Gathering Places
Gathering Places
WE ASIAN-AMERICANS born in Hawaii have an easier road to self-discovery of ourselves and our ethnicity than do those on the mainland. Road to self-discovery
has interesting twists
and a few U-turnsI knew at an early age I was different. I was raised on a farm alongside Keehi Lagoon. My parents were illiterate farmers and spoke only Cantonese, my first language. When I was 5 my sisters dropped me off at Puuhale School. Going to school for the first time is traumatic today, but in 1935? But I did learn English at Puuhale -- and how to use my fists.
Thirteen years later I went to the University of Missouri with a dozen people from Hawaii and two dozen Chinese in a student body of 5,000. Those from Hawaii scattered and never ran around together. My crowd were the Chinese students in history and journalism, the Jewish kids from New York, white liberals and Democrats, the YMCA/YWCA group of conservative Christians, and ordinary farmers and workers like my father, except they were white.
The people in Columbia were hospitable. When I registered, the lady at the counter asked where I was from. "Hawaii." She said: "Foreign students and Missourians pay $75. All nonresidents $150." I did not protest and paid my $75. My landlady was a dear. She would bring bowls of rice pudding topped with raisins, saying, "You must miss your rice." I was grateful because I was often hungry.
The Jewish kids from New York were fun and often cooked at Hillel House on Saturdays. They welcomed me because I was sometimes the indispensable 10th reader required for prayers. The Methodist Church had supper on Sundays. The cost was 25 cents, but the ladies insisted that foreign students were guests.
The YMCA had an exchange program with the all-black Jefferson University, 30 miles away. We had supper, then discussed apartheid in South Africa. I had mixed emotions of being accepted in the white community and tried to be friendly and understanding with the blacks. At the cafeteria I noticed that the workers gave me better portions of food than my white companions.
Unfortunately, the black students from Jefferson could not be entertained at the all-white University of Missouri so we met at a professor's home. I joined the Congress on Racial Equality then did a sit-in at a soda fountain, which made many townspeople angry.
Two Chinese students came to me and said, "We agree with you that segregation is bad. You are an American and have every right to sit in. But the people here do not understand that, and you would cause trouble for us."
I said I understood and dropped out.
In 1953 I passed the Foreign Service examination but was not interviewed until 1955. When I was ushered into an interview, I faced a long table and five white men. After introductions, the first question was, "Mr. Lee, do you know what a Texas Leaguer is?"
"Yes, it is a fly ball which drops in between the outfield and infield for a hit." The interviewers perked up and we spent the next 10 minutes talking about baseball. Then, another asked who Maria Tallchief was. Fortunately, I had just seen the Native American ballerina dance in Swan Lake with the New York City Opera. We spent more minutes on Puccini, Mozart and Beethoven.
After waiting in another office for a few minutes, an official came to tell me I was the first person from Hawaii to have passed. "Mr. Lee, you are one of the very few who have passed a very difficult four-day exam. We know you are well educated and qualified, so we didn't have to ask you about American history and politics. But we had to know how well you can represent the American people and American life."
Years later, a local told me he had passed the written exam twice and been interviewed twice but was turned down. He thought it was racial discrimination.
I traveled on the S.S. Independence from New York to my first post in Europe, along with several other Foreign Service staff people and secretaries. They came from ordinary backgrounds like myself. In an animated discussion of maids, I said nothing since I had no experience until one of the girls said, "I hope we're not boring you; you must be used to dealing with maids."
"Not really," I said. "My mother once worked as a maid." That was a white lie because she never got paid for helping other women.
My years as a diplomat were fun. I learned to speak several foreign languages and lived in different cultures, from cosmopolitan Hamburg to Communist Zagreb and wartime Saigon. My experiences were overwhelmingly positive. Sometimes I encountered antipathy but never overt hate.
Yet I was regarded as being different and sometimes with curiosity. Kids in Spain would follow me and shout, "Filipino," recalling the Spanish rule of the Philippines; while those in Italy, where the 442nd Regimental Combat Team of Japanese Americans had fought, would call out "Yaponese."
After years abroad, I came home to Hawaii and felt comfortable being local. Yet when I got elected to the state Legislature, some of my colleagues in the House of Representatives thought I was from California. One or two thought I had come on a boat like an immigrant because I would sometimes converse in Cantonese.
A year ago, a union official who had attended Columbia University in New York even thought I was from New Jersey. No one believed I was from Kalihi and had learned my English at the Puuhale School.
Oh, well.
Sam Lee is a former state legislator from Mililani.