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September 2001

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"A LISTSERV list for discussions pertaining to New York State history." <[log in to unmask]>
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"Roy, Nora" <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Tue, 25 Sep 2001 08:45:26 -0500
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                I don't know if this is of interest, but maybe...
                My parents were married in Oneida, NY, at the end of 1939.
After Pearl Harbor they took in a young Japanese-American woman.  She lived
with them for quite a long time. In those days, and in upstate NY, Japanese
Americans would have been interned somewhere over on the north side of
Oneida Lake, unless they stayed with a sponsoring family, as the young woman
did.  She and my parents became friends and stayed in touch after the war.
She eventually moved to California, married, and had children.  She and my
mother exchanged news and Christmas cards every year until my mother died
many years ago.  Shortly after the war we began to receive an English
language children's magazine from Japan.  I loved the stories and images,
although I forget the name of the magazine.  I think the subscription was a
gift from my parents' Japanese American friend.
                I was born after the war, so I am just remembering things my
mother told me, and I remember seeing informal pictures of them with the
young woman.  I think the experience was very good for all three of them.
My parents instilled in me and my sisters an appreciation and respect for
people whose cultures or ethnicities are different from ours, even though we
grew up in a community that was very homogeneous.
                Nora Leonard Roy
                (originally from Oneida)

                                -----Original Message-----
                                From:   [log in to unmask]
[SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
                                Sent:   Monday, September 24, 2001 3:03 PM
                                To:     [log in to unmask]
                                Subject:        Re: 12/7/1941 in New York
City

                        In a message dated 9/24/01 2:43:00 PM,
[log in to unmask] writes:

                        << The news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor
came to New York on Sunday
                        afternoon, December 7th.  >>

                        On that day, I was 9 years old and living in
Brooklyn.  A neighbor, a Russian
                        immigrant had taken his son and I down to City Hall
Park in Manhattan where
                        we fed  pigeons....probably just a Sunday outing.  I
just remember getting
                        home and hearing the bad news from my
parents.....somehow 3 o'clock rings a
                        bell.

                        I also remember that the air raid wardens were not
too well liked because of
                        their so-called abuse of power when they came around
at night to enforce the
                        "blackout" rules.

                        It wasn't until many years later that I learned
about the Japanese internment
                        camps, but only on the west coast. Here in NY there
was more concern about
                        the Nazi U-boats spotted in our area.  While it was
true that the Japanese
                        were villified by Hollywood  (the movies) showing
their heinous acts, German
                        nationals living in the US were worried about their
status and were changing
                        their surnames, for discrimination reasons.

                        Anyway, it is a different world now and because
there is no curtailment of
                        the immigration flow, we are now in big trouble.

                        Eileen

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