AFRICAN-AMERICAN AND JAPANESE-AMERICAN HISTORIES collide in this upcoming story. And as per usual, a Black woman is central to the telling. Mollie Wilson Murphy (or Molly, sources differ) grew up in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles. Born on January 6, 1926, Mollie lived on Boulder Street between Evergreen and Sloat, just north of the Evergreen Cemetery. She was a 1943 graduate of Roosevelt High School. World War II had begun.
Boyle Heights was one of the most diverse communities in Los Angeles at the time. While the majority population was Jewish, there were also Russian, Mexican, Black and Japanese residents as well. The lack of restrictive covenants – rules that said houses could only be sold to white people, basically – invited this diverse population.
In her oral history for the Japanese American National Museum Ms. Murphy recalled:
As a child, I vividly remember that on my street alone there were ten different ethnic families residing harmoniously together. My mother learned to cook from Jewish people, because she had not been taught by her own mother. It often amazed me how my mother could communicate with Mrs. Kokoris or Mrs. Akahoshi, because neither of them could speak English and my mother couldn’t speak Greek nor Japanese! It goes to show, that when it comes to mutual problems, you don’t always need words to express your thoughts.
As the War progressed, Mollie saw friends of hers being taken away to concentration camps. She did not understand how this could be happening to her classmates.
I had a lot of emotions, but one was the unfairness and stuff. That really got to me. But since I can’t do anything about that, I have to deal with whatever I can. They were still my friends. So yeah, I felt… You know, you’re asking me how I felt forty-some-odd-years ago. I can’t honestly tell you, because I can’t remember. But there was pain, and there was a feeling of… See, I have to always think, if they can do it to them, they can do it to me, too. So that’s always in the back of your mind. And from then on, they seemed to be doing okay from their letters, so you make the best of it.
Mollie Wilson decided to stay in touch with some of the girls she knew through letter-writing. She even sent care packages sometimes. In fact, African-American families were known to travel to the concentration camps to deliver items for their Japanese neighbors and friends. If you go to the Densho Digital Repository’s Mollie Wilson Murphy Collection you can read so many letters sent by Mollie’s friends from the camps. Unfortunately there are none in the collection written by Mollie *to* her friends.
This is an envelope that contained one of those letters, from a friend since elementary school, Mary Murakami. (Notice how she had to scratch out her home address and include the camp address instead).
And here’s a transcript of one letter from Mary, courtesy of the Japanese American National Museum: (Mollie donated her papers to the Museum so they could have all these artifacts as a part of their story telling project):
And here’s an old scrap book page of Mollie’s with photos of Mary and Mollie, date unknown.
I’m also including a letter from another friend to Mollie. There is something so typical-teen in these words written within such terrible conditions. It’s just girlfriends talking about life, even as we hear about the camp’s cooking and the cold Arizona nights.
Once the War was over and some of the students had returned, Mollie ended up delivering their high school diplomas to them. Although they were not permitted to return to the West Coast during the War, some Japanese American students who met specific requirements were allowed to leave the camps to work or attend school elsewhere. Others received a kind of education in the camps.
One of Mollie’s friends, Sandi, sent her a postcard from Oberlin College in 1944. This is a picture of Sandi wearing her Roosevelt High School letter sweater. She is standing at the end of the football field at the Granada (Amache) Incarceration Camp.
Mollie, herself, ended up graduating from the University of California, Los Angeles, and becoming a Spanish teacher. She remained friends with many of her Japanese-American classmates long after World War II. There is not a lot written about Mollie herself, which is unfortunately typical when it comes to the history of African-American women. There is a full oral history available but it must be listened to in person. And that is now on my to-do list.
Mollie passed away at the age of 88 on August 23, 2014. Her generosity and forethought in keeping, and then donating, her papers makes her an incredibly important historical figure in Los Angeles’ Great Migration Era.
POSTSCRIPT: There is another historical connection between these two cultures, the fact that African Americans moved into many of the homes left abandoned by the Japanese internment. World War II brought incarceration for the Japanese Americans while at the same time being a major moment in the Great Migration — that exodus of African Americans from the American South. Defense work was opening up to Blacks and women and Los Angeles was a center of this industry. Because of the prevalence of racial covenants, most of these Black workers and their families did not have many choices as to where to live. But the Little Tokyo neighborhood was open – due to the incarceration of the majority of its residents – and so African Americans flocked there, turning it into a vibrant Black community. The area became known as Bronzeville. According to the Densho Archive, about 80,000 people ended up moving into that neighborhood that initially housed more like 30,000. Overcrowding and all that comes with that eventually ensued.
After the War, when some of the Japanese families returned, they of course hoped to be back in their homes. But the neighborhood had changed and for some of them their dreams of resuming the life they had left would not come to fruition. (This occurred for myriad reasons worthy of research, if you are so inclined). Notably, an interracial activist movement sprung out of this historical moment, and for some relationships would be forever forged between African Americans and Japanese Americans. And yet, of course, there was also resistance to this collective organizing, from inside and outside of these communities.
There is so much to the history of African Americans and Japanese Americans in this country. Suffice it to say it has been very complicated at times, and yet quite often these two groups have been in solidarity born of shared struggle. See the Densho Archive’s page, “Intersections of Black and Japanese American History: From Bronzeville to Black Lives Matter” for a wonderful overview and lots of resources for further research.
Keep wondering!