<Begin Segment 17>

AI: Well, before we leave those high school years I wanted to ask you also, there was a period there where I understand that you were trying to find out more about what happened during World War II and the camps, and that you asked your parents about it?

RS: Right. I remember asking my father, once, "What was that thing we experienced in camp?" I remember even putting it that way. And my father just went into this rage, and, because I think he felt that we had passed that point of even bringing it up any longer, that we had not talked about it long enough that it should have disappeared completely from our collective memories. And I just remember how upset he got from me bringing it up and saying, "We don't need to talk about that. We want, we're trying to forget it, don't ever bring it up again." And that was it. That was it. And he was so emphatic that I never did bring it up again, despite the fact that... I think I was in high school at the time that this happened. And it probably wasn't until reparations in the late '70s that we were able to talk about it again. But of course he had to sort of get permission. He had to make sure that other people were talking about it before he would talk about it.

AI: So, at that time, when he had such a negative reaction to your question, do you recall what your sort of response was, or how you felt about it?

RS: Well, it's like most things, I just sort of accepted it. I mean, I had my own sense as to why he was doing that, that it was so painful and so negative. I couldn't really understand why he wouldn't talk about it for that reason, but I think I understood that he felt that if he didn't talk about it, it would eventually go away. But that's not the way that my generation dealt with things like that. I mean, we had a little bit more of a sense that one might be able to talk it out. And so that was a clear, sort of marking that the way the Issei dealt with things were quite different than the way Sanseis dealt with things.

And just sort of overall, my father and I did not have a very good relationship. And he would be very upset if he could hear me saying that right now, because I think the older he got, the better he thought our relationship was, because I tried talking to him later on in life with a certain amount of regretfulness that his relationship and mine could have been better. He didn't know what I was talking about. He can't remember those times that, some of those dinner arguments that we had that were just unbelievable. At least, if I was exaggerating, I certainly was feeling that. Boy, I remember slamming my fist down at the table and knocking everybody's food off the dinner, off the dinner table and just not talking to him for a month, not saying one word to him for a month. And they were horrific. And again, I think at the basis of that was the basic difference between the Nisei and Sansei and I felt like I was experiencing an exaggerated form. I really felt like I had it worse than anybody else. So in many ways I sort of felt like I disliked my father more than other people were disliking their father. And I was convinced that he disliked me. And going back to, maybe, my disappointment of not fulfilling his... you know, the argument that we got in before I enrolled in college where he wanted to establish some kind of compromise as to what I would major in, and I told him I refused to go into medical school or prepare for medical school. I wanted to be an artist and his idea of compromising was for me to become a dentist. My idea for compromising was maybe to consider being an architect because that was something that sort of vaguely interested me. But as soon as he said dentist, forget it, I'm not compromising one bit, decided to go into commercial art. So that was something that was, I think, a real source of disappointment for him and I think he carried that for a long time and never really let go of that disappointment until I became a college professor. Where he could tell people that his son was a college professor. And to see how long he'd carry on that discussion without telling 'em what I was professing.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2003 Densho. All Rights Reserved.