00:00:02.190 - 00:00:24.350

I get comfortable here. The date is February 2nd. Uh, I'm Bruce Keiper with the Radical Elder Oral History Project, and this is our first, uh, interview, the beginning interview with Nori Ikeda Lafferty. Nori, when and where were you born? I was born on August 7th, 1915

00:00:24.350 - 00:00:48.380

in Oakland, California. What is your ancestry? Um, I'm American of Japanese. Ancestry. When did your migrate to this country? Well, we're not too sure, my sisters and I, but we think the early 1900s, early 1900s you know why they came. My mother came because she wanted

00:00:48.380 - 00:01:01.930

to learn the English language and her intention was to go back and it may be that since she never got to do it, that she had that ambition for me because she always said, well, I want you to become a teacher and go back to Japan

00:01:01.930 - 00:01:27.699

and teach English. But um and my father came also for education. What were their occupations in Japan. Um, well, I guess my mother was just a housewife, and most Japanese women don't too much. Uh, I unfortunately, uh, we don't have too much information about their, their

00:01:27.699 - 00:01:43.300

life in Japan, but we gather that she must have had education because she wrote a book after she came to the United States about her travels and from what we hear, it's in very classical Japanese, so she must have had enough education to be able to

00:01:43.300 - 00:02:12.839

write. In that formal language, but and she was very careful always about her speech and so forth. And my father um comes from a Uh, priest. Background. And he had, um, now what was the question occupational background. Oh, his educational background, he went to university in

00:02:12.839 - 00:02:34.074

Japan, uh-huh, um, as far as we can figure in, um, uh, theology or something because he was always, he comes from a priest background, so he went to, um, to a, I guess you call it a seminary if no. Well, Buddhist, Buddhist, yeah, but he never

00:02:34.074 - 00:02:55.779

finished it. He was also interested in um agriculture and when he came to the United States, um, he went, uh, he took some classes at UC Berkeley and he got a PhD by correspondence from some Midwestern university in agriculture. No, I, I think we have a

00:02:55.779 - 00:03:12.860

diploma here somewhere that he got, you know, when he died we put all those things together. Well, it was when we were still kids, so I would not know how long it, how long it took him, probably many, many years by correspondence and he wrote some

00:03:12.860 - 00:03:34.529

books on agriculture which um. Uh, my sister says were were used in schools in Japan. So, well, now, was he, uh, fluent in English when he arrived? He wasn't. Had he studied at all, uh, prior to the trip? I don't know. I don't know, but he

00:03:34.529 - 00:03:58.729

was more fluent than my mother who spoke very little English, and, and my father read a lot and he picked up the language, I think that way. Well, what would you call his class. Uh, uh, in Japan at the prior to his arrival here, I lived

00:03:58.729 - 00:04:20.279

in, he lived in a rural area, so I imagine they did farming, uh, although my sister learned that his father, my father's father. Uh, at one time was the mayor of the town, so and he he was a priest was a priest. I noticed in the

00:04:20.279 - 00:04:38.700

earlier interview that you did that some one of your relatives was a sword. Well, that was my mother's. Father, now my sister corrected me. She said that he was a sword maker, which makes him a step above a sword sharpener. She comes from a samurai family,

00:04:39.130 - 00:05:03.910

so that would be considered pretty upper class, I guess, absolutely, absolutely, and um. Uh, so she was, she came apparently from. Uh, enough of um upper class family so that. She uh left Japan to travel around the world when she was still a teenager, which is

00:05:03.910 - 00:05:21.269

unheard of, you know, for a single, single Japanese woman to, well, when we find out that she was quite unusual in a lot of ways, and that was the first inkling we got, you know, women at the time of their coming here they allowed into the

00:05:21.269 - 00:05:39.450

school system in advanced education? You mean here or in Japan? Uh, I, I don't know enough about the history of Japan to know that. I would guess that they weren't. If anything, maybe they, they might have had tutors at home or something like that, but, uh,

00:05:39.619 - 00:06:03.429

too much education with Japanese women wasn't. What was yours? My father is from um Nigata Prefecture. My mother from Saitama Prefecture. No, my mother's family was not agricultural, as I say, you know, the father was a sword maker, the parent lived quite well, so they were

00:06:03.429 - 00:06:21.579

not. Were your parents, uh, uh, to your memory, at least to your family, you were the middle child, right? So do you know anything about the type of, uh, class consciousness that your parents possessed? I mean, when they came here, did they identify themselves as being

00:06:21.579 - 00:06:36.989

of a particular class, and, and were they consciously advocates of that, uh, that class experience? Well, I would say my mother was in the sense that Although she didn't look down on workers as such, she always aspired for us to to do something beside that. She

