My Father Fought Fascists. My Brother Voted for One: A Family Divided by Politics

I love my brother. I just don’t know if I like him anymore.

We were raised by the same parents.
Not in the same circumstances.
Not in the same house.
Honestly, not even by the same version of them.

The differences weren’t subtle. They were built into our lives.

The Immigrant and the War Years

My dad was an immigrant. An illegal alien, actually. His German-born mother left rural Canada in the 1920s, put her two boys on a train, and moved to Los Angeles, where she ran their house as a boarding home to survive. He worked his ass off, and by thirteen, he was throwing papers for The L.A. Times to help support the family.

After becoming a citizen, he served in World War II. He never said much about it.

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 whose husbands were overseas. They saved scraps, went without, and did what they had to do to keep the lights on and the world turning. One small act at a time.

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 remembered sitting beside 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. Being the child of a widowed mother in 1920s Oklahoma meant you 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. There wasn’t 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 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. She carried both, caution and curiosity. Years later, she’d use language she learned as a child, words that made my stomach turn. She wasn’t proud of it. Some things you unlearn. Some things stay.

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, the kind of 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’ early climb toward success. The younger ones were raised at the motel, in the aftermath.

The motel was the kind of place where people paid by the week if they could, by the day if they had to, and sometimes by the hour. The carpets were worn, the paint peeled, and the regulars were people between jobs, women trying to make a few bucks, or a single mother with her kids.

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.

He rented Room #6 to a Hispanic family, two adults and two kids packed into a single room. They cooked on a hot plate, worked wherever they could, and paid what they were able.

At the time, I was embarrassed. I thought my dad was taking advantage of them, that we were somehow making their lives worse.

Now I see it differently. As small as it may have been, he gave them a roof when nobody else would. Another Hispanic family lived in a garage across the alley, and my parents never turned them in, even though it was illegal. I doubt my dad ever thought about checking their immigration status.

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.

For all their flaws, and there were plenty, my parents didn’t look away from suffering when it showed up at their doorstep.

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. But it still took some guts. It was a choice that mattered.

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 Parents, Same Family

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 ancestral history runs through us, even if we made very different meaning 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 impossible.

Somebody has to remember what they actually fought for.

And what we may be in danger of forgetting.

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.