<Begin Segment 8>

TI: I want to go back now to when you were younger. When you were about four years old, you went to Japan, and I wanted to find out why you went to Japan when you were four?

HH: Well, my mother was always getting things from Japan from my grandmother, things that, every once in a while she would send us some things. And so my mother wanted to take -- at that time we only had my brother and myself -- but she was already pregnant, I guess. I didn't know that, but my sister Yaeko was born in Japan while we were there, and we were there about two and a half years or so. And at that time, we were always staying at my, my mother's side instead of my dad's side.

TI: So you stayed, so you, when you were about four, you and your older brother went with your mother to Japan for about two and a half years, and it's still not clear to me, so what, why did your mom, your mother want to go back to Japan?

HH: [Laughs] Well, she wanted to show off my brother and myself, I guess. But I do have a little recollection of where the place was and everything like that, which in those, when I was young, I thought it was a much larger place, more, bigger fields, the rice fields and all this, but it wasn't as large as I thought later on when I went after the war.

TI: So when you were in Japan, you lived with your mother's family, so that was your, your grandparents on your mother's side that you lived with?

HH: Yes.

TI: So what was that like? What was their house like?

HH: Well, I don't know for sure what that, my mother's side of the family, except for the immediate family. But I did meet their, her side of the family, but just very briefly, that's all. So I don't, I don't have too much recollection of the Okamoto family except for my uncles and aunts.

TI: Now, when you were at this age, was Japanese your primary language at this point?

HH: No, it wasn't, because we were not born in Japan, and we were only attending the schools. All the Japanese communities had a Japanese language school. I think the primary reason was that -- and we went also to the public school, but after school, about, from about four o'clock to about five-thirty or six, we had to go to Japanese language school.

TI: Yeah, but before we go there, but when you were younger, like at four, this was before you went to school. So in the home, your, you spoke Japanese to your mother and father?

HH: Yes, we spoke, but since we had to learn English also, we would kind of make it kind of like a pidgin Japanese-like. We would mix English words, pronounce it more like Japanese words, but that's the way we would talk. Most of the time we would talk Japanese, but more of the colloquialism of Japanese. In Japan, there's, different areas have different dialects.

TI: And then growing up, I'm still thinking of Tacoma when you're younger, before you went to Japan, like with your brother, do you recall whether or not you spoke Japanese or English with your brother, your older brother?

HH: Well, we would also mix, if we did mix, but we tried to use English more with our family.

TI: Because you realized that when you to school you would need to do English and things like that.

HH: Yes.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.