00:06:36.989 - 00:06:54.850

wanted us to be professionals and well in Japanese there are the two levels of speech, you know, she was very conscious about using the um. Upper class speech and um she had to work as a domestic after she came here and I remember she took me

00:06:54.850 - 00:07:12.989

once to the place where she worked and she said um you know there are people live much better than the way we live and I want you to see how you can live if you if you are successful so that upward mobility oh yes for her

00:07:12.989 - 00:07:35.170

uh-huh. What about your father? My father's. Uh, quite a different kind of person. He was not ever interested in like material things, you know, or maybe his priest background has something to do that. Unfortunately, it, uh, victimized my mother because um. She died very young because

00:07:35.170 - 00:07:50.850

she had to work so hard. My father was never much of a moneymaker, but my father was, uh, he was in the, he was an intellectual, I would say he wrote many books. He was a journalist most of his life he was a muckraker and um.

00:07:52.260 - 00:08:11.040

So my mother uh had to do most of the work to keep the family together, although before they had children, uh, my sister tells me she, she learned that my father did work on the railroads and that he did work in homes, you know, the domestic,

00:08:12.119 - 00:08:29.929

uh, but he got fired every time because uh he always resented their his being called a Jap and he would just he would just leave, you know. So he apparently he did some work um. But as far as I can remember. He was either a journalist

00:08:30.320 - 00:08:52.979

or worked for a newspaper or he started different businesses. What sort of journalism was the Japanese press, uh-huh he worked as a reporter. He worked, um, then he got his own newspaper. Oh my, yes, that was his life was the first one was called Hokusin and

00:08:52.979 - 00:09:14.020

then the second one was um. Uh, Japanese American reviewichibe yo, I think it is in Japanese. And um that was his thing, you know, he was a journalist based here, yes, yes, he just did it out of the house. What sort of readership to be? Oh,

00:09:14.429 - 00:09:33.950

that's kind of interesting because I'm sure uh he foisted subscriptions on people on the basis of his personal friendship and uh then he sent sent uh copies to organizations and so forth, but he, he got a lot of advertisers and that was the basis of of

00:09:33.950 - 00:09:54.859

um keeping the newspaper going and he got into hot water several times because he would expose some. racketeer in the Japanese community or some actions that he felt were not very good for the community. In fact, both my mother and father were quite um conscious about.

00:09:55.830 - 00:10:13.969

Participating in society around them. Well, they, they, uh, uh, being muckraker types, uh, what, what sort of political leanings did they exhibit when you were a child? Do you remember, uh, did they identify themselves as being radical no, no, no, not at all, not at all,

00:10:14.169 - 00:10:36.770

but they were very ethnocentric in the sense that, uh, their journalistic studies and their journalistic work was aimed at. The problems of Japanese American life. Well, I'm just talking about my father, um, yes, yes, uh-huh, and my mother was quite active in the Buddhist. Circles which

00:10:36.770 - 00:11:00.840

ones do you remember what Buddhist circle in Oakland Oakland Buddhist. There was one, there are a lot of Christian churches, but only one was a Japanese Chinese right near the church. Yes, well, in fact it was just around the corner. Well, it was the Jackson and

00:11:00.840 - 00:11:20.309

uh 6th at the time and then they moved a little further up later, but uh. Well, now, your parents were religious, uh, your mother, uh, acted in the Buddhist church, was your father, uh, being from a priest background, to what extent was the religious motivation a

00:11:20.309 - 00:11:41.039

primary one for him in in terms of his day by day life? Did he, do you remember him? Espousing and uh teaching the traditional values of the Buddhist faith to you uh as a child. Um, Not the interesting thing was that that the what I remember

00:11:41.039 - 00:11:55.080

most about any kind of religious training my we went to Sunday school, we went to Buddhist uh Sunday school, but you know, like most Sunday schools, you don't get too much religion. We went more of as a social thing, but my father used to have a

00:11:55.080 - 00:12:10.500

black board a bulletin board in the basement where his print shop was, and he had written on it in with chalk, uh, do unto others. And you know, as you would the others do unto you, and that's a Christian, you know, we usually associate that with

00:12:10.500 - 00:12:26.130

the Christian thing, and he tried, I think to live by it and um every time I went to the basement, I would be conscious of that, you know, so sort of subconsciously. Entered my thinking, but you never saw him reading materials. Oh, no, in fact, he

