JAPANESE SCHOOL CHILDREN IN CALIFORNIA.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8392, 4 April 1907, Page 3

JAPANESE SCHOOL CHILDREN IN CALIFORNIA.

THE MORAL QUESTION, „ Frank Mukai, the Japanese school-boy-attending the Mill Valley School, who was arrested by the Federal Authorities for mailing an indecent letter to little Marie Havelock, also a pupil in the school, has been released from the Alameda County jail on one thousand dollars bail, furnished by his employer, Dr. Carl Rem, says the California Examiner of recent date. Mukai, with characteristic impudence, returned to Mill Valley, and re-entered the employ of Dr. Renz, and his wife. His return to Mill Valley was the occasion of rejoicing among his fellow Nipponese, who had all returned to the school, but great indignation was expressed by the citizens of the town. Principal F. Houch declared in no uncertain tones that the boy should not be allowed to return to the schoolroom, no matter what the Federal, ♦officials might do. If Mukai' is not punished for sending an unprintable letter to an innocent girl he will at least ,be kept from further contaminating American girlhood in the school. So Mukai will not go back and be a school boy, even, though Dr Carl Renz arid his wife have taken him back as a servant in their home. The other Japanese boys were in the schoolroom as' usual yesterday, studying hard,minding their teachers, polite and obsequitous, but capable, .according to their own admissions, of doing the same thing that Mukai did; for they say "those things are not wrong in Japan," and they won-; der why all the fuss is being made of ' a little letter sent by a Mongolian to | debauch the mind of a 14 year-old i girl. | were many expressions , freely given in the Mill Valley cominunity yesterday by.those who are incensed at the rule which forces I their children and their neighbours' ' ,~4 to sit beaide Japanese adults in Ihe'schoolrbotn, School. Trustee Oscar C. Capplemann of the Mill Valley Schools declared it his opinion that the mixing of the adult Japanese with young white children is radically wrong and should not be tolerated. A, Brizzolara,. a prominent merchant of San Francisco, who lives in San Anselmo, expressed himself as being vigorously opposed to a continuance of the miking -of the two races in the schoolrooms of this country. He pointed out the fact that the offence of Mukai was not an isolated one. It showed, he said, in the moral standards of Mukai a standard so low that it prevented Mukai's Japanese associates from seeing or understanding the villainy of his crime! Brizzolara has had an unpleasant experience in his own family through the mingling of the Japanese and white children. His children, more than a year ago, while attending the San Anselmo public school, became infected with trachoma con-' tracted from a Japanese "schoolboy." Investigation proved that the boy brought the disease from where Mukai and the others bring their morals, Japan. Brizzlara spent hundreds of dollars before his children were well. < • .■ . ''Still," Says Brizzolara, "it was better/than moral contamination that doctors cannot cure." J. Wickman, of the San Rafael ' Board of Education, also declared against the mingling of Japanese and white children at school. And all through the valleys of the Marin .County the sentiment is rife and growing.