I grew up knowing prejudice before I ever knew the word. Especially growing up around military bases not long enough after WWII! I would see it mostly in the adults and then reflected in their children. My elementary school teachers looked at me like I was dirty or something and never stopped the name calling at recess. I remember sitting on a friend’s porch and hearing her parents arguing about whether or not she would be allowed to play with me. The mother was defending me saying I was the smartest friend their daughter had. The father was repeating over and over how THAT dirty little Jap wasn’t coming near his kids or home. (The Mom won but I sure avoided Dad!)
I remember when I was seven I noticed that if I soaked in the tub a long time I could scrape off a layer of skin with my nails and I did this regularly trying to get rid of the dark skin and I prayed every night to a God I eventually was sure couldn’t hear me that I would wake up blond and blue eyed. I remember sitting in the sun in the back yard looking at the tiny blond hairs on my arms, inherited from my father who was almost albino, and thinking why can’t anyone else see the little blond hairs and know that I am a little white, too?
I had to leave home when I was very young. My father had died and my mother didn’t think her chances of finding an new husband were as good with me around. The first white family that took me in pretended I had no color but I know that their relatives looked down on me and them for having me around. Then when I was 17 I stayed with a family where the man of the house, Red, was a real prankster and he teased me mercilessly about being Japanese but in a funny way. On December 7th he ran into the kitchen and bit me on the shin and ran out or the room whooping and yelling, “Remember pearl harbor!” We would play fight and if I bit him he would scream “Oh no! I’ve got Yellow Jaundice! I’m dying of Gookemia!!” Just insanity until I learned to lighten up and laugh with him. That was a huge turning point for me.
So was finally growing up. Then things changed the other way and I found myself being sought by men because I was Japanese. Once when a young man proposed and I asked him why he wanted to marry me he actually said, “Because You’re Japanese!” (No, I didn’t marry him!) I had heard something about it, but was surprised to find the reverse discrimination no better. Not that the outright discrimination ever stopped. My first husband was terrified to tell his father (who was an alcoholic in prison on murder charges) that he had lowered himself to marry a Japanese woman!
I don’t see myself as being of any bad color nor anyone else. The world I live in today is better, there are a lot more Asians in America now! But I don’t know if we will ever reach the dream state of colorblindness. In some ways we can’t. I tried to raise my girls to be colorblind and told them from birth how everyone was the same even if they were of different colors. Then they went to a school that was mixed when they were in third and fourth grade and came home shocked because the black girls didn’t want to play with them. They kept trying and finally made friends with sisters their own ages who they invited over but I found out that I had missed something in my teaching them. That was that sometimes different colors come with different cultures. We learned these things together and I believe my girls are colorblind as you can get. My youngest has a black boyfriend and her older sister married a Mexican mixed man. I have another daughter five years older than them who had an early boyfriend who was mixed although her husbands were both white, but the thing is that it finally doesn’t matter, at least to them. And, bless them, they’ve never been ashamed of their Japanese heritage like I feared they would. My youngest is the only one who inherited my dark coloring and she goes to tanning salons to darken her complexion even more!I live in a predominately black neighborhood where I and my family are accepted. Everyone warned us NOT to move her but my neighbors are wonderful and I’m very happy here. I wait for the day when we have all blended to be a nice pretty light brown color. I may never live to see the day but I was born that color. :-)
I remember when I was seven I noticed that if I soaked in the tub a long time I could scrape off a layer of skin with my nails and I did this regularly trying to get rid of the dark skin and I prayed every night to a God I eventually was sure couldn’t hear me that I would wake up blond and blue eyed. I remember sitting in the sun in the back yard looking at the tiny blond hairs on my arms, inherited from my father who was almost albino, and thinking why can’t anyone else see the little blond hairs and know that I am a little white, too?
I had to leave home when I was very young. My father had died and my mother didn’t think her chances of finding an new husband were as good with me around. The first white family that took me in pretended I had no color but I know that their relatives looked down on me and them for having me around. Then when I was 17 I stayed with a family where the man of the house, Red, was a real prankster and he teased me mercilessly about being Japanese but in a funny way. On December 7th he ran into the kitchen and bit me on the shin and ran out or the room whooping and yelling, “Remember pearl harbor!” We would play fight and if I bit him he would scream “Oh no! I’ve got Yellow Jaundice! I’m dying of Gookemia!!” Just insanity until I learned to lighten up and laugh with him. That was a huge turning point for me.
So was finally growing up. Then things changed the other way and I found myself being sought by men because I was Japanese. Once when a young man proposed and I asked him why he wanted to marry me he actually said, “Because You’re Japanese!” (No, I didn’t marry him!) I had heard something about it, but was surprised to find the reverse discrimination no better. Not that the outright discrimination ever stopped. My first husband was terrified to tell his father (who was an alcoholic in prison on murder charges) that he had lowered himself to marry a Japanese woman!
I don’t see myself as being of any bad color nor anyone else. The world I live in today is better, there are a lot more Asians in America now! But I don’t know if we will ever reach the dream state of colorblindness. In some ways we can’t. I tried to raise my girls to be colorblind and told them from birth how everyone was the same even if they were of different colors. Then they went to a school that was mixed when they were in third and fourth grade and came home shocked because the black girls didn’t want to play with them. They kept trying and finally made friends with sisters their own ages who they invited over but I found out that I had missed something in my teaching them. That was that sometimes different colors come with different cultures. We learned these things together and I believe my girls are colorblind as you can get. My youngest has a black boyfriend and her older sister married a Mexican mixed man. I have another daughter five years older than them who had an early boyfriend who was mixed although her husbands were both white, but the thing is that it finally doesn’t matter, at least to them. And, bless them, they’ve never been ashamed of their Japanese heritage like I feared they would. My youngest is the only one who inherited my dark coloring and she goes to tanning salons to darken her complexion even more!I live in a predominately black neighborhood where I and my family are accepted. Everyone warned us NOT to move her but my neighbors are wonderful and I’m very happy here. I wait for the day when we have all blended to be a nice pretty light brown color. I may never live to see the day but I was born that color. :-)
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