I don’t have memories of Pearl Harbor, but then I was only three at the time. I have only a few memory traces from camp Amache, the American concentration camp my family was forced into for three years during WWII. Things were harsh for Mom and Dad, and for Janet who was 10 at the time, but for us younger kids, we were protected for a short while by what Mom and Dad did for us.

When we returned home from camp in March of 1945, the war was still ongoing. The hysteria that had put us there had changed enough the government relented and allowed early release to any who wished to return home. Mom and Dad decided we would come home.

While I was too young at the beginning of our incarceration to understand what was going on, by 1945 I was well aware of Pearl Harbor and the reasons for us being in Camp Amache. Being Japanese in America in 1945 was painfully clear to me, and I was leery as I entered school back home. I learned years later that all the adults involved in the school, from the superintendent through the principal and teachers, up to the janitors and bus drivers, all had agreed to make school safe for the five of us kids of Japanese descent. It worked, as I have no recollection of any untoward or nasty reception by the other kids in school.

I entered that school setting a highly sensitive young boy clearly aware my face was noticeably different from everyone else’s. I was in Miss Peck’s 1^nd grade class. Being Japanese while the war with Japan was still going on I took very personally and determined I would be as American as I could be. This was a deliberate and conscious decision at the time. One of the things I did I began leaving the space for my middle name blank on forms, proclaiming I didn’t have a middle name. My full name is Gordon Hideaki Nagai, my middle name made up of half of my father’s name and half of my grandfather Miyake’s name. Very Japanese. The power of emotions had me thinking I’d be less Japanese without my very Japanese middle name, all the while I was continuing to use my very Japanese family name. I continued this denial until I graduated elementary school in 1952.

While I was in grade school there were only five of us who were of Japanese descent – My sister Janet, me, younger brother Gene, and cousins Robert and Peggy. The rest were white with a smattering of Negroes and Mexicans. Once I entered high school, there was a leap in our numbers in the school population. Japanese made up a large community in the area, all farmers who had been there for some 30 to 40 years by the time of Pearl Harbor.

Having more Japanese around was different from my experiences in grammar school. While we were in Camp Amache everyone’s face was like mine, and now in high school things were similar with more looking like me. We didn’t separate ourselves as Japanese, but blended in with all the rest, so no Japanese cliques. Most of the other kids spoke Japanese because they’d grown up in a community where Saturday language school was expected, I and my siblings, and cousins Robert and Peggy, declined to learn Japanese because right after the war we wanted nothing to do with anything Japanese, especially something as distinctive as the language. In hindsight, that was a sad mistake because of my loss of a language, but was wholly understandable for a vulnerable and insecure child.

In all my experiences to this point, I hadn’t had a girlfriend. I had lots of friends who were girls, but none I thought of as more familiar. I was always very young and naïve when it came to girls, even into high school. In the 8^th grade a white girl in my class asked me to go with her to a birthday party of her best friend, and that was my only date in elementary school. I have no memory of the party, but a kind of sense memory that we played spin-the-bottle and post office. The Sunday after the party she left school because her father, an Air Force captain stationed at the Strategic Air Command base outside of town, was reassigned to an air base in Germany. I never saw her again, though a year later I received a freshman school picture of her from a high school for American dependents in Germany with the message penciled on the back, ”Lots of luck and merry Xmas – Love Virginia.”

High school for me was really good. There were a lot of very bright kids in school, and a handful of us Japanese kids were among that group. We weren’t smarter than any of the white kids, but I think our motivation to excel and prove we were all American gave us an edge and we stood out. I was one of them. Most of my closest friends were white, but only because the number of Japanese kids was proportionately lower. There was an underlying attraction to the white kids from my earlier grade-school attempts to be American, and that meant being as white as I could be. In hindsight, this pattern was clear and indelible in my character, and honestly, it was a conscious choice in my mind growing up.

In the four years of high school, I had only one date, and it, too, was with a white girl. She sought me out. We went out several times, roller skating once, a movie, and hanging out around school. But, within a very short time it was clear she had serious intentions that would have me getting under her clothes, and that scared me, and I stopped seeing her.

There was one Japanese girl a year behind my class who had a crush on me, and she seriously pursued me. Her fervor was something else, dropping not so subtle hints, and that irritated me. We didn’t ever date, but she really tried hard to make it so.

During my last year, this girl asked me to take her to my senior prom, and was direct and outspoken about it. I declined saying I was asking another Japanese girl to the dance. When I did ask the other girl, she declined, which was a shock and totally crushed me. Years later it occurred to me that she may have said no because the other girl had made it known that she was my date for the prom, and word was out that no one should get in the way of that happening. I don’t know if that was the case, but it does make sense considering the intense interest the other girl had in me. So much for any love life in high school.

My interest in Japanese girls coincided with my efforts to reconnect with my Japanese heritage. I dropped the pretense that I had no middle name, and began seeking things Japanese. Mom had a copy of John Hersey’s book, “Hiroshima,” and I read it in a powerful awakening of sorts. I began reading about the war in Europe, and initially avoided the war in the Pacific because of what I’d heard about atrocities committed by the Japanese military. It wasn’t until I was at Cal in Berkeley that I began reading about the war in the pacific.

