<Begin Segment 7>

BK: As you talk about, then, growing up, did your parents ever stress learning the Japanese language, or...

MH: No. That's one thing I've... well, they did to my sister, because she was older, and they sent her to Seattle to go to Japanese school. But the rest of us, they didn't seem to stress it. Mother spoke very bad English, but we knew what she was saying, and I would have to help her when we'd go to the grocery store, because I could read. But actually they never really pushed us to learn. And then the culture, too, I was very -- now that I've grown up, I wished I'd known more about the Japanese culture.

BK: But, so growing up, did your mother speak to you in...

MH: Japanese.

BK: Oh, in Japanese?

MH: Uh-huh.

BK: And then you responded?

MH: In English. And she always sent us to Japanese, to a Christian church, wherever we lived. I'd wake up in the morning on Sunday, and she'd have my shoes polished and my clothes laid out. We'd all go to a Christian church of some sort. And then, I find out when we went to camp, she was a Buddhist. [Laughs]

BK: But there probably weren't the Buddhist churches there at that time.

MH: No, no. I think now it's funny she never mentioned it, although we did have a little hotokesama that she kept.

BK: Was your father the same? Did he speak to you also, in Japanese, and you responded in English?

MH: My dad could speak English and he could read. So a lot of things he would speak to us in English. Of course, sometimes he'd speak to us in Japanese, too, but Dad could do both, so...

BK: Well, that's, that's very... how did he learn? How did he learn to read?

MH: I don't know. When he came to this country, I think, from what I gather, that he must have done a little housework somewhere, where he learned some. Because he traveled, being a bachelor, I think he went to different places to work, and I think he took whatever he could. Because I can't imagine him working in a restaurant, because my growing up time, I never seen my dad cook anything. [Laughs]

BK: [Laughs] So, when you reflect back on your life in Eastern Washington, it was really one that was fairly happy and without any real incidences?

MH: No, I consider us really lucky, because all the schools we went to, there weren't any but us. I mean, in Rock Island, we were the only ones, my brother and I. When we went to Sunnyslope, we lived two doors from the school. And that one had, was just the same, they had up to the eighth grade in the same school, it was only two little buildings, and we were the only ones. Actually, there they didn't make us feel uncomfortable. I think I felt more uncomfortable when I came to Seattle.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.