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GY: But getting back to relationship with, with Japanese, and Japanese, well, the family -- if you were close to the family, it's very intimate and warm. In Japan, there's a concept, tanin; means outsiders. And that means when you're on the train, you're with outsiders. You don't care how you behave to their, or what you do. You could be rude as heck. We talk about polite Japanese, but it's not like that in the big cities. Everyone is outsiders. We were outsiders, too, out there. And especially with four children because in Japan at the time -- well, even now, too, families were small. The kids were, at the most, maybe two at the most -- at the most, but mostly in one family, one child per family. And here is this strange group of people, talking this strange language, dressed differently. They would look at us, not look at us, especially on the trains. We were sitting there, and then kids were sitting next to, and all the people are looking. And it's, who are these strange-looking people, speaking strange language? And I don't know if they even knew we were speaking English or not. Dressed differently, behaving a little bit differently. And the kids really were unhappy and resented that. Oh, they're all staring at us, why are they staring at us, kind of thing. Others that -- this, like this incident once that -- in one of the department stores -- I think Japanese women, you know, women, just adore children. And it seems to be a national trait, I guess. And so Lian, the youngest at three years old, running around, she was, she had this raspy voice, cute, big eyes. And, and a lot of -- what's the word I want? No inhibitions at all. Just running all over the place. And one of these young salesladies would, knowing that we were not Japanese but figured out we were Japanese Americans, would sort of stop Lian and talk to -- and they wanted to practice English. "Hello." They said, "What is your name?" kind of thing, you know. And Lian, you know, "How old are you?" Lian would say, "Mittsu." [Laughs] And shock, kind of thing. So these little incidents about meeting -- East meets West or West, or West meets East.

And then the other thing is that in Japan at that time, there were very few -- certainly not in homes, there weren't any of these so-called Western seat -- toilet seats and all that. They were on the floor, flush on the floor level. I don't know if you're familiar with that. So it took a little squatting and athletic proficiencies to do whatever you need to do in the toilet. But the kids didn't like that. And they were smelly, too, because there was no, in our house -- in most houses at that time, they didn't have flush toilets, so the honey bucket -- it's, actually it's a big, looks like a, a oil tanker truck, kind of thing. Petroleum truck. But anyway, they sucked up the stuff. That was a pretty terrible experience because it, it mussed up this material and they'd throw it up there. (Toilets in Japanese homes in the '60s were mostly out-houses located inside the homes -- they were not flush toilets. "Honey buckets" were receptacles used years ago by individuals to remove the accumulated waste. In 1963, trucks similar to our petroleum delivery trucks came to remove the waste through the use of a vacuum-operated flexible tube leading from the collection base of the indoor toilet to the tank of the truck. This process resulted in a most disagreeable stench throughout most of the house. My 5-year-old daughter once remedied this situation with a clothespin on her nose!) Well, anyway, so whenever we had the opportunity, we'd go downtown and go to the big department store, they had a Japanese toilet and a Western toilet. So they'd look to find the Western toilet. "Hey, Mom, yeah, found it. We found the Western toilet. It's a good toilet." So that was a treasure hunt on weekends at department stores. [Laughs] Yeah, so East meets the West. West meets the East, yeah.

<End Segment 45> - Copyright © 2002 Densho. All Rights Reserved.