<Begin Segment 14>

TI: So, we started off talking about the music a little bit and you got your first start within the Buddhist Church. Later on your brother purchased a clarinet for you and so you started playing. And so, this was for, in about junior high school.

MT: Yeah, uh-huh.

TI: Why don't you talk a little about the music and how that progressed?

MT: So I liked it because somehow made it perhaps it was following my mother, dad. I mean, music came very easy to me. And so I joined a band group in junior high school and we played at the different occasions in junior high school, but more so as I went into high school, I joined the band, but I joined the orchestra, also. And then as I did that I came closer to the hakujin people and classmates and went into opera and plays, school plays. And so I was very comfortable with the Caucasians as I went in from junior high school into high school because of the music. So I was fortunate that way. Like once a year, like where Puyallup Fair was a big thing, they'd have a Kent Day, an Auburn Day, a Tacoma Day and when the Kent Day all the school got out and the band played all day at the Puyallup Fair. But we played in a lot of band concerts in Seattle and Bremerton and Tacoma. So we traveled by bus and so I, as far as my relationship as a Nisei to the Caucasian, I believe I was very comfortable that way and very seldom ran into discrimination, although you know there's, I felt the discrimination... it wasn't all out to me but I still knew that I was a Japanese American.

TI: And you felt that more within the group or as you were traveling and other people saw you with the group?

MT: To a certain extent with the group that I was going to school with. But as I traveled and like we played at the University of Washington at the music concerts there, somehow being, well, when the war broke out we had a Japanese face and you still had that feeling... I had that feeling when I was still going to high school and going into the adult world, so...

TK: How did you deal with that kind of feeling when you, when you felt some of the differences? Do you remember that?

MT: Well, it wasn't a case of dealing with it, I think the fact that we, Japanese, we Nisei were on the quiet side and so if anything started to show up like that we didn't fight it or we didn't attempt to react to it or anything like that. So I think, actually, I feel that the fact that we were raised, our culture helped us overcome any kind of un-shown discrimination. So somehow we got by that way. And then the hakujin kids, if they felt there's anything coming on, they stuck right up with me and so I felt stronger that way, that I had somebody backing me up rather than to have to fight it or anything like that.

TK: In terms of your music, do you... you must have been very, very good in terms of taking up the musical instrument, clarinet and later saxophone, and perhaps, could you talk about why you think you were able to, to maybe have a proficiency in these two particular instruments?

MT: No, I think everything just fell into place as we moved into high school band, and orchestra, went into school plays and opera. It opened opportunities to participate as a... although I was Japanese American, I was able to fit in there and so it wasn't my proficiency in playing, it's just that it just worked out that a average musician that I was able to open doors to my life as a Nisei American into the hakujin shakai as far as school was concerned, so... and, no, I was just a plain clarinet/saxophone player.

TK: Okay, did you take any formal lessons or how, and how were you able to learn these pieces?

MT: Well, we took lessons at school.

TK: At school?

MT: The school had a music teacher and so, every day, or every other day we had music, band classes or orchestra classes, so that's all it took. We couldn't afford to take private lessons at all, 'cause the Depression was still following us right behind our --

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2003 Densho. All Rights Reserved.