Overall, my life has been mostly free of racial assaults and attacks, certainly nothing physical. Of those that did happen, only a few were direct confrontations. Most of them were side swipes.

There was nothing of any kind that I remember when we first returned from camp, which would have been late spring 1945, because I learned later that the principal and all the teachers of Mitchell Elementary School had agreed to protect the five of us Japanese kids. I think too, it was a different time and children were held to respect their elders and were fearful of getting into trouble if they didn’t. Respect of elders was important in the upbringing of children then, maybe more-so than today.

Anyway, I was a 6-year old sensitive to being Japanese and being different because of race, especially because of the war. I started in the 1^st grade in spring of 1945 and progressed into the 2^nd grade in the fall of that year, then through to grade 8 in 1952. I remember all the kids as friendly, with a handful as close friends. By the time I graduated from the 8^th grade in ’52 we were eight years out from the war, and race had faded mostly into the background and I felt more secure. Even still, race was a shadow in the back of my mind, always ready to jump out at any moment. Calm and with friends among all the kids, but wary of any unforeseen insult or comment. It could happen.

Since there were the five of us Japanese kids, and the only girls were my sister Janet and my cousin Peggy, I didn’t date in the upper grades. Except I did have one date, with this girl, Virginial C., who was in my grade who invited me to a birthday party given by her best friend. I was young, very young and naïve, totally ignorant of what a date was, other than I was with a girl and stuff that I didn’t know about happened. The details of the birthday party are sketchy, but I vaguely have memory traces of playing spin-the-bottle and post office. I had my first kiss at the party, and it is pretty vague in my mind exactly what happened. In spin-the-bottle I think I ended up kissing most of the other girls in addition to Virginia, and have no memories of any reluctance on their part in kissing a Japanese boy. I think there were six girls and six of us boys at the party, so I was really Virginia’s date. Where race was involved in the experience was in her asking me to meet her at the party instead of me picking her up from home. (Actually, Daddy would have driven me to pick her up, and later return her home.) At the time I was totally relieved that it was that simple, but in later years it occurred to me that there was likely another reason for this arrangement. Her dad was an officer in the newly formed U.S. Air Force stationed at the Strategic Air Command base just north of town. It was 1951 so only six years after the war. I suspect she didn’t let her parents know that she was taking a Japanese boy to the party. Afterwards, that very weekend, her dad had been reassigned to an air base in Berlin, Germany, and the family moved immediately to his new assignment, and I didn’t see Virginia ever after the party.

There was one incident that did leave an indelible mark in my memories: cousin Robert and I were playing beside the road in front of our place when a car drove by, slowed down, and the diver yelled out the window, “Ching, Chong, Chinaman, sitting on a fence…” and drove off. The rest of that sing-song jingle went like this: “…trying to make a dollar out of 15 cents!” – A racist slur and a ding. That was the only incident of someone making a slur directly to my face, even though from a passing car.

In high school, like in grammar school, there were no incidents of racism or racial attacks that I recall. This was eight years after the war, and all the Japanese kids in school had grown up with the townspeople and their kids, and for the most part fit into the community. There were some twenty families in the greater community surrounding Livingston, whereas there were only two families in Atwater. I think the greater numbers helped in the assimilation, and the increasing years out from the war helped. For me, I went out for football and track/field and excelled in both, and that meant something in my being accepted by my peers.

Almost immediately after we arrived home from camp in mid-1945, the commander of the Strategic Air Command base asked for help from Grandma Nagai. He needed help for several airmen who had returned from the war in the Pacific with “Japanese war brides,” men who had married Japanese women. Because of the culture and language differences, these couples were having difficulties making their way. Grandma Nagai sort of adopted them, had them over to talk and share Japanese meals, and in some helpful ways eased the women’s transition into American life. I think she may have saved a couple of marriages, at least given them a chance.

At Cal, most of my life centered around classes and the Methodist student center, Wesley Foundation, situated on the edge of campus. It was there I met a blond-haired student named Nancy B., and one day I called her intending to ask her out. Her mother answered the phone, and asked who I was. I told her my name, that I was a friend from Wesley Foundation. She said her daughter wasn’t there, but she’d pass along a message that I called. That very next Sunday after church, her father approached me and in clear words said there was no relationship in the future with his daughter, and I should not call again. I didn’t see her at Wesley Foundation after that. Other than this, there were no other overt incidents of racism while I was at Cal.

In 1957 I did meet Barbara, my future wife, though it would be several years before that ever developed. We were on the leadership council at Wesley Foundation, and worked together with the minister who led the center. There were planning sessions and leading the meetings of the students, and this put us together a lot. Because we often met before our regular Sunday evening meetings we started having dinner in Barbara’s and her roommate Lori’s apartment. In addition, we went out socially as a group, sort of group dating, but nothing formal in the way of couples. Well, unbeknownst to me Barbara and her roommate orchestrated things so that she and I ended up together on our outings. All of this happened flying way over my head, and I was clueless. It was at one of these dinners that we were all talking and joking around, and I said something cute and Barbara tossed a half glass of water into my face, and ran off laughing. I chased her into the bathroom, and we tussled a bit, and I turned the handle on the sink and started dousing her with water. All of a sudden we stopped, and everyone in the other room and Barbara knew that something had clearly shifted in our relationship. I was the only one in the dark and fuzzy about what had just happened. From that night on we were a couple, though I was still a little hazy on the depth of it all. Our little group continued to go out together, but now as a group of couples.

