My Father Fought Fascists. My Brother Voted for One: A Family Divided by Politics
My parents, early on
I love my brother. I just don’t know if I like him.
We were raised by the same parents.
Not in the same circumstances.
Not in the same house.
Not even by the same version of them.
The Immigrant and the War Years
My dad was an immigrant. What people like my brother would call an “illegal alien.” He built a life here anyway. Without it, we wouldn’t be here.
In 1921, his German-born mother left her husband in rural Canada and came to Los Angeles with her two young boys. She turned their home into a boarding house to survive, and by thirteen, my dad was throwing papers for The L.A. Times to help support the family. On his first day of school, he showed up in knickers, perfectly normal where he came from, but humiliating in Los Angeles. He never forgot it.
He worked his ass off, became a citizen in 1937, then served in World War II.
While he was gone, my mom fed her four young children rabbit stew made with vegetables from the victory garden. She rented out rooms to other women with husbands who were overseas. They saved scraps, went without, and did what they had to do.
My Mother’s America
My mom grew up in Ponca City, Oklahoma, in a big Irish Catholic family at a time when the Klan had real power. Her father’s store was burned to the ground when she was young. She used to tell a story about sitting next to him in a wagon as he pointed out a family where she wasn’t welcome, even though she knew the little girls.
Her dad died not long after, leaving her mother to raise ten kids alone. She learned early how to read a room—who was safe, who wasn’t, what could be said out loud, what had to stay quiet.
There wasn’t much money, not much safety. But there was music. At family gatherings the carpet would be rolled up, fiddles would come out, and the little kids would fall asleep on piles of coats in the corner. Joy and fear lived together in the same house.
As a teenager, she’d sneak to the other side of town to hear live bands and dance, even if she wasn’t supposed to be there. Years later, she still used language she learned as a child, words that made my stomach turn.
From Brentwood to Pico Boulevard
My parents married in their 20s and worked their way up, from a modest house in Los Angeles to one in Brentwood. Then my dad got sick, and everything collapsed. They sold it all and bought a run-down motel on Pico and 11th, a place you didn’t brag about owning.
Same parents. Twenty-five years between the first and the last. The four older kids grew up during the war years and our parents’ climb toward success. The younger ones were raised at the motel, in the aftermath.
Worn carpets, peeling paint. People paid by the week if they could, by the day if they couldn’t. Sometimes by the hour.
Race, Class, and Quiet Choices
My dad kept a daily tally of rent due in red and rent paid in black. There was always more red than black, something my parents fought over on what felt like a nightly basis.
Across the street from the motel was Fred Tanaka’s car-repair shop. Fred, a survivor of Hiroshima, built a new life far from Japan, raising his kids and putting each one through college. He and my dad yacked almost every day. Two men who had seen too much, trying to make something decent out of what was left.
In Room #6 was a Hispanic family, with two adults and two kids packed into a single room. They cooked on a hot plate, worked wherever they could, and paid every week on time. Another Hispanic family lived in a garage across the alley, and my parents never turned them in, even though it was illegal.
They didn’t think about it in political terms. They saw whatever, or whoever was in front of them.
Small Acts That Still Mattered
They also bought an apartment building a few blocks away. My mom watered the yard almost every evening. Looking back, I think that was her therapy, even if she’d probably never call it that.
When a vacancy opened up, a young man named Earl applied. Renting to him wasn’t exactly an easy decision. He was the first Black person who had ever applied to live there. There was no red line we could see. But it existed.
In the end, Earl moved in and, for years, shared a living-room wall with our family. He was kind, engaging, funny as hell, and became part of our extended family. Renting to him wasn’t some grand moral stand. My mom was cautious and practical.
The Family Divide
For all the ways they tried to do right in the world, things were different at home. The same people who rented to Earl and traded stories with Fred also built a family system where the boys came first. Always.
It wasn’t subtle. My three brothers got the loans, the gifts, and the quiet help that let them start businesses and build wealth. My sisters and I got quiet expectations to look good, be self-reliant, and, for me, to be practical. We learned to worry about our weight, chase perfection, and not ask for too much.
After my parents died, the pattern didn’t end. It calcified. The money that was supposed to bind us as a family split us instead. Every unspoken resentment, every small favoritism, every patriarchy-soaked decision came out into the open.
It’s strange, realizing that the people who taught me to stand up for others never learned how to stand up for their daughters.
Different Versions of the Same Parents
The truth is, my older siblings grew up with different parents. They got the war years. The ration books, the scrap drives, and the mother who rented rooms to women and children whose husbands were fighting overseas.
My middle sister was her own story. Seven years separated her from the sibling above and the sibling below. She was essentially an only child by default. She started her life in Brentwood, then was uprooted to the motel and apartment when everything fell apart. That kind of shift marks you.
I was just a toddler when we moved down the socioeconomic ladder. The three youngest of us never knew life in Brentwood at all.
By the time we came along, our parents had already lived a few lifetimes. They had seen too much, built too much, and lost too much. I think they were just plain tired.
On the way to school, my dad took detours to the ocean, dropping us off late more often than not. I can’t count how many times we missed the Pledge of Allegiance or walked in halfway through it.
We all learned resilience and work ethic. But honestly? The lessons were uneven. We learned contradiction, how to cope when life got scary, and how not to depend too much on the adults around us.
What They Fought For
I don’t know if it’s possible for me to like my brother. I do know that I love him. That distinction matters.
We came from the same mother’s body. The same family history runs through us. But we didn’t live the same version of it.
Love, I’ve learned, doesn’t always require closeness or agreement. Sometimes it asks for limits. Sometimes it asks for space. Sometimes it asks you to let go of the version of connection you hoped for so you can keep breathing.
My parents weren’t perfect, far from it, but they knew the difference between right and wrong. They believed in decency, in honesty, in helping people when it would have been easier to look away.
They didn’t wave flags or call it patriotism. They just did what was right, because it needed doing.
What Was Passed Down
My oldest sister, who is a year older than my oldest brother, learned something different. She took me to protests when I was a kid. She talked to me about power, about war, and about what it meant to resist quietly and out loud. She is part of the reason I fight back and don’t give up.
So it isn’t just about the years when my siblings started their lives. It’s about what each of us learned to protect, and what we learned to ignore.
We were raised in the same family, but we did not inherit the same lessons.
I try to hold onto that, even when it feels completely impossible.
Because somebody has to remember what they actually fought for.
Disclaimer: Reading this blog isn’t the same as therapy. If you’re struggling, please reach out to a licensed mental health professional — you don’t have to do this alone.
