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4A
December 23, 1944
Ever since I can remember, I have developed everything very slowly. I never felt easy about the other sex, and never knew anything about it until I was about twenty-five years old. Perhaps this was due to the way I was brought up not to associate with the other sex. Traditionally, the people of Japan are taught to look down on females. In the public schools, or any other place, from childhood on, we were forbidden to associate with the girls. I remember that in the public school there was a division made so that boys could not cross over to the girls' side. I never registered the existence of woman, because we were segregated from them physically, and naturally the woman problem never came into my mind.
It was rather difficult for me to adjust to a new angle after I came to the United States. I was still clinging to the ideas I had been taught, and it was rather difficult to get used to associating with the other sex. Even after being here some time, I felt awkward and any association naturally was a superficial one, because somehow at the bottom of my mind I regarded talking to a woman as difficult and shameful. I suppose all these reasons are why I was afraid for a long time about women, and I never really had anything to do with them. Perhaps shyness played the most important part in keeping me away. My contact with women was slowly developed, but by today I have the reverse of my former attitude, and not only that, I believe that women should have equal rights in every way.
I think all of this is due to my education, and I feel sorry for those people who are holding on to that tradition. I have found a number of Japanese-Americans, recently come from the West, who, I am afraid, although they have lived here just as long as I have, or were perhaps born in this country, still teaching the things I was taught