I came to Cal as a sophomore, having spent my freshman year at Fresno State College. Being a Methodist I found Wesley Foundation Student Center connected with First Methodist Church. I was one of only two Asian students at Wesley, me and a Chinese student. Everyone else was white.

I don’t remember exactly what year, but probably late during my sophomore year I called a girl I’d met at Wesley to ask her on a date. She was a white girl, and very blond.

When her mother answered the phone, I asked to speak with her daughter. She asked who was calling, and I gave my name. She told me her daughter wasn’t home, but that she’d give her the message I called. The next Sunday after church, the girl’s father came up to me and asked me not to call again, that there wasn’t going to be any kind of relationship there. He turned and left. I was stunned, and felt very small.

I met Barbara at Wesley Foundation who I would eventually marry. That started out as an unlikely match when we met at a welcoming event for new students. Her first impression of me was that I was very strange because I was overly friendly and outgoing. I was oblivious of this, and didn’t learn of her impressions of me till years later.

Barbara and I were often together because we were both active in various leadership roles at the student center. At one point we started having dinner in her apartment as a convenience before our Sunday evening meetings. She and her roommate Lori hosted me and Terry, a student Lori was interested in. We did things together, some collectively in sort of group dating, but there weren’t any clear delineations as couples. Unbeknownst to me, Barbara began orchestrating with Lori so that she and I would end up together whenever we did things. Again, I was clueless that women did this kind of thing.

One evening we were all in their apartment for dinner before our meeting that night. During dinner there was a lot of joking around and the feeling tone was light and intimate. I think everyone was aware of this but me. At one point in the conversation something happened that I didn’t follow, but Barbara turned and emptied a glass of water in my face, and ran out of the room laughing. In shock, I rose up and chased her into the bathroom where I grabbed her, and turning on the faucet, soaked her in return. Then, everything went quiet. We returned to the other room. Something had just occurred, and everyone seemed to know it but me. The conversation was stilted. It gradually dawned on me what had just happened. I didn’t have words to put on it, but knew I was now in a very different relationship. There was a mixture of puzzlement, pleasure, and relief, in equal measure.

After that evening Barbara and I began dating. We were still in school so we worked our dates around classes. We’d been dating just a couple of months, and as we came up to the Christmas break, I decided I wouldn’t go home for the holidays, but would stay in Berkeley through the New Years. I have no idea why I made that decision to stay. Barbara’s roommate Lori invited us, Terry, Barbara, and me, to her home in Grass Valley before everyone went on break. It was a Friday night through Sunday morning weekend.

By this time, we four had all become close friends, so the time would be a nice interlude. Saturday night after dinner, Lori’s parents went off to bed, and Terry and Lori to separate rooms for the night, leaving Barbara and me in the living room. The lights were out, and we sat on the floor in front of a large bay window overlooking the back yard. There was a full moon and the yard was bathed in silvery light. We talked softly, cuddling in the moonlit room. I don’t know how long we were there, or what we talked about, but it was quiet, still, and we were very much in a moonlit mood.

All of a sudden I heard these words coming out of my mouth: “Will you marry me?”

I froze. My heart stopped beating. I held my breath, as time stopped, and silence loomed for what seemed an eternity.

Finally came her response: “Yes!”

I don’t remember anything after that, what we said if anything, what I thought. In the morning we told Lori and Terry our good news, and everyone left for the holidays.

Once back in my apartment, I was facing a very lonely couple of weeks until everyone returned for classes. I called the first thing to tell Mom and Dad my good news. After some comments back and forth, Mom silently said, “We had hoped you’d marry a nice Japanese girl!” Our conversation was rather stilted until I rang-off.

Barbara had a similar experience when she spoke with her mother. Her response was, “I had hoped you’d marry an American!”

Barbara answered, “Mother, he IS an American!”

Well, so much for family celebration of our engagement!

After my call to Mom and Dad, I didn’t have anything to do till classes returned in January. I went out one day and stopped in front of a small jewelry store near the corner of Telegraph and Bancroft Avenues, just off the Cal campus. I looked at the display of engagement rings in the window with nothing much going on in my mind. Just looking. While I was standing there, the door opened and a young man, maybe in his mid-30s, said, “Hi!” and asked why I was in town and not home for the holidays. I explained I had no idea.. I then told him my good news, and he asked if I was looking for an engagement ring. I said I wasn’t, that I couldn’t afford one. He said “Let’s talk.”

He brought out a tray of loose diamonds, and picked one out and showed it to me with his loupe. He said it was a quarter karat, and a very nice cut. He took a pencil and on a piece of paper drew what he described as the setting he thought would enhance this diamond, especially making it look larger. He said the setting and diamond would come to $120, and if I could swing $10 a month, in a year’s time, I’d have the ring I wanted.

Well, starry-eyed me, I agreed, and was then up to my eyeballs in debt.

When Barbara returned for classes in January I presented her with a ring box, and said it was a surprise. I had placed a cigar band in the box, and explained that I couldn’t afford a real ring, but in a week I presented her with the engagement ring, and that’s how it really happened…