Barbara’s parents were Caucasian and came to California from Nebraska around 1937. My Mom’s parents came from Tokyo to the San Francisco Bay Are in the early 1900s and she was born near San Jose, California shortly thereafter. My Dad’s folks came from Hiroshima to the Bay Area in the same time period, and for some unknown reason he was left with an uncle as a baby and came to the U.S. as a 13 year old to be reunited with his family. Both my parents grew up with their families in the farming areas around San Jose eking out a spare existence during the hard times leading up to the 1930s.

My parents were married in an arranged marriage in 1931 and settled in Atwater, a small farming community in the middle of the San Joaquin Valley north of Fresno. I was born in 1938 in Merced just south of Atwater , and Barbara was born in 1939 in Alhambra in Southern California. Following Pearl Harbor my family spent three years from mid-1942 in a concentration camp in southeastern Colorado before returning home to California in early November 1945. Barbara and I both grew up in the post-war America of the 1940s and 50s.

Barbara and I came to U.C. Berkeley as sophomores in September 1957, she having spent her freshman year at Long beach State College, me my freshman year at Fresno State. We first met at a new student’s gathering at the Wesley Foundation Student Center at the Methodist Church on Bancroft. Following the gathering I was walking along Shattuck Avenue to my apartment and saw Barbara and her roommate, Sharon, walking ahead and ran to catch up.

We chatted for a couple of blocks and they turned off indicating that was their street. I went on home to my apartment. Years later I learned that they had actually taken that other route home because they thought I was ”weird,” being way too friendly, and they felt uncomfortable. I don’t remember that first contact with Barbara and further was unaware of how she viewed it.

Over the next several years we were together at the student center in increasing ways as we both ended up in leadership roles on the student council. Her friend, Lori, and Lori’s boyfriend, Terry, participated in various leadership roles as well and we became fast friends.

In time we were comfortable enough with each other that Barbara invited the three of us to have dinner with her in her apartment before our Sunday evening meetings. This went on as our relationships deepened. Lori and Terry were definitely in a relationship, and unbeknownst to me Barbara and Lori had for some time been scheming to have her end up doing things with me whenever we were together. Sometimes we went out on group dates, Lori and Terry, and Barbara and me, though I wasn’t aware of the Barbara and me part. I wasn’t aware that the two women were orchestrating everything – I was totally in 0the dark that women did this.

One evening over dinner we were horsing around with a lot of jokes and teasing. At one point I said something I thought was funny and Barbara tossed a half glass of water in my face. She got up and ran laughing out of the room. I chased her into the bathroom and grabbed her and started splashing water from the sink in her face. We struggled as I kept splashing her, and then we both stopped, and peering into each other’s eyes the room fell into a deep silence. Barbara knew immediately what had just happened; it took me a bit longer to figure out that some huge paradigm shift had just occurred – Our relationship had moved to a new level.

Knowing what had happened Barbara began telling me how she felt about me that pretty much overwhelmed me as I tried to respond myself. I mumbled a lot of things thinking I was being so clear and direct, but in reality I was stumbling so poorly it would have taken a decoder ring for her to understand what I was saying. We went back to the others and they had already figured out what had just happened. I was the only one who was still fuzzy on the concept.

This began a three-month period of us dating, sometimes with Lori and Terry, sometimes just us. I was young, innocent, and very naïve and rather new at this thing of dating and being in a serious relationship. It took me a while.

By the time of Christmas break we were dating steadily. I had decided that over the break I wasn’t going to go home because I didn’t have the money and would stay in Berkeley. Barbara, Lori, and Terry planned to go home over the holidays. At the last minute Lori invited us all to her home in Grass Valley for a couple of days before everyone planned to go home and we all agreed. It was a Friday night through Sunday noon with Lori’s parents, and then everyone would be off for the holiday break.

After a fun and exhausting day on Saturday we settled down after dinner and Lori’s parents went off to bed, and Lori and Terry went to their respective bedrooms. Barbara and I stayed up and talked into the wee hours of the morning. The lights were off and we sat shoulder-shoulder on the floor holding hands in front of the huge bay window overlooking the back yard while the nearly full moon bathed the yard in light and shadows. I know, you can’t make this stuff up, people wouldn’t believe it, it’s too cliché.

We spoke softly in order not to bother the others and talked oblivious of time and space. Time, as the saying goes, just stopped. At one point we fell silent and just watched out the window as the moonlight and shadows made their way across the yard. I don’t know what came over me but I leaned into Barbara and whispered, “Will you marry me?”

As soon as the words were out of my mouth I froze and went into a panic that paralyzed me. I had so warmed up in the moment to the romantic tone of the evening the words just came flying out. I held my breath for what was likely only a handful of seconds but felt like an eternity, waiting in total fear. Barbara finally answered a whispered, “Yes.” We kissed and hugged and sat watching the moonlit backyard till almost morning.

We didn’t say anything to Lori’s parents, but we did tell our exciting news to Lori and Terry. It was an exciting ride back to Berkeley before Barbara and Terry had to leave for home.

Over all the time we were dating, that being only three months, the issue of race didn’t come up in conversation. It was never in Barbara’s conscious mind, but to be honest it was an unsettling twitch in the back of mine. Now that we were an item, and a serious one, race became a rather large cloud we knew we would have to deal with when it came to announcing to our families.

Having decided not to go home I was faced with having to deal with this by phone. I called and Mom picked up. I said some perfunctory stuff just get my mouth working and then explained what had happened and that Barbara had said, “yes.” Long pause with a deafening silence.

“Mom, say something!”

A deep sigh, and “I hoped you would marry a nice Japanese girl…”

Well, there you go!

Barbara was home and would at least be sharing this news face-to-face with her mother. She explained our experience and that she had said, “yes” to my question.

Nary a nanosecond’s delay and out came, “I wish you would be marrying an American!”

“Mother, he IS an American…!”

I was in graduate school over the next two years and we didn’t have to deal with parental anxieties and disappointments much and life moved on, sort of. Eventually we were married on February 3, 1961. It was a small affair with close friends and a slightly tense family.

In a couple of years when Paul David was born it was amazing the power of a grandchild in the transformation of distressed parents into doting grandparents.