"Peace Empowers": The Testimony of Aki Kurose, a Woman of Color in the Pacific Northwest

Frontiers, 2001 by M, Gail

Relations with other teachers at Laurelhurst were at first tinged with racism, too. Kurose related:

When I first went there, one teacher came and said, "What are you?" And I said, "What do you mean, what am I?" And she says, "Well, who are you?" And I said, "I'm Aki Kurose." And she said, "Well, what are you?" And I said, "I'm a teacher." And she said, "Where did you come from?" And I said, "From Madrona." And she was getting furious with me, and she said, "No. You know what I mean, where did you come from?" So I said, "Oh, Martin Luther King School." And she said, "I'm asking you where you came from?" So I said, "Are you trying to ask my ethnicity?" I said, "I told you I'm from Madrona, I told you I'm from Martin Luther King School, you know...and you're still asking me where I came from." And she said, "Oh." And I said, "Are you wondering whether I'm Japanese, or Chinese? Well, I'm Japanese American." And she said, "Oh." And she walked away.

Later that year at the school Christmas party, another teacher asked Kurose if her husband was coming to the party. She told Kurose, "Our husbands were in the service, and so they won't feel comfortable if your husband comes." Kurose told the teacher that "My husband was in the service, too." Two other teachers joined in saying, "No, we mean the American army." Kurose added, "Well, my husband was also in the American army." "They couldn't quite understand that," she explained. Nearly four decades after World War II, the teachers still could not understand that Japanese Americans were Americans and that Kurose's husband had fought as an American in the American army. Not only were they ignorant of the history of valor of Japanese American women and men in the U.S. military in World War II, but they also held a racial assumption that an Asian-looking person could not be an American. When she told her husband about the incident he said, "Thank goodness! I don't want to go to a teacher's party anyway!"

Kurose faulted such ignorance on inadequate staff training in the school system. She stated: "I've complained a lot about how they really aren't teaching the teachers, or exposing them, or sharing them the beauty of a multicultural...education. And so I really like to emphasize that peace and cultural pluralism...should be...integrated into the whole curriculum. You're not getting a true education unless those things are considered." Kurose believed that teachers and staff, too, needed to have a multicultural education.

Kurose related how even young children had absorbed the racism of those around them. A child who had been assigned to Kurose's class told her, "I'm not supposed to have a Jap for a teacher.... My mom says I'm not supposed to be in this class." When the principal called his mother, she told him, "Oh, he wasn't supposed to say that out of home," but she added, "I really don't want him in her class," and she immediately withdrew her son from Kurose's classroom. Nevertheless, some of Kurose's greatest critics later became her strongest advocates. Three years after this incident, the same woman who withdrew her child from Kurose's class requested that her other son, who was not wanted by any of the other teachers, be assigned to Kurose's class because, the mother said, "He is so difficult, and I'm sure he could fit into your room because, you know, you're real nice to kids." And, indeed, the difficult child "just needed the special kind of attention, and he turned out very nicely," Kurose explained. Subsequently, his mother became one of Kurose's strongest supporters. One of the parents at Kurose's "trial" by parents later became one of her best friends and was part of the committee that built a peace garden at Laurelhurst Elementary School dedicated to Kurose after her retirement due illness in 1996. Over time, Laurelhurst parents nominated her for numerous other awards and honored her in many different ways.