In elementary school, my brothers and I single-handedly integrated into that school system. So it was a very unusual, I didn’t realize how unusual at the time, but as I said, we were the only family of color, the only diverse people.

And so during my childhood, we were bullied on the playground. We were called names, we were called, “jap,” we were called, “chink,” and just had to endure it. But it was sort of a dual existence because on the one hand we were different, we stood out, and many of our friends had fathers who were World War II veterans. This was the 1950s and then into the ‘60s, so there was still a lot of post-war animosity toward Japan. And of course people didn’t differentiate between Japanese Americans and Japan.

So on the one hand we felt ostracized, but on the other hand, we did really well in school and in fact were socially quite popular. There was this sort of duality. And so, you know, I was in the honor society, I was very active in school events, student council, I was in the choir and band and many of the school activities. I was editor-in-chief of my yearbook my senior year, and even was elected to the homecoming court my senior year.

But the great irony was, although I was a homecoming princess, I didn’t have a date for the homecoming dance, because many of the boys were forbidden by their parents from dating me because I was Asian.