suitcases, your steel suitcases, I could still, brown steel suitcases, I felt like my arms would fall off. And we walked into the Salinas Assembly Center, and we got all these vaccination shots and I remember those shots, and oh man, my arms really hurt. Then I became a kind of a brat at that time because being a farm kid, being kind of isolated from the rest of the world, and then in with a bunch of kids your own age, and there's a lot of peer pressure and so forth. So I think I became a real difficult kid, because any time they had those curfew, sirens would go off, I'd be at the other end of the camp, and I couldn't run home, so I used to hide under the barracks. And then these officers kind of picked me up and take me home, and then I'd get the licking of my life once I got home. What really struck me then was when I looked through the barbed wire fences, and I still remember the guards looking down at me with a rifle. But when I looked through the barbed wire fence, I could see our farm. My grandmother's farm was over there on my right, and the farm that I used to walk to kindergarten was right in front of me. And as a kid I used to say, "Gee whiz, what am I doing behind these barbed wire? There's my home right there." So it really struck me funny, and I remember that to this day. I don't know how far you want me to go.

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

<Begin Segment 5>

HH: After that you...

AI: Yeah, after Salinas, I remember I was a brat because at assembly center, I used to run through the women's lavatory. And here I am, a seven-year-old kid, running through the women's lavatory. Then I guess in July of, near July, we moved from the assembly center to Poston, Arizona. And I remember getting on this train and it was hot. They pulled down all the shades, and I remember going through the windy, train was going through all these windy tracks and going back and forth moving very slowly. And it was very hot, and I remember they used to have these, ice between the trains, the cars, and my mother had given me a Boy Scout knife. And I would pick on the ice, and I remember eating the ice on the way to Poston. And then once we got to Poston, we got there on really a bad day because I remember a sandstorm. And I used to hold my hand up and I couldn't see the end of my had because the sandstorm was so bad. Then the straw mattresses in the cots, and we had to wet down everything and then the one-room barracks for the whole family. I had two brothers and one sister at the time. My younger sister was born here in Seabrook. So my father... so I guess there were five or six of us in that one room. My grandfather luckily got another room for bachelors. So that was camp, I mean, that was quite a traumatic experience.

HH: You used to wander around the countryside within the concentration camp.

AI: Oh, yeah. The camp, I walked with a kid named Bobby Tokiwa. He and I used to walk all around the camp, so we wouldn't go through the barbed wire fences, but we walked the whole perimeter of the camp. And to this day, I must have traveled around the camp so many times, I could draw the whole camp. If somebody gave me a piece of paper, I could draw every block in the camp, including the swimming pool, I knew where all the canteens were in the library, in the school, and where all the cars were. So yeah, he and I were brats again. [Laughs]

HH: And walking through the perimeter, you got acquainted with some of the wildlife around there?

AI: Oh, yeah. They had a creek running through, or stream running through the camp, too, and we used to go fishing there. And I remember one time we saw this bass in this little pond, I don't know, might be ten feet in diameter by five feet across, and we saw this bass, and we said, "Well, if we can catch this fish by draining out all the water." And so we took the whole morning to take out all the water out of this hole. [Laughs] And we caught the bass, but we didn't realize it was going to be so much work and took a long, long time, I remember that, just to catch this one lousy fish.

And then, yeah, the rattlesnakes. There were rattlesnakes all over the place, and yeah, we used to climb trees. And whenever you see a, you can hear the rattlers go off, and you can go in that direction. And you kind of see, well, you were kind of well camouflaged, but you could eventually find them. And then we'd climb the trees and throw rocks at them, branches at them. [Laughs]

HH: Eventually you moved out of Poston, and where did you go?

AI: Well, let me say a little bit more about Poston. Poston, you used to have to take salt tablets, and I did not take salt tablets, I said, gee, they taste terrible. And I got the sunstroke. In fact, I remember jumping into the swimming pool, in and out, learning how to swim. And I got, I became delirious, and I got sunstroke, and then they sent me to the Camp I hospital. And I was in there for a whole month recovering from this sunstroke. Then I realized what the salt tablets meant. So when I got out of the hospital -- this is in third grade -- and I took salt tablets from then on.

