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| Title | Edward Miyakawa Transcript Part 6 |
| Date | 2007-08-18 |
| Time Period | 2000-2009
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| Interviewee | Miyakawa, Edward |
| Interviewer | Uhlig, Elizabeth |
| Transcriber | Forgard, Ben |
| Subject | Japanese Americans
Racism
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| Geographic Subject | Waldport, (Ore.)
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| Original Collection | Japanese-American Association of Lane Co., OR, Oral History Collection
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| Restrictions | Permission to use must be obtained from the Oregon Multicultural Archives, OSU Special Collections & Archives Research Center. |
| File Name | edward_miyakawa_part6.pdf |
| Language | English |
| Full Text | Japanese-American Association of Lane County, Oregon - Oral History Collection Edward Miyakawa – Part 6 Date: August 18, 2007 Place: Edward Miyakawa's home Waldport, OR Length: 00:21:13 Interviewee: Edward Miyakawa Interviewer: Elizabeth Uhlig Transcriber: Ben Forgard Note: (sp?) means that words prior, mostly names, may be spelled incorrectly [00:00] [EU] This is part six of the interview with Ed Miyakawa. Ed, could you talk a little bit about, um, raising your children in Waldport—what kind of community was Waldport? [EM] [clears throat] Well, again [sigh] to me everything is a life-learning lesson, and um [pause] so you, here you live in this little town, in one tiny little coastal town, and um, the thought that comes into my head is that in Waldport High School, I don't think they ever had—I know they never had a black student there before, and I don't think they ever had any mixed-race children in this town before. I'm not positive about that, but I know it's close to being the truth, and, uh, so here we live in this little town and you don't know quite what to expect living in a place like this, but it's another lesson to me about who we are as human beings, and Waldport itself, it's like my experience in Boulder when we went there and they just totally accepted us. Well, that's what it's here too, you know? And there's other people who think that my black son is a nigger, and, but we basically, in living here, never really, well my kids have, you know, you go to school and they'll face racism. You know, and, and, but I don't know too much about their stories because they never shared it with us. You know, occasionally you get stories about what they had to go through themselves, you know, and it was really racism. On the other hand, you know you meet these teachers here, and, and then one teacher has a, one teacher I remember, has a kind of a racist thing, you know, and she saw sees, you know, our black kids as inferior, but then you meet these other teachers who are absolutely wonderful people, who, who are admirers of the Miyakawa family because of what we did. So here we are, that's the way it is, you know? You deal with this and that, and uh, and, and, so the kids have to deal with all that themselves, and now what was I talking about again? [EU] Yeah, well just what it was like raising them [EM] Yeah, what it was like raising them. Yeah. [EU] And, and. [EM] Yeah, yeah. And, and [pause] so, one of the things that we felt important to do was to continue to be involved with the people who founded the Planned Adoption Agency, and, and 2 the people, you know, who were part of the Holt Adoption Agency, and, uh, and, and the Vietnamese people who were bringing these Vietnamese kids from overseas to make sure that our children, you know, know all this stuff that is going on. And, uh, and, and, and they do understand it now, and, and then, you know, again, I already mentioned this I guess, but you know, my Vietnamese daughter marries a Caucasian man, and my Vietnamese son marries a Caucasian woman, and my Korean daughter marries a Caucasian man, you know, all down the line, you know, and so, you know, this is, this is the family experience, and, and, it's a, it's a fascinating experience to me, see. And, and and even at my age, it's a constant learning experience. [04:29] [EU] You gave me this article, a copy of this article in The Oregonian where she wrote about, about um, um, about your family. [EM] Yes. [EU] Yeah. "Family, Assembled in Waldport." [EM] You know, and the, and the fascinating thing to me about that one is that when that article came out, because, you know, when you get to be my age, and my wife's age, and then this little family, and you see all those pictures of them and they're all grownups, this woman went back in history to ask, to tell the story, and usually you I feel like, you know, they're interested in the ones who are doing it right now, they're not interested in somebody who did it way back in history. [EU] Uh huh. [EM] You know, and so here this woman, you know, writes this article about this family and uses all these pictures, and I'm, it was just absolutely fascinating to me. It was like "Well we're going to give you a reward, you know, because you're an old man now, [EU] [laughs] [EM] by doing this article. And, and it was just a, you know, a wonderful article. [EU] Wonderful article, yeah. [EM] And, and, and, and, and then, you know, Gabrielle Glaser, and, and I think, "Who the hell is Gabrielle Glaser?" and of course her husband, you know, is one of the high ranking members of The Oregonian newspaper. I don't know what his name is, I forget what the heck is, well anyway, you know, he, he's the one who, who heard about me and had her come, and um, and then to me what's interesting too is Gabrielle herself. And, uh, an-and because not only do I talk, but I'm always interested in the people who are interviewing me and things like that, I want to know about them too. And, and she tells me this story that, that she's, you know, comes from a Jewish background, and then