<Begin Segment 16>

MA: So you said you've lived in, you've lived in Spokane your whole life, right?

MT: Uh-huh.

MA: What are the changes that you see in the Japanese American community, I guess, over the years and then now? What are some of the biggest changes? I mean, you said that they have kind of dispersed, but are there other things?

MT: Well, we're all, my age, we were the children at the beginning there, and now I'm near the end of my lifespan. And you look back and let's see, what do I think? Yeah, I'm proud of the city, our Spokane, I really am. Because they produced real good kids, really. And try to find a bad one, it's hard, really. Isn't that right, Kazue? It's very hard to find one that you'd say that was really bad. And they all did well.

MA: Why do you think that is? Why do you think that your generation and then the Sanseis just did so well?

MT: Well, discipline. I definitely say that we were disciplined the way that the Isseis felt that we should act, and they kept us pretty close together. I don't know why we didn't break into the hakujin -- well, they weren't ready for us either. But it's discipline and what they taught us, we conveyed. Like my boy, my young boy was a paper boy. And I used to tell him over and over, I says, "Remember, if there were a hundred boys and you were one Japanese boy there and somebody threw a rock and broke the window, they wouldn't remember any of those ninety-nine boys, but they'll know darn well that there was a Japanese boy there." In other words, you've got to behave accordingly, and when you hurt, if you hurt the family, if you do something bad, you hurt the family and our reputation and everything. But not only that, the city will be ashamed of you, and it'll go all the way down the United States, down to California, I told my boys. Especially him, Roddy. [Laughs] He was always sick, but then he's a musician. But I wanted him to understand that, and I told the others that... haji. You know haji? What do you say, haji?

KY: Shame. Don't bring shame.

MT: Shame, don't bring shame. Don't bring shame. My mother used to tell me every time I left the house, "Don't bring shame to the house." Pounded it in here. [Laughs] That's why we, I try, in my house, I may be screaming all the time, but it was one of those things that I was trying to get them to be sure and to be an example to the other people. You've just got to be good. Some of the other people, they have no respect for anybody. And that's another thing they made you do, is respect the emperor, and that's not bad.

MA: Respect, what was that?

MT: Respect the emperor and learn that certain, you respect people and their stuff and whatever. Then you should be pretty well on your way to not stealing, you know. You at least respect their stuff so you don't want them to do it to you. That, right now, that's all there is going on. But the Japanese are pretty good staying out of trouble in our town.

MA: And you feel like that has a lot to do with what the Issei taught you?

MT: Issei taught. I don't think, I know. If they hadn't pounded it into our... and at kokogakko, at our Japanese school, they would tell us.

MA: The same thing?

MT: Uh-huh. And you know, we had to stand at attention when the opened up the emperor's message, and that's all the same, respect. Well, yeah, Bush being like he is, it's hard. And it's really, he's showing what you could get away with, and everybody's learning well how to get away with tainting the words a little bit this way, and it sounds good, you know. Too bad.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.