<Begin Segment 7>

AI: I'm wondering if you remember any of your childhood time in Japan.

MY: I don't. I don't. And I, it's really strange because some people remember a time when they were three, you know, when they were children? And, and so then when I went to Japan when I was eleven -- was it ten or eleven? 1932 --

TY: I think I was thirteen.

MY: I was eleven. Okay.

TY: I was thirteen. I think you were eleven or twelve.

MY: 1935 -- yeah. Okay.

TY: '35.

MY: Yeah, I was twelve. I, I went back to Japan, and I saw my foster parents. And the story was that my foster father became very attached to me, and he used to carry me around, because the mother was busy with her child. Her own child was the same age. And they, and so my foster (father) took care of me. And he was the, the story they used, I used to hear was they used to onbu me, you know, had me on his back, and he would carry me all over town. And so when I went to Japan, my foster father just saw me, and, and he just fell apart. You know, that was just -- and I, I remember sitting, standing there, thinking -- staring at him and thinking, you know, I, there has to be some kind of a recollection, you know, of this man. And I, I remember standing there kind of scanning my brain to see if there was any glimmer of re-, of a --

TY: Recognition or --

MY: Yeah, recognition of this person. And I didn't remember anything, but part of the reas-, I think that the, the first memory that I have of coming to Japan -- of coming to the United States is that I was wearing a geta and -- and Japanese -- and so my parents said, "Oh, we have to buy her a pair of shoes." And I remember that. And then my mother told me -- and I, I guess I, she said, and the, and she said I said in this very -- I didn't open my mouth. You know, they didn't know whether I could speak yet or not. And I said, "Wataki wa, akakato ga yo ka?" you know, it's just a very, very country, country dialect. [Laughs] And my mother said, "My heart just -- oh, mo gakkari..." She said, "Oh, my goodness. This kid is, she's a little country bumpkin." [Laughs] And, and she said I was very dark. And she said I was trying -- she said, my mother said, "This is not the baby I left in Japan." And she said, "I remember looking to see if she had a, you had a kind of a birthmark on your neck, and, and I remember looking under your shirt, you know, under the dress to see if you had..." and she said, "Yeah, I guess it was the right child." [Laughs] But that was the only, thing about the shoes was the only thing that I remember. I said, "I remember that," and then my mama said, "Yeah. And then you said -- you just opened your mouth, and I thought, 'Oh, my gosh, she's a country hick.'" And so, and that was very quickly repaired. She's taught us very proper Japanese. She taught -- she spoke, I found out years, when we went back to Japan that she spoke Hakata-ben among her own family. And, and I -- but she taught us when she came to this country -- I don't know whether she learned the Tokyo-ben here, do you think, or she already knew it probably?

TY: Oh, I really don't know.

MY: That's a kind of a mystery to me.

TY: I wonder what kind of, well, what kind of Japanese -- did Dad, Dad speak Hakata-ben?

MY: I don't know.

JY: Could it be from school?

MY: Mom? Oh yeah. Maybe.

JY: When she was going to school then, you know, then they taught them proper Japanese in school.

MY: Japanese. Because she taught us very proper Japanese, Tokyo Japanese, what they call Tokyo-ben, which is very different from Hakata, Hakata-ben or the Kyushu --

JY: Yeah, because I don't even understand what you said. [Laughs]

MY: I know. And so, and so when I went back to Japan with her in 1935, I remember being met at the train station, you know. And we got off the train, and all these -- of course we had many relatives. They met us at the sta-, train station. They seemed to know all about me because my parents had sent pictures. And so my aunt and my cousins were kind of clustering around me. And then I heard this Hakata-, you know, the people speaking right behind me, and I didn't understand a word they were saying because it was just such a strange Japanese. And then the voice sounded like my mother's. So I remember looking back, you know, to see who was speaking, and it was indeed my mother. And, and I had never heard our mother speak like that ever in our whole lives. She was very, very careful, and -- but when I went back to Japan, as an adult, my rela-, I had, we have relatives in Tokyo and rela-, on my mother's side of the family and in Fukuoka. And so I -- you know, I was, of course landed Narita, and I was met by our relatives in Tokyo. And then once in a while, you know, I, I was talking to them in Japanese, and then they would -- with this peals of laughter, they said, "Ha, ha, ha, ha. She sounds just like her mother," because my mom spoke Tokyo-ben, language, but it just once in a while this dialect would kind of creep in. And, it was speech like that. And they thought that was very funny. But it was just -- it was very amusing. You know, the, either a class distinction or it was a very regional speech, Japanese speech, that is very different. But --

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