<Begin Segment 3>

TI: Okay, so, so he decided at this point that he was interested in coming to America.

TA: Yes.

TI: And your parents or your grandparents didn't want that to happen.

TA: They didn't want it to happen. They wanted him to stay.

TI: And so he was pretty, pretty headstrong. Pretty willful in terms of...

TA: Definitely headstrong. [Laughs] It was, once he made up his mind, he usually stuck with it, yeah. And that's evident in a lot of things that he did.

TI: Did he have contacts in the United States to, to come to?

TA: Not really, except my uncle -- this is my, his older brother was here, Tokutaro was farming in, in Atwater. However, he had a Caucasian sponsor, and he sponsored and, to come to America to go to school. He wanted to go to school, he wanted to attend a college in the, in the United States. However, he spoke very little English. So as a result, he was about eighteen, he went to grammar school and quickly finished grammar school and then went to high school, and got enough confidence that he could go to college in the, and applied to UC -- I keep saying UC Davis, but the Farm School and got accepted.

TI: So the agricultural college that became UC Davis.

TA: Agriculture, yeah. Agriculture college.

CO: So he must have made it in before the cutoff, 1924 was the cutoff of immigration, so he must have come here before that.

TA: Yeah, he came before that. Because he graduated college 1918.

CO: Oh, okay.

TA: Yeah, and he finished in three years. So he, he did very well.

TI: So that is, because as, having English as a second language, he was able to, to graduate from high school and then college in three years.

TA: College, yes. In three years, yeah. He, he met his requirements and he graduated.

TI: Did he ever tell you how he learned English so quickly?

TA: Yup, yup, he sure did. Because when I had to learn Japanese -- [laughs] -- he says, "(Motomu)," he says, "read as much as you can, listen to the radio, and talk to people who speaks nothing but English." And so he lived with, with a Caucasian family. He had to speak English because that's the only way he could communicate with them. But he says, and he says, "Practice and study hard." He says, "It'll come."

TI: Oh, so that's funny. So when you had to really go to Japan, he said the opposite...

TA: He said just --

TI: Listen to Japanese radio, read as much, and...

TA: That's right. He says, "Study hard, practice, learn, listen, and talk to people who speak nothing but Japanese." So he just reversed it to me. He says it worked for him, it'll work for me. Well, for all of us, really.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.