<Begin Segment 24>

AI: Well, these are some interesting examples of how some, the life in Japan was quite different in a lot of ways.

MY: Yeah, I remember the language was very different. In Fukuoka.

TY: Yeah, well the Hakata-ben is --

MY: Yeah.

TY: Fukuoka-ben or whatever you call it.

MY: Then especially when I went to school, the language that, the Japanese that I, that we all learned from Mom was a Japanese of deference. That kind of Japanese you speak to your -- the only people that we spoke to, Japanese to was to our mom and to our Japanese school teacher. Right? Who else did we learn? We didn't speak Japanese to anybody else except maybe her, or Mom's friends who came to the house. And so that was the only kind of Japanese we knew. So when I went to school, I didn't know the kind of Japanese that you speak to your peers. Apparently the vocabulary is very different. So I started to speak to, when I opened my mouth, they all went, "Ha, ha, ha." They were all laughing. And so I stopped talking. [Laughs]

TY: That was hard, I bet. [Laughs]

MY: [Laughs] They, it was like, I wasn't quite sure -- at that time I didn't quite, I wasn't quite sure what was wrong. You know, I only figured it out years later, was that my language was saying, "Anata ikimasen ka," or some very polite form of Japanese that you don't normally speak to your classmates.

JY: Peers, and that --

MY: Yeah. And they all thought that was very quaint, I guess. And then I couldn't keep up with -- I think it was fifth grade -- keep up with chuugakko, or something. Jogakko?

TY: Jogakko. Because chuugakko is middle school, or...

MY: For boys?

TY: Yeah.

MY: And jogakko is for girls. The, I couldn't keep -- my Japanese, my Japanese school Japanese wasn't adequate at that time to, for the Japanese, and I couldn't keep up with them.

TY: Well, did you stay at one place long enough to go to school?

MY: Hakata.

TY: In Hakata?

MY: Yeah. And then Joe and Mom left. 'Cause I stayed there longer than... you were gone. And so I, and I, when I was in school -- and then the teacher, that was before Mom left, she told her that my Japanese wasn't adequate to keep -- I couldn't keep up with the class. So he said, but then he thought it would be a good thing for me to have this, the social intercourse with my, with the classmates, and to go out on the playground and things like that. And that I could sit in on the class. And then he tutored me every day, after school.

JY: What grade were you in?

MY: I was in about fifth or sixth grade. Or eleven, twelve years old?

TY: Oh, so we went when I was thirteen, you were twelve, and then, you were twelve years old.

MY: Yeah. So I was in sixth grade or something like that. So he was very, he was a very gentle young man.

JY: Understanding man.

MY: And so he kept me after school -- and then he, after school -- I don't know, he probably got paid. Don't you think?

JY: Yeah, I don't know.

MY: Because they had this agreement and then he would keep me after school and I had private Japanese lessons. And I don't remember how long that was. I was, I was, missed about a whole year of school, though. And then when I came back --

JY: You mean regular school.

MY: Uh-huh.

JY: Then did you get sent back? Or did you just press on?

MY: No, I just went to one more year of eighth grade when I came back, and then I graduated and went to high, to Cleveland High School.

<End Segment 24> - Copyright © 2002 Densho. All Rights Reserved.