Category: Race

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Marlon Brando interview

https://youtu.be/F6Lm-plgObg

When I was a kid movies were my first exposure to photography and music. If you have ever looked at a picture I took, or heard a song I wrote, or listened to me play drums you heard or saw some fragment of artists like Pink Floyd, Allan Holdsworth, Miles Davis, or Marlon Brando in there. I first saw Marlon Brando in the Movie Apocalypse Now at the Cinedome Theater in Orange California with Chuck Lantz​ back in 1979 (or so). I became a fan of his acting and began to search out his movies. This is a long but interesting interview probably happened sometime after he won the academy award for The Godfather. It’s amazing that at one time (on television) two people could have a conversation like this (and as long as this).

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1950’s, Japanese American life post WWII, Mobile Home Park, Southern California

 

Japanese American post WWII California
Japanese American post WWII California

My dad told me this story a long time ago, about a place  I drive by on the way back from dropping my kids off for school.

My mom and dad met in Colorado and were married a few years later. Mom’s version was that she gave dad a ultimatum. I guess dad caved? He originally went to school for engineering but couldn’t hack the study and having-two-or-three-jobs-while-going-to-school-thing so he instead became a teacher. Dad’s first teaching job was in Minnesota. He loved the job, people, fishing, and hunting. Although mom met some nice people in Minnesota she wasn’t crazy about the weather and the bugs.

After a fews years of teaching in Minnesota dad got offered a job in California. So they drove their Airstream to California. They went to a mobile home park in Cypress off Lincoln ave., but were turned away. They were told “we don’t take your kind here”. This was during the 1950’s (World War II recently ended). Japanese American’s lived with this type of pre-judgement. So mom and dad drove east of this location to another mobile home park. The man at this park said he was full and suggest they go to the mobile home they had turned them away. They told him what happened and he said “I know the guy who runs that place, lets go together and talk to him”.

The man got my mom and dad into the mobile home park that previously turned them away. And wouldn’t you know in a short time they became best friends with the man who originally turned them away.