<Begin Segment 36>

AI: Well, and you had other interesting incidents, too. You, in the late '70s, your lab had some visitors from Japan that came.

TY: Oh. [Laughs]

AI: And, please tell about what that led to.

TY: Well, we had, during that period, Japanese fisheries, scientists were really just sort of starting out then. And they been in fish business for many, many years. But fish diseases, and fish, the viral diseases and bacterial diseases, I think we were a little more advanced in the studies then, so they were sending people from Japan, I mean, just by the dozens. And they'd come, and they'd leave and then more come -- and back in 1968, I represented the U.S. government to the, to a meeting in Stockholm and I met lot of Japanese fishery scientists there. And one of them was Dr. Egusa who was the chairman of the fishery department in University of Tokyo. And he said, well -- this is 1968. He says, "Well, sometime in the near future I'd like to come over to Seattle to see your lab and stay with you couple weeks and see what you have and try to learn something from some of the material you have." So I said, "That'll be fine." So he came couple times and the incident that you're talking about, it was in 19... it was before 1979, it was about 1978 or in the mid-'70s, he finally came to Seattle and at that time, Don Amon, our virologist said he'd go pick him up because he knew him, too. And I said, "Oh, that's fine, why don't you do that?" And he went and picked him up at the airport and on the way back to the lab, Dr. Egusa, Tom, I mean Don asked Dr. Egusa, well, they told him, "Dr. Egusa, it must be nice at least talking to Tosh because he speaks Japanese." And Dr. Egusa said, "No, actually, he speaks Japanese but he speaks funny Japanese. He talks like a woman." [Laughs] Because of that, of course, because I learned my Japanese from my mother. That's how, the feminine Japanese is little bit, female Japanese is little bit different, much more polite than the, less idiom and things like that that the men use. So that was kind of, and Don thought that was very funny. [Laughs] But since then, Dr. Egusa is the one that invited me to some of the lectures, tours I had in Japan. The first one I went was in '79, for thirty-two days. And went to, gave a major lecture, keynote lecture at the conference of the Japanese Society of Fish Pathologists. And I gave a -- I was invited to give a keynote lecture at that time. And there was a funny incident that happened then too, but should I continue or...

AI: Yeah.

TY: Okay. [Laughs] Since I was invited by the Fish Pathology Society in Japan, I decided that in my introductory thing, I'll thank them in Japanese for inviting me, because I was gonna give my lecture in English and Dr. Egusa was going to translate for me. And so I wrote this introductory paragraph of thanking them for inviting me to Japan and, to give this lecture and I wrote that in English and I took it over to my mother's church, St. Peter's church here, right in this neighborhood, and Dr., I mean Reverend Nakayama, who is a Nisei who speaks Japanese very well, I asked him to translate it for me. And I wrote it out in romanji, and I memorized it very well, I thought. And when I finally got over there I gave my introductory paragraph in Japanese and right after I gave it Dr. Egusa said, "Wait a minute," and he translated that. [Laughs] And I asked him afterward, I said, "Gosh, why'd you do that?" And he said, "Well, because some of the Japanese you spoke, I don't think the younger students understood what you said." [Laughs] And I guess Reverend Nakayama also spoke effeminate Japanese and old Japanese.

AI: Right.

TY: Yeah.

AI: Yeah, for people who don't know that the --

TY: Some of the new Japanese is a lot different, and some of these -- I think like -- my mother said that, she went to Japan when she had the same problem. She said that she was talking about motion pictures, moving pictures, movies to some of her relatives and she said, used a terminology, I mean a word katsudoshashin, I don't know if you ever heard of that expression, but that was movie back in the old days, was, it's not, they don't call it katsudoshashin, anymore. They call it, oh boy, what did he say now, but the word is entirely different. So my way was, I think was it something like that and I think I must've said a lot of, used a lot of words that were antiquated and old.

AI: And old-fashioned speech.

TY: And old-fashioned.

<End Segment 36> - Copyright © 2002 Densho. All Rights Reserved.