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RB: I'm wondering if you could share some memories about school, and what was it like going to school where you grew up? I assume probably outside of your siblings, there probably weren't other Japanese Americans? Just kind of curious...

MM: Moorestown Friends School. Quaker school, a day school, and I was a lifer, I went from kindergarten all of the way through twelfth grade. When people ask me how I feel or thought about myself as Japanese American, I really thought of myself more as Quaker, as the biggest part of the identity, and then part of this farming family. When I was in kindergarten, a white American Quaker teacher, Mrs. Hess, had been in Japan, and her daughter had been to Japan, and so they had some kimonos, they had parasols, and they set up a Boy's Day, carps in the middle, I think, with streamers. And I was dressed up, my big brother came down from second grade, and the little bit of home movies that I remember seeing are that my brother first went up, and he had to... no, I went up first, and I was supposed to demonstrate how to use chopsticks. Well, I was five years old, not very adept, and she probably had peas or something, and I was having no success. So I walked away, and my brother came up and he could do it. [Laughs] So that's how we were, I guess, sharing some Japanese culture within the school. It was strongly Quaker at that point, because most families were, they were rarely an only child. There were three and four and sometimes more kids in families. So there was the Decole clan and the Roberts' and David Ritchie's two daughters, but we were the Moriuchis, and everybody kind of knew who we were. When I got to seventh grade, there was one Filipina young woman, but most of the diversity probably were the Jewish kids, and we would ask them to share matzo with us in Passover. And I think my dad felt that we should be protected and that the Quaker school would get that to us.

RB: It seems like a really welcoming environment, both between the Quaker community and the meeting house as well as the school environment, do you recall any instances of racism that either you or your parents faced?

MM: I was incredibly shy, and I've verified that with some of the people I went to high school with. So I don't remember anything significant. I have had an incident within, during the pandemic years, and I can talk about that now or later. So I lived in the edge of Mount Airy Germantown, and this happened about two or three years ago. And I was driving across on Wayne Avenue, across Lincoln Drive, going, okay, I've got this errand to do. And I'm at the light and I realize, oh, there's a car that's stuck going uphill. And I thought, well, do you do the good Samaritan thing? And I thought, well, if it's still there when I finished my errand and come back, then I'll ask. So it was still there, came back, parked my car, crossed the one lane of traffic, and I said to the man, "Do you need help?" He said, "It won't go." I go, "Yeah, but do you need to call a tow truck?" and he says, "Yeah, I did that," and I said, "Okay." So I turned around to go back across, because it was getting close to rush hour and I didn't want to get killed on Lincoln Drive. And this car comes from behind him and goes around, and a woman hangs out of the passenger side and said, "Go home and take your virus with you." And I was taken aback, and they were speeding up Lincoln Drive. I was going, 'That's not appropriate." And my kids were later in hysterics that that was my response, and well, good. But what was interesting was the car that was stopped was a Jaguar. The man who was in the car was African American. The car that went around, and the woman who yelled at me, she was African American Muslim. And I'm going, "This is a whole scene of misplaced identities or expectations and stereotypes," but it's really been one of the only times where somebody has... I'd say that we walk around in this world from the inside out, and we don't usually make, are aware of how other people are viewing us. Do they view us as, oh, it's just a person, or that's a woman, or that's a person who's different, or a person who's stereotype A, B or C. So it was shocking to me, and it hurt, and I've told the story a number of times, but it's really one of the few times that I've had that.

I've had the reverse happen, because... oh, this will be out of sort, out of timing, but I taught in Thailand in 2005 to '06, and taught English, and people spoke Thai to me. Then, well, backwards, the first time I was in Japan in '73, '71 to '73, people assumed I was Japanese until I opened my mouth, and then they would go, "Oh, she's not." And then I traveled for three and a half months. Egypt Air opened to Tokyo, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Bombay, Cairo, Rome, Paris, London, and I traveled with a backpack. I had a place to land in most of the countries. And people spoke whatever the local language was, and then they try a few more, Chinese or whatever else, and I realized, I'm traveling with a pretty effective disguise. They don't always look at your clothes, they look at your physical features and make certain assumptions. And so I realized if I had been traveling with somebody else who was maybe Caucasian or whatever, that it would have been a different experience. And in Malaysia, I was in a household, a Chinese Malaysian family, and the five year old start speaking Chinese to me and I shook my head. And she switched to Hindi because one of the relatives was of Indian Malaysian background, and shook my head. And then she spoke Malay to me, because the servants in the house were Malay. And I go, "She thinks I'm really stupid." [Laughs] So I'm very much learning to not judge people as much as you can to try to be open.

RB: I think I have one more question about childhood and then maybe we'll move into, more about college and then your career. You talked about the meeting house and Quaker identity being a big component of your identity as a child, adolescent, I know your parents were very involved in JACL, a long period of time. Were you also present at JACL gatherings?

MM: My parents, my mom, I think, tried. [Laughs] So there would be, the two things I remember were JACL, and summer picnics at Friends Central, and Christmas parties someplace downtown in Philadelphia. And at that point, there were all these other kids. I knew Lisa and Chris and Paul and Larry, my cousins, I knew the Marutani kids. A lot of the other kids, we kind of knew who the families were. And not very often, but now and then, my parents would have a party or would see more the kids. When the Marutanis arrived, it was a big deal, because there were eight kids. So I wasn't involved with JACL except in high school, I guess I was. Because there was a junior JACL group, and I went to San Diego to the National Convention, I'd say probably '66, '67, and Ted Hirokawa and Marsha Murakami and I went. So that was a big deal. But it felt pretty foreign, because I was not used to being... and the West Coast Japanese American experience is really different. So I didn't have as much maybe in common than my mother would have liked. [Laughs]

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2023 JACL Philadelphia. All Rights Reserved.