Densho Digital Archive - Marion Tsutakawa Kanemoto Interview (denshovh-kmarion-01-0035)

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AI: Well, I would like to hear that, but before we get to your senior year --

MK: Oh, you do? Okay.

AI: -- I wanted to ask you a little bit more about this period where you were really trying to adjust to the situation. And here you were struggling with the schoolwork, and then in the meantime, your father was making this new house for you to live in.

MK: Right, right.

AI: And, I wanted to ask about how you felt yourself. You mentioned earlier that here you were American, and inside yourself feeling American, but, I'm wondering, how did you adjust to being in this very Japanese situation, especially the school and classmates and teachers?

MK: So, right. I always had to, I think, to be careful who I was talking to because, shortly after that I was beginning to see American people. So you know, it's like shifting, I mean, the roles.

AI: When you were just, say in 1944, early to mid-1944, still pretty much most of the Japanese school, the Japanese high school that you were in, and I'm wondering, did you ever get asked questions about what you thought about the war?

MK: No, I was never asked about that. And the teachers or the principal never interrogated me. Yeah, that is interesting.

AI: I was wondering if your family was suspected at all, because you had spent so much time in the United States, because you were born there and so forth, and whether you heard whether your mother or father were treated differently by some of the Japanese.

MK: Well, my father was very open and he kind of tried to meet the people that ran the city. And he was not a shy person, so, actually, during the war, war, I mean, I don't remember whether he was questioned or not. But however, when the occupation came in, my father became the best of friends with the police department and the city officials because they needed my father's help. Because as the occupation came in, in the country, no one spoke English. But my father was able to communicate with the occupation that came in and they, you know, they feared these Americans so much that my father was actually, he came and rescued them, and to remodel the ryokan so that the occupation forces could make quarters there to guard the border of Hiroshima and Okayama. The Australians took care of the Hiroshima side. So, they had to have the American side (...). And so my father helped the police force in many ways, that way.