Things for me were a mix of excitement in being in a relationship, alongside questions of dating a white girl. Mostly this was going on inside my mind, and much of it I think unconsciously. Mostly, I was a blathering idiot in feelings.

When the winter semester came to the Christmas holidays in late December 1960, Lori invited Barbara and me and her boyfriend Terry to her home for a weekend before everyone left for home. Late one evening after everyone else had gone to bed, we were sitting on the floor holding hands in front of a big bay window overlooking the backyard bathed in the light of a full moon. We talked, about what I don’t remember, but it was quiet and serene, and romantic. At one point I heard myself asking out loud and out of the blue, “Will you marry me?” The silence that followed couldn’t have been more than a handful of seconds, but if felt like an eternity, and I froze. Did I really say that out loud? Then, came the answer, “yes.”

The next morning, we told Lori and Terry about the evening, but didn’t share the news with Lori’s parents. We then left for our own separate homes for the holiday break. Except for me. For some reason I don’t recall, I had decided not to go home for the holidays but remained in Berkeley and awaited the New Year and beginning of classes again. Because this was such an important thing I called Mom and Dad and explained what had happened, my question and the answer. There was a pregnant pause on the other end of the line, and then, “I had hoped you’d marry a nice Japanese Girl…!” Things were a little tense after that. When Barbara told her mother about what happened, her response was, “I had hoped you would marry an American!” “Mother, he IS an American!” Things were a little tense here as well.

As it turned out, when Paul was born, becoming a grandparent turned things around, especially for Grandma Nagai. Plus, being the eldest son, Grandma and Grandpa Nagai turned the corner and like good Japanese parents were supportive of my new relationship.

Years later I learned something that upset me a lot. Grandma Nagai shared that when it became known we were engaged, Reverend Tufts, minister of the Livingston Methodist Church where I had gone while in high school, contacted them and implored them to convince me not to marry a white girl. At the same time Reverend Hayward of the First Methodist Church in Berkeley where we attended while at Cal, also contacted Mom and Dad and urged them to intervene and prevent the marriage from happening. These were two things that began the souring of my relationship with formal religion. In a not related but curiously related incident, Barbara’s brother David, classic younger brother he, gave this response on hearing of our engagement: “You finally did it…!” meaning she rebelled against their mother, which was so cool in his eyes.

Then there was the episode after we were married of looking for an apartment in Berkeley. I had gone out in response to an ad in the paper for an apartment, and when the woman opened the door, she took one look at me, hesitated, and said that her husband had just rented the apartment. On reporting back to Barbara, I said I thought the woman was racist and didn’t rent to me because I was Japanese. Barbara thought I was being overly sensitive and a little paranoid. A week later the ad for the same apartment was in the paper so we went out to check. This time a man answered the door, and upon seeing us, hesitated, and said his wife had just rented the apartment. Barbara became a believer.

The second episode was the time we were in Colorado for Diana’s graduation from the University of Colorado and made a pilgrimage out to Camp Amache. We stopped on the way at a café that turned out to be a redneck hangout. When we entered, the conversations stopped dead cold. Here was this mixed-race couple, mixed kids, and a blazing redhead, which alone must have caused a whole lot of questions just by itself.

Over the years since we were married Grandma Nagai enjoyed a benign sort of racism whenever it was clear that Barbara didn’t understand or know something of Japanese language or culture. It tickled her so to poke fun at this white girl trying to become a little Japanese. It was always in jest and mostly without malice, but there was still a bit of an edge to it. We still laughed along with her.

At Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Oregon there was one incident of benign racism. One time during a discussion in International Relations the topic wasn’t to my recollection about anything racial, but during a break a woman came up to me and said something like, “Your people are exceptional because in spite of the tragedy of the internment nobody caused any trouble!”

One final thing about race and my history. In grammar school I used to think I was conscious of being different because I was an introvert, that the kids who received favored treatment were all extroverts. I didn’t know these words for it, but I was aware, sometimes painfully so, that I was different in this way. Actually, while there was some truth in this perception, what I was really noticing and mixing up was that the white kids were getting attention and I wasn’t. But, instead of being racially based, what I didn’t get was that I rarely raised my hand in class, thus the non-response from the teacher. There were a lot of things I thought the white kids did to get the attention and receive positive responses, and I tried to mimic what I thought I saw. I tried to be white, or maybe an extrovert. It was very confusing.

It wasn’t until I entered high school that I did make a return to my Japanese heritage, and for example, started using my middle name again, Hideaki. I had stopped using it in grade school because it sounded too Japanese, and after the war that wasn’t something I wanted to identify with. The fallacy of my childhood thinking was that eliminating my Japanese-sounding middle name didn’t negate the fact that my family name was still so very Japanese, and I was still using it.