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Note: Gregory A. Prince, a member of Dialogue's board of editors, conducted this interview with Chieko N. Okazaki on November 15, 2005, in her home in Salt Lake City. In addition to her career as an elementary school teacher and principal, she was the first non-Caucasian to serve on any LDS general board (Young Women's Mutual Improvement Association, 1962- 71) and is the first woman to serve on the general level of all three LDS women's auxiliaries. After serving on the Primary General Board, 1988-90, she went directly from that calling to first counselor in the Relief Society presidency (March 31, 1990-April 5, 1997). She died on August 1, 2011, in Salt Lake City of congestive heart failure.
Chieko Okazaki: Inmy meetings with the young women or with the Relief Society women, I'm often really surprised that they do not feel that they can function as women in the Church-not all of them, of course, but many of those who come to me and talk to me. I just keep wondering, "How did they get to that point of feeling like they were not worth anything in the Church?"
Greg Prince: Did you feel that way when you were younger?
Chieko Okazaki: No, not at all! I guess it was because I was raised by my parents, who were really raised by their grandparents, saying that I had a contribution to make in this world. My dad andmy mom-we were sort of on the far side of the track, as far as financial things were concerned. My dad was a plantation worker. I know he only made about $200 a month. At that time, in the Japanese way of life, the oldest son always had to give his money to the parents, and then his parents would give him an allowance for his family. So I just knew, from my earliest childhood, that this was how things would be as long as my grandparents were there. Even as a child, I noticed that.
But my parents told me, "You are not going to have this life. You are going to the university and you are going to become somebody, and you are going to have another way of life, and not this plantation way...