And then I stole a coping saw. I remember they used to have, the older people used to make these birds, okay, and they had a special shop in camp, and Bob Tokiwa and I, I kind of knew. I said I wanted him to break this window, because I knew a coping saw was in this room. And he broke this window and I said, "Hey, Bobby," I said, "I wonder what's in that room," knowing full well what's in that room. So I got on his shoulder, climbed in, and opened up the window and I got this coping saw. The coping saw is what the kids wanted because with the coping saw you could make guns and all the toys you wanted. Because you had a lot of scraps of wood and we'd make all these, whittle out all these guns. So between the coping saw and my Boy Scout knives that my mother gave me, I made toys for everyone. I made all kinds of toys. And that was quite a toy, I mean, quite a tool. And my mother said, "Where did you get that coping saw?" and I kind of hemmed and hawed, and she said, "Return it." [Laughs] So I remember running back and throwing the coping saw through the broken window. So we made our own toys back then, because there was just no, we didn't have money to buy toys out of Sears catalog or anything like that. So I remember as a kid, we made all our toys. [Laughs] So I learned how to swim in camp, which we had a big swimming pool. My uncle kind of threw me into the deep part, and I was drinking water, as I recall, and that was kind of a terrifying experience because I swear I was drowning. And he pulled me out, and I decided, "Well, I'd better know how to swim." [Laughs] And then my uncle was quite a swimmer, as you recall. He was the swimming champ out of all three camps that were there. So I always used to look up to him.

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

<Begin Segment 6>

HH: Okay, then you eventually moved out of Poston.

AI: Yeah. Then, I guess my father said that people from Seabrook came to the camp and offered work and housing for the families, whoever went to work for Seabrook Farms. So with the government subsidy, and the fact that we could have employment to raise the family, so my father probably asked my grandfather if it was a good move to move east. And my grandfather being a pretty educated guy, probably recommended that we take the move. So we came to Seabrook in late October 1944.

HH: I'm guessing you were about fourth grade then?

AI: I was in fifth grade, started fifth grade.

HH: So you went through the Seabrook system.

AI: So okay, you want me to go through the Seabrook system? Okay. Yeah, it was quite a, at the time, we wanted to, as a family, we wanted to go back to California. But I guess my dad said, "No, we're going to New Jersey." And so we got on the train and came to New Jersey. Well, my father had this 1941 Buick, which was driven to the camps from Salinas by Manuel, which was a Filipino worker who farmed my grandmother's farm, and drove it to Poston during the middle of the war. But because we couldn't drive it, it sat in the garage right there in Poston. And then when we were allowed to leave, my father, Mit, his brother, and Harry Iwashige, my cousin, drove the Buick all the way across the United States while we took the train, so the rest of the family took the train. So when we arrived in Seabrook in late October 1944, it was only like two days later, my father and Harry came and Mit came in with the car. Said, wow, they drove that whole two thousand five hundred miles almost as fast as us taking the train. So we were surprised at that. And they said it was a pretty hectic drive because there was a lot of back roads. They didn't have any superhighways then.

HH: And gas rationing, too.

AI: And gas rationing, exactly. So when we got to Seabrook, the car kind of sat in the parking lot there for a long, long time without being driven. And then of course, because we were the only ones that had a car, a lot of our younger neighbors came over and asked my father whether they could drive the car. And he said yes to some and no to others. But we were rich in the sense that we had an automobile whereas ninety percent of the people in Seabrook didn't have an automobile. So that made my father feel good.

HH: What do you remember as some of the notable features of living in Seabrook?

AI: Well, coming to Seabrook was almost like camp in a way. Although we had an apartment which had an indoor toilet and shower facilities, although I didn't realize at the time that the bedrooms were so small. So all of us, the six of us, fit into this three-bedroom apartment. And then we had a fourth with my youngest daughter, I mean, sister. So there were seven of us in there. So when we arrived, gee, just two doors down the road, Miko was there, and they were, I guess, Mr. Sasaki must have gone back to wherever their camp was and brought the kids back. Because I think they started school a little after us, and so they lived three houses, three apartments down in the same building. And yeah, when we... getting back, we went to Seabrook school. And I remember walking into the fifth grade class and seeing the Japanese there. It was probably eighty-five percent Caucasian, fifteen percent Asians, and a couple of Blacks. And so it was kind of a traumatic experience for me walking into that classroom. Mrs. Meyers was the fifth grade teacher, and I could not, I was not a very good reader. And I still remember because I was not a good reader, she started on the right-hand side, she had all the best, smartest students down the class, I guess ten rows down to the dumbest students. So I was about three quarters of the way down towards the dumber class, because my reading was very poor. And I wish my mother, even though she was college educated, but she didn't teach me out to read. So again, I was a real brat, really. I was really a spoiled kid. I got into a few fights in Seabrook, not many, where you just face each other with your fists and you kind of stare at each other but very few swinging. [Laughs] And then so it was like camp, really, because there was a lot of guys your age. So we had gangs, we developed gangs. And gangs were developed, we were the Hornets. There were about ten of us, and there was the Blue Devils, another group of ten, there was the El Lobos and the, there were quite a few others. And we formed basketball teams, football teams from these groups of ten or eleven. And so we played each other all these sports, and these were all against Japanese Americans. So we were kind of in our own ghetto here. I call it a ghetto because looking, it was really cramped. But we were happy with where we lived.

