<Begin Segment 9>

HH: That completes one phase of this interview as far as history is concerned. But the next phase would be some questions about some things that you might be feeling about your life in Philadelphia. For instance, after you moved from Gila to Philadelphia, and the things you talked about, the things you did here, What kinds of discrimination if any did you encounter in this area?

GO: Well, I guess I was a little different. Because as far as employment is concerned, you couldn't have picked a better organization to work with than a Quaker organization because they were very helpful to us even during that time, it wasn't a popular thing to help Japanese Americans when we are considered as an enemy of the United States. So in that way we were lucky, but as the children start to go to school, the usual kids picking on our kids saying, "Chin Chin Chinaman," or whatever it is, but nothing too serious. But when I bought a car and tried to get insurance, they claimed that the one company, the [inaudible] said that I can't have insurance because Japanese have a very bad record of not paying premium. Of course, during evacuation, who could pay the... so that kind of discrimination I faced, but I was more or less, was not in a typical situation where others may have suffered.

HH: But your children encountered some?

GO: Some.

HH: But nothing that were, I guess, extremely heavy, but they knew that discrimination existed.

GO: I remember one case, when our second son, one kid was picking on our son. But an older high school kid on the same bus, who happened to be a neighbor in Moylan, said, just took, put his arm around our son and said, "Don't pick on him, he's my friend," and that was the end of that. So an incident like that helped.

HH: What do you think of the term "model minority" and did you have any reaction to it?

GO: I don't have any reaction one way or the other.

HH: It was often used to describe Asian Americans, "model minority."

GO: I don't think we deserved that, I don't know. Because of our cultural background, that may have helped. Because when were younger, we are told that we have to bear the unbearable, "Don't blow up," and gaman and all that, all those things. So I was conscious of that, "Don't do anything shameful that may be hurting your family name or something like that." That was constantly on my mind, we are brought up that way.

HH: And those are the, some of the core values of being a Japanese, not only a Japanese American, but being Japanese.

GO: That's right.

HH: All right. Is there anything that I did not ask that you think I should have asked during this interview?

GO: I think you did a pretty good job, Herb. [Laughs]

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