<Begin Segment 12>

TI: Now was there, like, a Buddhist church in Prince Rupert?

HS: There was a Buddhist church, but I don't remember it because we never did go to a Buddhist Church. There were Buddhists, though, and a Buddhist monk used to come there. But they don't, in those days, they didn't have, in Prince Rupert as far as I know, they did not have a Buddhist Church. Buddhists, Buddhism is not really a church, it's a way of life, sort of. And they would arrive, there used to be a Buddhist, Buddhist minister that would show up in Prince Rupert, and I remember him coming there. But there was also an Anglican minister, a Japanese Anglican used to come up from Vancouver. He used to come up, oh, how many times a year? About two or three times a year he would come up. Come up, his name was Mr., his name was Reverend Nakayama. Now, Reverend Nakayama's daughter is a girl by the name of Jo Kogawa who wrote a book called Obasan. And that's where the connection is.

TI: Oh, interesting, I didn't know that connection. Okay.

HS: Huh?

TI: I didn't realize it was that connection --

HS: Her father was, was an Anglican, his, was an Anglican minister.

TI: Well, in between, he comes two or three times a year, then who did the services...

HS: Well, it was done by these...

TI: These two women.

HS: Two women, Anglican. And for a while they had a young Japanese minister that came up and stayed up there, and would conduct -- but he stayed, I don't know how that worked, but he was there for a while.

TI: So on Sundays --

HS: Mainly it was Nakayama who would do the, what you call the missionary work, 'cause he would go up and down the coast. And he would go up through, through each of the, each of the fishing villages and conduct services there and talk to the Japanese people. And of course that would be the same thing with, the Buddhist minister would come up and he would do that. But there was no, as far as I know, there was no real Buddhist church, but there might have been a Buddhist gathering that would happen.

TI: So in thinking about the Anglican church, so as you got older, were there things like Sunday school that you...

HS: Oh, yeah, we had Sunday school there.

TI: And how many, how many kids would be...

HS: In Sunday school? Oh, there would be about twenty-five, thirty kids. There would be, and they also ran a kindergarten, the Anglican missionaries.

TI: So this is before they went to public school, they would have their own...

HS: Yeah, we had a Japanese...

TI: Japanese community.

HS: ...Japanese community type kindergarten. And I know that we had about, maybe about, in my group, there would be about ten, fifteen, well, more than that, maybe about, about, up to about twenty kids that would be in the kindergarten, that they would...

TI: Now, at that point, in kindergarten, did the kids -- because they were coming from the home -- did most of them mainly speak English, or were they all...

HS: Oh, they all spoke -- but they could all speak Japanese, just like I could, I, my first language was Japanese, and I had to learn English after that.

TI: So where did you learn English?

HS: There.

TI: In that kindergarten?

HS: Yeah, the kindergarten, and then we went to (elementary) school.

TI: So in some ways, that was kind of a prep to get you into the public schools. Teaching you English so that when you started --

HS: Oh, yeah. Teach you English, and you started, and I could still remember, well, my friends, all my friends then, at that time, like Harry and people that I associated with were my age, would all be speaking English, (...) I had arrived from Japan, so I was new. I was, so I was four, and then right away, a year after I arrived, I'm in kindergarten, so I'm five years old, and I was still speaking Japanese. And I still remember one time, there was an airplane came through, and I called it a hikoki. And everybody thought, what the hell am I saying? They were all laughing at me, saying, "What is it you're saying, Henry, what is it?" "That's an airplane." "That's an airplane," they said.

TI: So "hikoki" is the Japanese term for airplane?

HS: Airplane at that time.

TI: And so if, if there was a Japanese in Prince Rupert that wasn't part of the Anglican church, would they still go to that kindergarten?

HS: Some, I would think some of them would, too. And it was, Japanese religion is such a way that it's, it's a practical religion in that they, even the Buddhists would go. Even their parents may be Buddhist, but they would still send their, if they thought they were gonna get an education, a good education, they would send their kids to, kids to the Anglican kindergarten.

TI: And these two women taught the English classes, too?

HS: Oh, they taught they, they did, (and) they were conducting the services, they would have English classes for the mothers, not for us, no. We learned our English just amongst ourselves, and then eventually, when we went to school, we began to develop our vocabulary.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.