HH: Lot of people had nicknames in those places. You have a nickname?

AI: No. Now and then they'd call me "Punjab" because my name is Bunji. So in a sense I got, somebody called me Punjab, and that stuck with me for a little while, but not a lot. And so we had these basketball teams and yeah, we had a lot of nice basketball teams, softball teams, games, and football games. Some of the football games got real nasty. Because you didn't have any equipment, no shoulder pads, and you start tackling each other. And then you're tackling each other on concreate sidewalks because the football field went across sidewalks. So we had some wicked wounds. But yeah, I thought that experience in Seabrook was, as a kid growing up was really, it gave us a lot of teamwork, a feeling of a family and togetherness. Because once we got our group of ten guys together, we did everything together. So we went swimming together, rode the bicycles together. And when we got to high school, we'd kind of, in a way, when we got to high school, we kind of went funny, at least our group did. We tried to assimilate into the white culture. And so the friends that we developed during the grammar school years kind of broke up a little bit. But after high school, then we got together again.

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

<Begin Segment 7>

HH: You went to college?

AI: Yeah. I took a scientific course. When I got to Seabrook I was flunking. I flunked sixth grade. I passed sixth grade on trial. I had Fs in English all the way through. And then the sixth grade teacher says, "I'm not supposed to pass you but I'm going to pass you on trial." So I got to seventh grade and seventh grade I didn't flunk everything. I got maybe several Fs in English. But then eighth grade turned me around. A guy named Richard Ikeda was in a class in front of me, and he used to get all As. I said, gee whiz, how do you get all As? He's an Ikeda and I'm a Ikeda, but he's a smart guy and I'm a dumb guy. So eighth grade, I said, gee, I'm going to see if I could do what Richard did. And so an eighth grade teacher turned me around. I became an A and B student in one year. I went from an F student to an A and B student. Anyway, from then on, then I studied all the way through high school. And because I took a scientific course, because my mother said, "You should take a college prep course," but we were poor, really. And so when I got to senior year, I didn't take my college boards. And I said, "I'm not going to college." So I worked a summer around, after finishing high school, and I was an A and B student then. And so my mother said, "Hey, let's go to Drexel University," I mean, Drexel Institute of Technology, and just see if we can get in. So that's when I went to Philadelphia, took the subways, I still remember taking the bus and then the Elevated to Thirty-second and Market. Walked to Drexel and I interviewed the entrance officer. And my mother must have said... I don't know how she did it, but starting fall, that fall, I was going to Drexel. So because it was a co-op program, that was very helpful. But yeah, I didn't take any college boards, no entrance exams, I got in by sheer grades at Bridgerton High School. So all my other friends joined the Air Force, and I was going to go into the Air Force with the rest of them. There was, our group of Hornets, they joined the Air Force. And so I said, "Heck, I'm going to the Air Force," and my mother said, "No, let's go try Drexel." So I was one of the few out of that group that went to college. So I, luckily there was a co-op program at Drexel where you worked six months and go to school for six months, so I was able to earn eighty-five percent of my college expense. Because as a family, they couldn't afford to send me to college. So during that co-op program I earned good, I guess around twenty-two hundred.

I held, during those six-months' time, I held five jobs. I worked at a climatology, I worked at Seabrook Farms, I worked for geological survey, I made bookshelves, and I made water measurement, so I held five jobs at one time. And I started at eight o'clock in the morning, I didn't even get home until after midnight every day for almost six months. So that's where I was able to earn enough.

HH: When did you get married?

AI: I got married in 1960. When I finished college, because I took ROTC and became an officer and the military. I was in for six months. They asked me at the time, the military asked me if I wanted to become a regular officer. I said I would become a regular officer and serve in the U.S. military for three years, "If you would send me to Japan." They came back two weeks later and says, "No, openings in Japan. You can go to Germany, you can go to Italy, you can go to Spain, several parts of Europe, you can go to Iceland, you can go to Alaska, or you can stay in the United States." And I said, they gave me a choice of three years' service, two years' service or six months. And I took six months' service because they didn't send me to Japan. So after serving for six months, of which three of those six months was attending classes, buildings, learning how to blow bridges and build bridges, so that's what I did in the Corps of Engineers.

