Discover Nikkei

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Discrimination faced in San Francisco (Japanese)

(Japanese) Upon arriving in San Francisco, we would go look for an apartment. But they wouldn’t rent us right away. They rejected us. I thought to myself then that they wouldn’t like to rent to black or Japanese people. When they saw us, they looked troubled and said no. When we talked on the phone, they would say O.K. So my husband and I would show up along with our two kids. When we got there, they would tell us different stories and reject us.

Luckily, my husband had a younger sister. So my sister-in-law and her husband had an apartment where we could live. Then after a while we moved into our own apartment.


California discrimination interpersonal relations postwar San Francisco United States World War II

Date: February 6, 2015

Location: California, US

Interviewer: Izumi Tanaka

Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum

Interviewee Bio

Terumi Hisamatsu Calloway was born in 1937 in Yokohama as the 5th of 10 children and grew up in the suburb of Tokyo during the war. She met her husband, Edward E. Calloway, who was a civilian engineer working at American military base in Tokyo and married him. In 1960, after having 2 children, Terumi moved to the U.S. with her family and settled in the Bay Area and had two more children. Later they moved to the Lompoc area where all of her 4 children - 2 girls and 2 boys - grew up. In 1977, they moved to Inglewood where she resides now. Terumi was widowed in 2009, and she currently works as a caregiver. (April 2016)

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