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AI: Well, I think another change that happened, of course, is that when you were, when you moved up to Berto Hill, that you also were a little bit older by then, a young teenager, and I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit about school and some, your classmates, and how, and your friends there.

PB: Well, when we were in Des Moines, I met this girlfriend next door, her name was Florence Parks. And, of course, in those days, I guess they never had a Japanese living around there. And her mother was afraid that, well, I guess she just didn't know us, so she didn't want her daughter to play with us. But we, we went to school together, and we went to Sunday school. That's when we first got acquainted with church; we never went to church before. But we became real good friends, and the other children were all Caucasians, but they were kind of, the boys were kind of mean. They liked to take my books away, and they'd throw 'em in the ferns, and the ferns grew along the side of the road, and they'd throw rocks at us, and I did get injured at one time. But they were friendly in a way, but loved to tease and make fun of us and things like that. And yet, they were friendly. After we moved up on the hill, it was the same way; they liked to kind of fool around and tease us, but actually, they didn't really mean harm. But the teacher didn't like it, and he would get after them, and he'd really get after them, because he said we should all be treated alike.

AI: So, and tell me a little bit more about the, the church and the Sunday school. Your parents were not Christian, were they?

PB: No, they were Buddhist. Well, we started going to the Methodist church, and we also went to class after school to, about once a week we went to Christian meeting, you know, where we learned more about the church. They were really nice people; I remember Reverend Abbott, and he had several kids that were around our age, and they were real nice. And then this lady, Mrs. Clayton, I read more about her in some of the books about Des Moines, and I understand that she donated lot of things to the church. And the house she lived in, she, I think she left that to the church, and the organ she had. The house is still there, and it looks, still looks the same. She was very, very, very sweet to us, and she'd come and visit us, and give us a Bible, and always saying that someday we'd be treated just like everybody else, if we'd just go to Sunday school and we were God's children. She was always kissing us -- [laughs] -- which was kind of novel for us, because, you know, the Japanese people didn't do any kissing or anything like that. Mother thought it was unsanitary, and she said she didn't like that at all. She didn't approve of it. But she was very loving, and very, very nice.

AI: Well, what was your feeling or reaction when, when you were told things like this? That someday you would be treated like everybody else and that you would be accepted? Because at the same time, you were getting this kind of teasing, or even harassment by some of the other kids and other people in the area.

PB: Well, I don't think as a child, we never thought too much about it. We just went along, and went to school, and just never gave it a thought as racism or anything like that, because we didn't feel that on the Island, there were so many Japanese on the Island when we were going to school.

AI: On Vashon, you mean.

PB: Uh-huh. And when we moved to Des Moines, there were few, only a few Japanese, and by that time, we were speaking English quite well, and we were doing well in school, and just never gave it a thought as far as racism or anything like that.

AI: Well, I was wondering about whether your parents had ever talked to you much about being Nihonjin, or about being Japanese, especially after you had moved to Des Moines and were not around as many Japanese families anymore.

PB: No, they, they didn't. They didn't speak anything racially. The only thing was that we had, we should be proud. Proud of our race, proud of our heritage, and just do well in school, and do what the teacher told us. There was no bad feeling, and our neighbors were all very nice to us.

AI: And it sounds like you had some very nice experiences at the Sunday school.

PB: Yes.

AI: And with some of the church people.

PB: They were all very nice to us.

AI: Well, and tell me a little bit more about, also some of your activities as a child there in Des Moines, then up on Berto Hill also. Of course, you were very busy with the farm work, but what were some of the other things that, about your daily life?

PB: Well, we used to go to the neighbor's. There was a neighbor by the name of McDonalds, Mrs. McDonald was teaching us how to cook, because Mother didn't do any American cooking. And 'course, when we were going to school, we would be kinda embarrassed, because they would ask us what we had for breakfast. And the other kids always said, well, they had toast or they had eggs or something like that, and we usually had rice and miso soup for breakfast. [Laughs] So it was kind of embarrassing to me to say, "Well, I had miso soup for breakfast, and rice," because they'd think that was kind of unusual. But that was a typical Japanese breakfast. But then we gradually learned how to make American foods. And I was grateful to Mrs. McDonald because she taught us how to make cake, and she would take the leaves of the peppermint plant and put it on the bottom of the pan, and that would flavor the cake with a peppermint flavor. And she taught us how to make potato salad, and our neighbors taught us a lot of things. We learned to do American cooking, but my mother always thought that when we started cooking, our teeth started to deteriorate because we ate sugar, lot of sugar. That's why she always maintained that my older sister and I had good teeth, but the younger kids, their teeth were bad because they ate too many sweets.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.