00:12:26.130 - 00:12:41.179

wrote a treatise called um. There's no life after death. I remember he, uh, he wrote it in Japanese and then he translated it and he had me go over. He wanted me to edit the English, but it was pretty difficult. I would either have had to

00:12:41.179 - 00:12:55.580

rewrite the whole thing or leave it the way he translated it and I thought it was better to leave it the way he translated it. Uh, but his idea was that there's no such thing as heaven, but he did believe in and he, oh, he did

00:12:55.590 - 00:13:12.320

talk to us quite a good deal about his belief in the universal soul. He thought there was one universal soul and all of us come and go back to it. Now is that rooted in the Buddhist tradition? I don't think so. I don't know where he

00:13:12.320 - 00:13:34.229

got that yet. Yeah, I don't think uh it, uh, I, I would say that um. the Buddhist part of it probably came in. Um, as against the Christian, you know, where you try to develop yourself to the highest level of social personal relationships and so forth.

00:13:35.010 - 00:14:01.250

Oh But um And my mother was not religious in the sense that uh. She indoctrinated us or anything like that, but she did have very strong moral principles which I'm sure influenced my thinking because she would constantly say that. You know, we're put on this earth,

00:14:01.289 - 00:14:15.780

not just to live our own lives, but. To do something for the community around us and so forth, you know, so that that was sort of dined into into me anyway. I don't know how much it affected my sisters, but you got a fairly solid I

00:14:15.780 - 00:14:41.530

would say ethical, yes, very definitely, uh-huh. Well, did you receive formal religious training as a child. You never attended classes at the Buddhist Center, we went to school that was about it. Mostly, as I remember there were stories the Buddhist priest would, well, he would chant

00:14:41.530 - 00:14:58.200

the sutras and so forth, and but we never knew what it was all about and then he would always end up with a story and we always looked forward to the stories at the end of class. Well, uh, in your childhood, describe your childhood, Nori, uh,

00:14:58.419 - 00:15:14.239

uh, you know, after your birth, what do you consciously remember about living in Oakland during that time period? Well, I was trying to think of that and I was struck as I, as I look back over it that my childhood. Very ethnic in the sense that

00:15:14.450 - 00:15:28.130

uh my friends were either Japanese or Chinese and the things that stand out in our mind in my mind are all things to do with these the Japanese community. Well first of all, we all went to Japanese school after uh the American school we went to

00:15:28.130 - 00:15:46.520

Japanese school so that was up until dinner time and um uh then the community would have, um, I remember this so vividly picnics. Uh, people who came from a particular prefecture in Japan would have their picnic and then the other group would have another one and

00:15:46.520 - 00:16:02.419

it was up in the Albany Hills they were all open at that time and always have glorious fun. You either had to have a car or we'd go by uh by a trolley by a street car and most of us didn't have cars. But I remember

00:16:02.419 - 00:16:20.419

the, the picnics. No, no, one of the prefectures would call an annual picnic and you didn't have to be a member of that prefecture to, to go, but we would, we would try to go to as many of them as possible because it was a one

00:16:20.419 - 00:16:38.669

time the whole family was there and they'd have races, you know, the usual things, the races and tug of war and relays and food and And uh all the hills were just, you know, they were just open just it just seemed like acres of open fields

00:16:38.669 - 00:16:57.609

for the children to play and no danger around, you know, it was, it was lots of fun. peer group associates? Well, as I say, mostly the children, the kids, um Japanese and Chinese because it was a Chinese Japanese neighborhood and we all went to Lincoln School,

00:16:57.630 - 00:17:30.400

which was, um, I would say 95% oriental. the teachers and she must have taught literally thousands of Asian children because that's we had a very interesting experience. I went. To Lincoln School when Ms. Chiu was my teacher and when my older my sons grew up and

00:17:30.400 - 00:17:49.829

not grew up when my sons were kindergarten age, uh, my father, their grandfather took them to Lincoln School and lo and behold their teacher was Ms. Xu and she remembered when I was there the first day and she remembered my son um. First day of school,

00:17:49.920 - 00:18:10.000

isn't that amazing? She was definitely and she must have been very young when she started. She never married. This was her life and her career and um she spoke English beautifully and she loved children and uh she was just just one of those traditions I'm sure

00:18:10.000 - 00:18:27.270

just literally thousands of uh. Japanese and Chinese children remember Miss Chiu. That's amazing. Well, how, what were the Occidental teachers like? I mean, were they, uh, did you feel that there was a fairness in terms of their, uh, teaching method? Did they openly indicate a type

00:18:27.270 - 00:18:46.670

of biased attitude toward Asian students or, uh, were they fairly well selected not to reflect oxen and the prejudice? Uh, I don't know that it came in too much. I do remember that there was one teacher who didn't like, uh, some of our names, and she

