<Begin Segment 10>

LG: Do you know... I know you mentioned when your father bought the house, the neighbor had made a comment, and even coming to Seabrook, maybe the reception of the community was not... do you have any memories of...

DM: Well, you know, as I say, racism lingers on. And in this day and age, it's like when a Black person comes in to live in your neighborhood. I have a friend who lives in my neighborhood, she's of Italian descent, and detests Black people. And Black people and Hispanic people and Turkish people are moving into my neighborhood. And I welcome them; she doesn't. It really aggravates me to have to listen to what she says about other races. I may say it in a Japanese way someday and try to get her to realize that this is not the way to be. You know, we're supposed to love everyone, and how can you as a human being -- if they can afford to move into your neighborhood, they're just as good as you are. How can you look down on them? And you know, you can live a lot more happily if you accept that and invite them over and know that we as Hispanics, as Blacks, as Asians, as white people, can live in a neighborhood and the neighborhood can thrive. That's what the world should be like in 2023. You know, people talk about, "Well, the slaves were emancipated in Lincoln's day." No they weren't. Why did they have "colored" fountains and "white fountains" in the South until what, 1960s? A hundred years after the Emancipation Proclamation. Don't tell me the Blacks were freed by Lincoln. The Blacks still aren't freed by the white man and many other cultures, too. And it makes me really, really sad that we have to live in this day and age with so much racism and so much hate. Just think how much the world would be in a better place if we all learned to get along.

LG: Do you have any personal -- I'm sure you do -- but do you have any personal stories about racism you might have experienced directly?

DM: Yeah, yeah. You can't help but... and it might have been self imposed, a lot of it. I mean, I always felt like a second-class citizen. I never felt good enough, and I went to college in 1960, and it was unusual in that day. It's not like swarms of Asian students, I was the only... there was myself, Japanese descent, and I remember a fellow, I think he was Chinese, I think his name was something like Yang. And then there was this Esther Park, who was Korean, three of us on campus. I went to Upsala College which is no longer in existence, but it was a Swedish Lutheran college, and so there were a lot of Lutherans. But I stuck out like a sore thumb. In my nursing school class, I was the only Asian, so it's "that Asian nurse" who did this, or "that Asian nurse" who did that. And some people might like to draw attention to themselves. I didn't, and it just bugged me that I stood out like a sore thumb wherever I went. But it's there. And I felt it back then, and I still feel it.

You know what the funny thing is? We have some elderly women... I mean, I'm elderly, but I'm still capable of driving and taking people out to lunch and things like that. So when I take... one time in particular, I took this lady out to lunch, and she had a walker, and of course, I had to help her. And I got the impression that everyone thought I was her caregiver. And that was just my feeling, but from their reaction about the body language or whatever of the customers around us when I took her in, I felt the feeling that they thought I was her caregiver. And go figure. I mean, really, and it shouldn't bother me. Because yes, for that day, I was her caregiver, but it's just... and you know, I have to get over it, too. And my children, who are all married to Caucasians, so I call all my grandchildren "half-breeds." [Laughs] But one day when we were, I went up to Connecticut where she lives, because she was the chairperson for the Asian portion of the event that we're having. So they had people representing India and then they had Native Americans and they had Black people, Hispanics and everyone. So my daughter was in charge of the Asian portion of that. So we took one of my neighbors who was a taiko drummer, we took him up, he played the drums, and I made nigiris, rice balls, and made some ginger chicken, prepared that for the children. I think it was either third or fourth grade. So we were having a wonderful time, and this little boy, one of my daughter's classmates, runs up to my daughter and says, "Mrs. Dragon, I didn't know you were Japanese." I don't know what he thought. Kids, I guess, are color blind, and he was so overjoyed. "Mrs. Dragon," and it really tickled me so much that he was so excited that he didn't realize she was Japanese. So I don't know what he saw when he saw her, but obviously not an Asian woman. So you know, as the generations, yes, I felt prejudice back then, I still feel it now.

When I was in nursing school, we were in the subway, and I was there with three of my classmates, because we did our pediatric training in the Bronx. So we were riding the subway one day and this woman came at me and she was saying, "Them damn Japs with their swords cutting off heads." And so my friends gathered around me and they said, "We'll protect you." And so it was an older woman, I don't know if she was homeless or what, but she was obviously angry about something. So I felt like sitting down and saying, "I'm an American, I was born here. I'm not one of those damn Japs who cut off heads." And so I was telling my friends this later on, I said, I think that was the first time they realized what I had to face. So then they said to me, "Darlene, look at it this way, though. Maybe she had someone who was killed in the Second World War." And I said, "Oh, I never thought of it that way." And I was of the generation when I went away to school like that. My classmates' fathers were in the Second World War, and many of them were very prejudiced. So after my friend, they being Caucasian, looking at it from the woman's point of view and probably hearing anti-Japanese sentiment, but then again, befriending me, the only Japanese and our classmate. Because you can imagine how lonely it would have been if no one befriended me. But I had excellent friends and we're still in contact. We graduated in 1960, so sixty-three years later, we're still writing to each other and seeing each other when we can. So they're friends, and I had to look at it from another perspective.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2023 JACL Philadelphia. All Rights Reserved.