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LG: So both your parents were also Christian?

DM: Yes.

LG: So growing up, was the church a big part of your life?

DM: Yes. In fact, because my mother was so strict, but she allowed me, of course, to go to Sunday school and youth group, so that's where I had my freedom, going to youth group, and they would take us on trips, they would take us to the shore, and that was a lot of my socialization. So I grew up with healthy relationships, so for that, I'm really grateful for. But I was in the Girl Scouts, too, and we did things with the Brownies and the Girl Scouts, and that was healthy. And then we had social groups. It went all the way down from the older people all the way down to the youngest. And I think it was my generation, before we started socializing with Caucasians, most of our socialization was done within our group at Seabrook. So we had clubs. I was a member of the Debbies, my sister was a Koline, and then were co-eds and, oh, I can't remember all the names of the groups, but they had different names, and the guys had groups, too. And so in our groups we formed basketball teams and we played against each other, which was my passion, I loved basketball. So that's another story. I went to high school to play basketball. I wasn't particularly interested in learning, but I wanted to play basketball. Tried out my freshman year, tried out my sophomore year. Whoever tries out in their junior year? I figure if I come, I'm going to get on this team. I came to high school to play basketball. Tried out, made the team my junior year. My junior year, we lost one game or we would have been undefeated. My senior year we were undefeated. Then I did the same thing with the tennis team. We played with the Jewish girls, got lessons at the country club, we played on the school ground here with rocks, hit against the building, the school building, that's how we learned to play tennis, but I loved it. With tennis, made the team. It was second doubles, but I don't care, I made the team, second doubles. We were undefeated. We used to go up to the country club in Philadelphia to play. And talk about feeling out of place, it was the Kenwood country club. Our team would go up and there were about three of us on the team, Japanese American girls on the team. The boys did a lot better, they excelled very much so. They got beyond second doubles. [Laughs]

LG: Did you feel out of place because you were Japanese?

DM: Oh, yeah.

LG: Anything specific?

DM: No, just being with a bunch of white people, and knowing it was a country club, exclusive, from little old Seabrook? My goodness. But because we were unique, they took a picture of the three of us, put it in the Inquire, so we made the Inquire. [Laugh] Sometimes it's good to stand out, I guess.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2023 JACL Philadelphia. All Rights Reserved.