she tells me "but I didn't know about this until I was 35 years old." 3 And so, so I said "really?" She says "Yeah." She says "my Jewish parents came to Oregon, and they, they changed their name, so that it wasn't a Jewish sound to the name." And she says "and they never told me that we were Jewish, and then later I grow up and then I find out that I'm a, I'm a Jew. And, and so, it was fascinating to me, and then she, and then she does, this Jewish lady does this article about us. So I thought how wonderful that was, but that was fascinating to me. [EU] And there's wonderful pictures of, of the family and [EM] Yeah, but she chose those pictures, you know, because they were taken way back, you know, and I didn't think anybody would be interested in all those pictures, but she puts that family picture right in the front, you know. And then of course, that article that I gave you for the University of California thing, they used that same picture. [EU] Yeah, this was a [EM] [papers rustling] [unintelligible] No, no, that one right there. [EU] Oh, this one here. Oh this was in the, um [EM California one [EU] The Californian the Un- Un- Un- the Berkley University of California Berkley um, uh, yeah, and it's [EM] So, when they chose a picture to show of the family, they chose that same picture too, and I thought that's fascinating too. [EM] Yeah. [EU] The title of this one, "The No-Nos of Tule Lake." [EM] Right. [EU] "A research project on it internment turns into a celebrated novel, and a post-9/11 lesson." [EM] Yes. [EU] Yeah [pause] [EU] Umm. Were you involved, um, in the, the memorial that they, the Japanese-American memorial, that was dedicated in Eugene, uh, earlier this year? [EM] Yes, Yeah, mmhmm, yeah. And, and that's how I got connected with Eugene because I heard about the about, it was four or five years ago that they first started the idea of creating a 4 Japanese-American memorial. And, and, without getting side-tracked, again it was another fascinating thing to me about the world we live in. And, um, how, how sick we are as human beings to, you know, see people on a racial basis, and then making judgments about them, because here we are, having created this wonderful memorial that's taken many years of hard work from many, many people, and um, but the whole thing was generated, not by Orientals, but by Caucasian people, in Eugene, and, and, and then that, the guy, what's his name? I can't, uh [EU] Um [EM] But anyway, the young guy [EU] Yeah, he was, he was [EM] The military guy [EU] Yeah, he was in the Navy, serving. Yeah. [EM] Yeah. And, and, and he's the one who triggers all this, and, and, you know the judge, you know lady, and you know here they are, creating this Japanese-American memorial and giving so much of their lives to do this, you know, and it's just, uh, absolutely wonderful to me. [09:52] [EM] And, and, and you know we have to keep understanding and knowing that because there's so much stuff that's going on the world that can be very depressing to people, you know, and uh, it's just wonderful memorial. Yeah, and uh anyway when I heard about it, how did I, I can't even remember how I hear about it anymore now, but I just started to go down there because it was very interesting to me, and then I got in more involved in the committee and all that sort of stuff, and through that process, you know, I met all these wonderful people. And, and and uh, and then, uh, I met Mal (sp?) and Malice A- uh, Mal and Alice Aikens, and uh, and and, uh, an event happened that became a lifetime memory to me again, and, and, and the memory was this: I got to know I got to know Allen, uh Alice, and uh, and she was very interested in me because she saw that article about the family and then she knew that I had written Tule Lake, so that was very wonderful for me. Uh, but one day [pause] that I got to know her, and, and I don't know how I found this out, but she had never, never talked about or mentioned her experiences in Japanese-American. Never told that story, and so one night there was, we were giving a presentation someplace, I can't remember where it was, I have a record of it. And it was, and the thing that meant so much to me, it was, it was, she told me, she says "this is the first time I'm ever sharing my experience." And so she does this slideshow and then, and then she's reading, you know, telling this thing, and, and later or before or whatever it was, she was telling me that she was an absolute nervous wreck making this presentation she tells me [laughs] and, uh, and, and, and so I said w- so I said "you've never talked about this before?" and she says "Never. This is the first time I've ever talked about this." And so here this memorial is presenting an opportunity for people like Kenge and Miya and Alice to come out before they die to come out and, and tell the stories that 5 they went through, and, and, and that they just totally suppressed it all their lives until now, and, and I found that very interesting experience too. And, and, and then, but it���s because of people like you, and it's people like, you know, Judge, you know, it's people like, you know, and, and they're not Japanese, they're not blacks, you know, they're white people like you, you know, and so. You know. Just, it always interesting to me. [EU] Yeah. Well, I think I do think it's important to preserve the stories, and, and just seeing the memorial and seeing the memorial stones with all the different names from, many of them of course are Japanese-Americans, but many other people in organizations, and it's, it's an amazing memorial and, [EM] Oh, geez. [EU] Yeah. [EM] Oh, geez, yeah. Amazing memorial. [EU] Yeah. [EU] So, are there other things I should have asked you, other things you want to add? [EM] Well, let me think about this. Um, I kind of don't think so, you know, I've been talking and talking, and so, [EU] [laughs] Okay. Okay. [EM] [laughs] But, but, you