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AI: Well, let's back up a little bit before your -- those teenage years, and you had mentioned that some of your mother's reading was the Buddhist books. And could you tell me about the place of Buddhism in your life, in your family life and the religious upbringing that you got?

FY: I think, I think many Asians were influenced by Buddhism, which originated in India and to China and to other areas. It's hard to begin because it goes on, extend itself so far. Buddhism is, is a philosophy that says, "There is no good. There is no bad. Life is a continuous -- there is no beginning, there is no end." It describes each individual -- so-called good and bad -- China, in China, they call it yin and yang. This extremity will always be with us. And to find a happy medium, they call it the -- taking the middle path, as so-called considered ideal in the philosophy.

AI: Do you -- thinking back to your childhood, do you remember when you first starting -- started going to temple, or do you first remember early teachings about Buddhism as a child?

FY: No, I -- very little because most of the service and activities were in Japanese. No, I would say almost all of my understanding of Buddhism was from my mother. The activities among the Niseis -- this is in the '30s -- the Niseis in the cities were already active in sports, and they spoke -- how can I say? The, they, there was a language of the Nisei that we don't hear about now. I'm having difficulty even speaking English even now. Well, it used to be much worse. I couldn't pronounce, the word. "R's" were hard to pronounce. "Th's" were hard to pronounce. My vocabulary was very limited because my first language was Japanese because my, my parents were not able to speak English. "Can I go down on that road to school?" Because they were not able to speak or write English when I was going to school, if I played hooky or stayed home, I would have to write an excuse. And so I would write the excuse myself, and then I would see how my mother signed the passport, and I would forge her name. So I was very good at forging my mother and my father's name. It was very easy.

AI: Did you ever get caught doing that?

FY: No, no way because my mother and father couldn't read what I wrote anyway. [Laughs]

AI: And your teacher never suspected?

FY: Teacher never suspected.

AI: Well, now, you -- I think you also had mentioned that in connection with Buddhism that your family was Buddhist, and yet here you are, you're going to school, and you're finding out about other ways of doing things, and you have Caucasian classmates and others --

FY: Yes.

AI: -- who are not Buddhists, who are Christian. And can you tell me a little bit about that? For example, maybe the holidays, Christmas holidays.

FY: Well, like for instance, Christmas is another situation where in Japan or among Buddhists, it never existed. So I would come home and again tell my mother that in Christmas, we're supposed to have a tree. So we had, we lived in the foot of the forest, so it was easy. We'd just, I just went up in the woods and got the tree, made a stand for it, and we are supposed to decorate it. And in school -- you know, this was a period where everyone was pretty poor yet, so there were decoration that was made. And the teachers would have these scrap paper that were color, and they would cut it in strips and make a little ring and make a chain out of these paper -- make a paper chain, you might say. And then we would drape that over the trees. That was one form of decoration. We would cut shapes of flowers or something and then tie it on a little string and tie it on a limb. Later on... I can't remember whether it was at school where they had, they had these foils that they used to drape over the trees. Well, they would throw those out, so I would gather those. And so the next year, I would have those glittering foil to hang on the tree.

AI: Well, and of course, at that time, that was made out of real metal.

FY: Yes.

AI: That real metal foil...

FY: Well, no, they were thin, I think it could've been lead foil. I'm not sure. Yeah. But that's the way... and then later on, you know, my parent had -- like at first, we'd make little packages. That's our Christmas present. And later on, Dad would give us -- well, give me 50 cents. That would be my Christmas present. And I would go to, to the store and buy myself a checkerboard for 15 cents and -- or buy a yo-yo and things like that for a nickel, and wrap those up, and those would be my present. [Laughs]

AI: Well, speaking about stores, I think you had mentioned some memories about smells or odors.

FY: Oh, yes, yes. Looking back, stores -- at least most of us used to go to, there was a kind of a identity with each store. For instance, Luchi had a Italian supply store, and when you walk in there, you can automatically smell, instantly smell the cheese and -- primarily the cheese -- and other smells. If you go to the Japanese store, you walk in, and the floor are wooden slats, so worn, and then it's a little squeaky sound that the floor had. And they used to have these large containers with pickles. And they would have what they call takuan, radishes. They would have other pickles in these containers. So there was aroma there that you can identify right away. And if those aroma didn't exist, well, it couldn't be the Japanese store.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2001 Densho. All Rights Reserved.