HH: What did you study at Drexel?

AI: Oh, I got my mechanical engineering degree. I wanted to become an aeronautical engineer because I wanted to become, I wanted to design airplanes, as a goal I wanted to design airplanes. But when I interview all the airplane companies after finishing college, none of 'em wanted me. So then I went to work for RCA at that time.

HH: As a mechanical engineer, you'd be quite expert at blowing up bridges.

AI: Yeah, right, and I did. [Laughs] In fact, the first time it was in Camp Drum, New York. We wanted to blow up this bridge and it didn't blow. Hit the generator, uh-oh, something's wrong. So you got to go back and trace the wiring all the way back. Sure enough, we didn't connect one of the wires, so that's how we'd blow up the bridge.

HH: And I ask you, you got married...

AI: In 1960, yeah, after I got out of the service, and after the six-month service I got out in November of '58. Then I asked my sister, I said, "Hey," I knew about Eiko, I said, "Hey, can you set me up a date with Eiko?" And she did and we got married. [Laughs] Anyway, after a year of courtship, we got married.

HH: And so after you get married did you live in Seabrook for a while or did you live in Philadelphia?

AI: No, we, I was working at RCA at the time so we moved to Haddon Heights, Haddon Heights, New Jersey and lived there for three years. And then during that time, my oldest son was born in 1961. And then I got a job at... I'm sorry. I worked in Camden, RCA, for one year, went to work for, and then transferred over to Moorestown where Moriuchis' live. I worked there 'til, four years. And then in 1963, I moved to Burroughs in Paoli, and worked there for three years, and been there for the last thirty years.

HH: Then you went back to school, your graduate school?

AI: Yeah. While I was at RCA I went to an evening school at Drexel for a while, then I switched to University of Pennsylvania and I got my master's degree in mechanical engineering in 1966 from Penn. Penn is easier than Drexell. No, it's because Penn has a half-year system whereas Drexel has a quarter system.

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

<Begin Segment 8>

HH: Before we conclude out of this, couple of questions I'd like to ask you. You've heard the expression "quiet Americans" regarding Japanese Americans. How do you feel about that label? Is it accurate?

AI: I think it's accurate. Because I wanted to become assimilated into the white society, so I... and not being able to speak well. I was a quiet, shy, shy quiet type, and so the "quiet American" is a true characterization of me.

HH: And the other label that's often put to, not only to Japanese Americans but to Asian Americans is that of the "model minority." Do you have any kind of response or reaction to that label?

AI: Just reading. I know that the Japanese Americans do very well education-wise because eighty-five percent of Japanese Americans go to college. But once they get out of college, they hit this glass ceiling. And I feel even in the business I'm in, I was hired in at one time as a manager, but because of the stress, I took myself out of the management picture. But I think Japanese Americans, although they're quite well-educated in this country, they do hit this glass ceiling just like the women do.

HH: So there's a kind of, perhaps, discrimination that exists in the business and career world, but they, in the "model minority" label itself, is that, would you say, an accurate way?

AI: Yeah, it's a "model minority" because we abide by the laws of the land. We don't like to make a lot of waves, we'd go out of our way to stay within the law. So I think in that respect, I think it's a good characterization that we are a "model."

HH: Is there anything that you would do differently if you had a chance to do anything, change any area of your life? Is there something that you would like to change?

AI: In retrospect...

HH: Certain things you can't change, like there's no war.

AI: Right, right. If the war never happened, I'd probably become a farmer. And I don't know, maybe I would have been a very happy farmer. Because all the farmers that are in Salinas became millionaires. Just like my father, the land that he returned to these three or four farmers, they all became millionaires. In fact, just from the sheer fact that they owned the land. Because the land that they owned used to flood every years, and so they could only get one or two crops out of it on an annual basis. And so nobody wanted to build anything on that property. But when they built a dam above Salinas, the city had already gone around this land. So they were in the middle of the city, you have this farmland. And then when they built the dam, it became a fortune, it was worth a fortune, and so my grandmother was one of them.

HH: So if there's something that you would do differently, it would be not to have the family sell the land? [Laughs]

AI: Right. But I don't know. In retrospect, I don't have any regrets.

HH: Well, thank you very much. That was really generous and you filled in a lot of holes.

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