know, I just, I do find it interesting that people are interested enough to sit there and have me do this, you know, because it sure is a wonderful opportunity to share these inner-stories with you, you know, and stuff like that. And, and me, though, you know, I'm a little bit different than the Japanese-American people, because, you know, I didn't wait until I was Alice's age and Kenge's age and Miya's age to tell my story, you know. [EU] Yeah. [EM] I was one of the pioneers in it because I started out there in the ‘60s [EU] The 60s, yeah. [EM] by writing the story of Tule Lake, [EU] Yeah. [EM] but uh, a- and and, you know, just, the stories that keep coming, you know, that just never cease to amaze me. For instance, this one: [clears throat] I have a friend, uh, in California, who's now gonna move up to Oregon, and he's a friend that, you know, when you go back to friends 6 that you had in college, and, and you graduate in the ‘60s, you know, you lose contact with them a lot of them, and you never see them again. [15:25] [EM] [clears throat] Then every once in a while, one will come up, you know, out of the past, and, and uh, there's a, a, a, a friend of mine named Kinya (sp?), and Kinya was a Japanese boy, and he came to Berkley to go to architecture school there. And so, so, you know, I graduated with him in the architecture school, and then, you know, I went to overseas, then I went here and there, and he went someplace in California, you know, and never heard from him again for many years, and then later, all of a sudden, you know, I get a contact from him, and so we, we renewed our, our friendship, and he's going to move up to Oregon now. And, and, and then his connection was very interesting because he met the Sacramento people, and, and he met them, one of our closest family uh friends, and, uh, and oh, called the Oshimas (sp?), and, and there was a, they had a daughter named Karen, no Sharon, Oshima, and so my architecture friend Kinya Japan ended up marrying Kinya, I mean, uh, uh, uh Sharon, and what I want to share with you is that it's all, you know, that's a long complicated story too, but anyway, that's the connection that I have. And so, after all these years, we're renewing our friendship, and, uh, and Kinya's not an American, he's he was born in Japan, but he just stayed in America. And, and then a year ago, we were in California, and we were discussing him coming up here his family, he and, and Sharon were gonna move up there, and so we got into talking, and then he shares with me a story that was very interesting to me, that he doesn't ever share with anybody else, and, and here's the story that he tells me: he says "well I go out and golf a lot on Saturdays" and then he says "I'm going out there and I'm golfing with my Japanese-American friends" and he says "all of these guys are like, you're and my age" and, and he says "what they are is that Nisei Japanese guys who are very grown, very old in life now" And, uh, you know, they're the guys who some of them are part of the 442nd Regiment and all these guys were in the concentration camps. And then Kinya says to me, he says um, he says, "You know, these guys get together and then you talk about the No-Nos." He says, "These guys hate the No-Nos" [laughs] [EU] Ohh. [EM] There's this guy telling my friend telling me that here are these guys are our age and older, and some of them older because they were part of the 442nd, they're going to carry their grave to their grave, their hatred for the No-Nos, their fellow Japanese. And so, so he he he just, he's kind of shocked by this, even then, you know, but it's been happening to him for quite a while. [EU] Yeah. [EM] But I'm the first guy that he can come and tell, tell me this story about and so that was interesting story too then, you know, that he goes out there, and he's kind of No-Nos are still, you know, you know, highly prejudiced against anybody who was a No-No. [EU] Yeah. 7 [EM] We Japanese-Americans are just like anybody else [laughs]. [EU] Yeah. It's just, it just amazes me, you know, it just amazes me the legacy of, of, you know, the, the history, and how it doesn't go away, and people, I mean it's, yeah. [EM] And, and you would think, you know, that when you live in a country like ours that opens up things, you know, and it's not controlled, you know, it's a free society and a free democracy, you know, that we human beings can grow past this kind of thing, living in this "great country" and some people can, and some people can't. [EU] Yeah, yeah, yeah. [EM] And then, I'm, I'm living here by myself now, and, and so I go up to Portland a lot, you know. Normally I wouldn't be here today because I usually I'm in Portland, but school hasn't started yet, so I'm sitting here listening the news at night, and uh, and my sister and my, and my wife basically don't want to watch the news, and, and, and when I'm sitting here watching the news, it's absolutely shocking what I'm watching, you know, about human hatred, and and and and and then I'm sitting here, and then they give news, and then a commercial comes on, and then they give news, and another commercial comes on, and another commercial comes on. [laughs]. And, and, and, and, and then I think about going to Wal-Mart and walking around, and I'm walking up and down these isles, and, and I can't believe the things that, you know, are for sale in there. I mean, I'm so blown out going into these stores nowadays. And, because all of these things, watching news, watching commercials, going to the stores, is just a statement of where we are, and I'm thinking "where the hell are we headed anyway?" [EU] Yeah. It gets, yeah. Yeah. [EM] Anyway, [EU] Okay. [EM] and I appreciate being able to share all these personal thoughts [laughs] [EU] Well, and we thank you for sharing with us, so, thank you, Ed. [EM] Yeah, yeah. [end 21:13] |
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