00:18:46.670 - 00:19:08.770

would just, uh, change them to something that you could, there was the. Um, The most glaring example I can remember is uh there's a Chinese name that's Ng NG, and she said I can't pronounce that name, so she changed it to Eng ENG, and the city

00:19:08.770 - 00:19:31.660

councilman who's who's an Eng is from that family. I guess he, I guess they kept it that way that's that's Peter, right? Peter No, no, it's um. Uh, what's his name? Well, I guess they're all related, but um. Well, it doesn't work, yeah, he's he's the

00:19:31.660 - 00:19:46.699

current city council to the uh to the right, yes, very definitely he we went to school in Lincoln school together. We all had missed you. What other treatment did you experience in uh in uh Lincoln, uh, I mean, did, did you, do you remember what I'm

00:19:46.699 - 00:20:08.650

trying to get at, Nori, is that did were you conscious of a type of uh. Racial or ethnic prejudice within the community that not really, not really. I, I had, we had a very happy childhood by and large. There's one incident which I vaguely recall, and

00:20:08.650 - 00:20:25.180

I don't really remember when it was, but some kind of law had passed. I don't know whether it was what they call the gentleman's agreement or not, and one day. Uh, the teacher asked all the Japanese to leave the classroom, and we had to go to

00:20:25.180 - 00:20:42.020

another building, and she apologized profusely. She said, I don't want to do this, but I've been asked that we have to do this, and I to this day, I can't remember. Uh, what the incident was or or why, and we felt a little strange then. No,

00:20:42.030 - 00:21:02.650

no, no, I don't remember. I just I don't remember whether I even told my parents. Um, well, that's what I can't recall. I, I was born in 1915. I met when I was maybe 8 or 9 or something like that 23 or 24 or something like

00:21:02.650 - 00:21:23.800

that, yes, something happened at that time, mhm. Uh, in terms of your childhood, who, who. Were your heroes as a child? I mean, were you conscious of that I was not at all. I just was not conscious at all. There were a couple of teachers whom

00:21:23.800 - 00:21:39.760

I looked up to and uh I thought wouldn't it be nice to be a teacher and teach children the way these people are teaching me, but aside from that, I don't remember storybook heroes or heroines at all. I respected my mother a lot. I thought a

00:21:39.760 - 00:21:55.050

lot of her. But aside from that, I really don't. I did a lot of reading, but I can't even remember what I read. Yeah, I, I know I read a lot because uh my mother says that's how I roll my eyes. I would turn the light

00:21:55.050 - 00:22:08.410

on after I was supposed to be asleep and I would read in bed and of course the light wasn't all that good. Did you like fiction or nonfiction mostly fiction. Do you remember any of the uh the fictional. Uh, works that you read, I mean, were

00:22:08.410 - 00:22:27.209

they? Yes, yes, they were all American. I imagine there were things that children read at the time, but, um, but I really don't remember too much. Now you were in Japanese and English at the same time. Yes, uh, we would speak Japanese to, especially to my

00:22:27.209 - 00:22:48.770

mother and um half and half to my father, but of course between my sisters and myself we'd always speak English and with our friends we spoke English. Yes, we read in English except of course when we had, you mean our extracurricular reading, yes, in Japanese school

00:22:48.770 - 00:23:06.010

we did everything except uh not except in school we had to read the textbooks in school. What, uh, uh, what stories or or what uh traditional, uh, themes did your uh parents impress upon you that have remained with you to this day? Do you remember any

00:23:06.010 - 00:23:23.880

tales that they told you about their, their, uh, past or just about their vision of the world that had any influence on you at all to your memory? You mean particular stories or? Yeah, like, uh, uh, you know, whether they were rooted in the Japanese, the

00:23:23.880 - 00:23:43.030

mainland Japanese experience or whether they were tales of passage, you know, from Japan to what, what sort of uh uh uh stories did they run down to you that you remember? Well, all I remember are um a lot of folk tales, and they all had a

00:23:43.030 - 00:24:02.589

moral. Like what? Uh, usually the good, good guys want out, uh, or, uh, don't mistreat other people, uh, fairly simple, you know, and when we used to go to movies, the Japanese movies that came from Japan, um, they were an experience that there were no no

00:24:02.589 - 00:24:23.079

talkies, of course, but this one man would take the part of every character. He was just amazing and he would take the part of women, children, men. And um he would relate the dialogue and then in between uh incidents and as I remember all the movies

