Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: George Yoshida Interview
Narrator: George Yoshida
Interviewers: Alice Ito (primary), John Pai (secondary)
Location: Seattle, Washington
Date: February 18, 2002
Densho ID: denshovh-ygeorge-01-0007

<Begin Segment 7>

AI: Did you -- excuse me. But at the time that you were going to grade school at Bailey Gatzert, were you also going to Japanese school?

GY: Oh, yes. Yes, I did. Every day. After school -- it was something we hated, but it was part of our, the scene and expected of us. And next to my apartment, there was a series of other apartments, was Ishii Japanese School. Mr. and Mrs., Mr. and Mrs. Ishii were the proprietors and the teachers of the school. And very frugal surroundings, makeshift rooms, ordinary rooms where they may have had old kitchen table or dining room table with a few chairs. A small attendance, maybe four or five kids at the most in each level. We used the standard texts, reading texts from Japan, Book 1, 2, 3 up to 6 or whatever. We learned quite well, I thought -- reluctantly, of course.

And the other Japanese kids from outside the neighborhood, living away from our gang, would walk down past our school, down on their way to the other, the main Japanese School. And if we were up on the porch up there, hanging out, the kids going to the regular school would look at it -- schools, for some reason the old school -- the new school, I should say, the large school was called "Tip School." And when these kids would go to Tip School, they'd see us up there playing. They'd look up and say, "Ishii gakko. Boro gakko." And they shouted at us, and boro means, I guess, rickety. And that would sort of get us really uptight and angry. And, and one of the Kato sisters, who lived right across the street, just told me the story after all these years. This is sixty, seventy years, well, maybe sixty years after the experience. Said, "Yeah, I remember that. That was -- got angry when they called us boro gakko." And she remembers going, was just, at that time to a relative, a friend of hers, who used to be one of these people who used to call the school boro gakko, and she said, "I punched him in the nose, something, I was so angry." That was a cute story. Yeah. Boro gakko.

AI: Did you speak Japanese mainly with your parents?

GY: Oh, yeah.

AI: Was that your main communication?

GY: Yeah, I think that's probably natural of anyone coming from Spain or Mexico. I expect their primary language was their primary language, which is Japanese. And so they would speak to us in Japanese, and our response would be in Japanese, too, because that's what we heard as an infant growing up. Japanese, Japanese, Japanese. Of course, it didn't take long for us to hear other sounds, of course. And in school, we were -- as part of our Americanization and assimilation into American culture.

AI: Did your parents ever talk to you about be -- being American or being Japanese or were they concerned at all that you were growing up more American than Japanese?

GY: No, not at all. It's just sort of a natural process. I didn't recall at all their urging us to retain Japanese or to speak more, more or less of one language or the other or to be more Japanese or to be more American. I don't recall any of that.

AI: And you had two younger sisters? Is that right?

GY: Two younger sisters, yes. Masako was two years younger than I. And Toshiko two years younger than her, or four years younger than I, you know.

AI: Do you ever recall your parents talking about perhaps leaving the United States, going to Japan?

GY: Not at all. Not at all, no, no, not at all.

AI: And they were both Christian? Is that right?

GY: Yes, uh-huh.

AI: Before they came? What kind of religious upbringing did you have?

GY: Well, getting back to my father and mother, it was interesting that my father's father, my grandfather in Japan, in Saitama, would walk -- not walk -- not only walk, but ride his bicycle out in the countryside and read the Bible, which was in Japanese, of course, to whoever would listen to him. So my early start, in terms of my background, was very much Christianity.

And, of course, my uncle was a chaplain at Doshisha, so there's that bit. And so I had no inkling of what Buddhism might be. And so in the United States here, I went to the Congregational Church and continued going to Christian churches, which did not mean that I was a devout Christian, but nevertheless, that was my Sunday habit, going to church school or -- to yeah, church schools or to church services, yeah. Yeah.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2002 Densho. All Rights Reserved.