<Begin Segment 6>

HH: Earlier, you mentioned that you were born in Tokyo, which means that you're not a citizen. You were, at that time, at least, not a citizen.

YO: No, I was not a citizen of this country.

HH: Are you a citizen now?

YO: Yes, I am a citizen now, and I received my citizenship with them, my inlaws and my mother, at the time the Walter-McCarran immigration bill was passed, it was very soon after that that we applied received our citizenship. In fact, my husband stood up for all of us when we went to get our citizenships.

HH: I see. Okay. I have a few miscellaneous questions that I ask at this point. Do you identify with the term a "quiet American"?

YO: In a way, yes. I kind of consider myself as a "quiet American." I do not demonstrate, I go about doing my ordinary things. If people ask me or ask me to talk about my experience, I am more than happy to relate my experience. But I don't go around advertising what I had to go through.

HH: Okay, how about this one? Do you do identify with the term "model minority"?

YO: I like to think of myself as a "model minority," I really do. I'm proud of my background, proud of what my parents went through, proud of their willingness to leave a very strange country and come to a strange land. And all the things that I have learned from them mean a lot to me.

HH: Do what extent do you find yourself identifying with the plight of Latinos, Native Americans, African Americans?

YO: I strongly sympathize with them. They're going through some of the experience that we went through very early in my parents' life. Economically, our parents were among the lowest in the country, therefore there was a lot of prejudices. And now that we can speak the language, are educated so much better, we have been really very fortunate. We have been given opportunities that our Issei parents did not have. And I do sympathize with those people who have recently come to this country and are going through very similar problems.

HH: Have you seen the nature of racial prejudice, change in respect to Asian Americans over the course of your lifetime.

YO: Oh, the prejudice of Asians, yes, I have seen a great change, really. I think Asian Americans are accepted a lot more than they were from the time that I was growing up. And I don't know whether it's because we are living on the East Coast, that to me, it's almost an advantage to be an Asian American, especially a Japanese American, although many people cannot specify whether I am a Chinese, Korean, or Japanese, but I definitely see a change in the attitude toward Asians.

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