00:24:23.079 - 00:24:37.780

we we would always say which are the good guys, you know, which are the bad guys and the good guys always want them so the moral was, you know, you, you should live right and do right. Do you remember other tales that your your mother or

00:24:37.780 - 00:24:56.560

father told you that stand out that you could actually narrate to me? No, I don't, uh, well, actually they didn't, uh, we weren't with them all that much and uh so I except for, well, I remember my mother used to take us to Lake Mayor on

00:24:56.560 - 00:25:11.439

Sunday, she would take her knitting or darning or sewing or something like that and, and there used to be a beach area at the lake by the bandstand. Uh, where we could go waiting. So even when we were just with her, we weren't with her. We

00:25:11.439 - 00:25:31.199

played alone and she did her work, but I don't remember too much, um. Of anything like that, it's just the sort of a blank. Do you uh feel closer to your mother or father? I've always felt closer to my mother. Why is that? Uh, I don't

00:25:31.199 - 00:25:51.569

really know. As I grew older, I might have had a subconscious resentment that my mother had to work so hard. Uh, not that my father wasn't working, but he was more interested in what he was doing, um, and, uh, my mother had to really bring us

00:25:51.569 - 00:26:14.520

up and as I say she died very young and she was 59 and I'm sure it was from over over that? In in the sense of, uh, that he set himself, he excluded himself from the mundane world of uh survival, uh, for the sake of his

00:26:14.520 - 00:26:32.359

journalism and for the sake of his writing, or do you feel that I, I sort of felt that I sort of felt that you think he was conscious of it? I doubt it. I, I imagine, uh, every Japanese family, the same thing was happening, you know,

00:26:32.400 - 00:26:53.449

where the, where the women had the where the brunt of the work around the house and the children. That was a traditional I would think so, although in maybe some maybe other families, the father actually had a job that That brought in money. But uh without

00:26:53.449 - 00:27:10.170

my mother's um. Domestic service, I doubt that we would have been able to go to college, for instance. And they and my mother particularly wanted us all to have some kind of musical experience, so she gave all of us lessons and that all took money. My

00:27:10.170 - 00:27:37.250

sister plays the piano. She, she still does and does accompanying work. I took violin lessons and piano lessons and my younger sister took piano lessons. And Well, Nori, uh. As a child, do you remember your parents, uh, engaging in any political discussions that had, uh, at

00:27:37.250 - 00:27:56.670

least to your childhood memory, uh, some sort of an impression on you? Um, I, I imagine that they did with, uh, with other Japanese adults that came to the house. We didn't really stick around to, uh, to listen to their conversations when they were when it

00:27:56.670 - 00:28:11.410

was all a Japanese for one thing. But um, if you had to weigh uh the sources of your uh early experience in terms of your appraisal of what was happening in your life, what was happening in the world, would you say you were influenced more by

00:28:11.410 - 00:28:36.469

books or by experience? I would say more about books probably. Um This isn't a childhood you're talking about let's say your grade school period because I, I was always uh. I was always studying and reading and, and, uh, in, in fact, uh. We, uh, I, I

00:28:36.469 - 00:28:55.890

feel I, I, I live sort of a sheltered life. I really didn't know too much about what was, what was happening and uh what other countries only through reading about geography. I remember my parents talking about bandits in China and I imagine they were referring to

00:28:55.890 - 00:29:14.479

uh communists, but uh. Aside from that, no, I don't. As I said, we sort of took our parents for granted as parents and we didn't really think of them as individuals in there. All right, I remember that after I got to college and I was um.

00:29:15.280 - 00:29:31.589

I joined the YWCA. My mother, for instance, was very happy because she hadn't been able to give me any kind of sex orientation. Uh, she was, she was probably a little embarrassed for one thing, and secondly with the language barrier and so forth, so she felt,

00:29:31.630 - 00:29:55.000

well, maybe I'll learn something. Yeah, well, in high school now, uh, were there any dramatic changes in your life when you entered high school? No, just studied some more or just continuous, that's you at all active politically or socially in high school? What school did you

00:29:55.000 - 00:30:16.030

go to? I went to Oakland High School when it was still the old Oakland and then I went to McClymons. I graduated from McC um. My orientation was, uh, as a, as a student more than anything else. I didn't take part too much in athletic events

00:30:16.030 - 00:30:34.270

or other social activities. And um I guess I just thought that was, well, we knew we were going to college, my mother. She was going to insist that all of us go to college, so there was no question about that, and she just sort of pushed

00:30:34.270 - 00:30:45.250

us. She, she pushed us scholastically too. My mother did did you write at all in high school like in school journalism or any of that? No.