<Begin Segment 9>

TI: And going to your family life, at home, what was the language spoken in the house?

TO: Mostly Japanese, yeah.

TI: So did, were your parents able to speak English?

TO: No. My father very, very little. He could say some swear words, but his English was very, very limited. My mother was, just didn't have any ability to speak any English.

TI: So as a child, you grew up learning or speaking Japanese.

TO: Definitely.

TI: And then when you went to school, how much English did you know when you went to school?

TO: Very little.

TI: So how was that for you, going to school?

TO: You know, I don't recall any real difficulties when I first went to school. All I remember is that the schoolteachers, the small, three-room schoolhouse, I think it was two, three teachers. But all three women teachers were very, very kindly ladies, real good teachers, very, very patient. And other than that, I don't recall any particular difficulties I was having because I couldn't speak English. Of course, my older sister was about two years ahead of me, so I'm sure she had some. Because for some reason, we started to speak English at home among ourselves. But that's, I don't recall any particular difficulties.

TI: And as you got older, you spoke more and more English.

TO: Yes.

TI: But you communicated with your parents in Japanese?

TO: Oh, yes, definitely.

TI: And I'm curious, did your parents ever talk to you about being Japanese and what that meant, to be Japanese?

TO: Oh, yeah, my father was pretty strong on that. You're Nihonjin, you got to be proud of being Japanese, don't bring shame to the family and all that stuff that typically, I think, the Issei laid on their Nisei kids, yeah. But my mother didn't. I'm sure some, in some subtle ways, she said things, did things and said things like that. But my father was pretty strong on that. He was real, I don't know what you call that, Japanese-Japanese, you know. And that showed during the Second World War, too.

TI: And so when you heard that from your dad, so it's almost like you're in the, almost two different worlds. If you go to school, it's a very American, sort of, culture and philosophy, and then your dad is more Japanese. I mean, how did you come to grips with that, these two different worlds in some ways?

TO: I guess when you're a kid, fifteen, sixteen, you don't think too much about those things. That's the way things were, and so I don't, I don't recall having to come to grips with that at that time. Of course, after the war broke out, then it was a different, totally different story. But during those days, I don't recall. And I think that the only... of course, all us Nisei, we were almost like a parent to our parents, because they couldn't speak the language, they didn't understand a lot of the culture and those things. So we were very responsible for them, which, of course, lasted all through our lives, or all through their lives, looking after them almost like a child.

TI: Well, can you recall, that's an interesting kind of issue. So can you recall an example as a teenager having to help your parents with something, whether it was a document or a meeting or something like that? Do you recall, can you give an example?

TO: Oh, yes. Whenever something like that came up, of course, we were very much involved in that. Explaining to them and trying to make them understand what was written and that type of thing. That was definitely something that we just, we didn't even think about it, it just became second nature, something we had to do. I'm sure that my, all my Nisei peers went through the same, same thing as what we did. But out in the country, we had no... my parents never had any close peers that they could just talk to. We had no telephones like they do today and they could call somebody. So there was a lot of depending on me and my older sister to do some of the things that needed to be done.

TI: Yeah, because probably even more so, in your case, because I think in the city, there were some Isseis who could speak English and so oftentimes the Issei would go to another Issei who could speak English and they would be the go-between. But in your case, it would really be the kids who had to do it.

TO: And our neighbors. The neighbors, Hiroshi, he was quite a bit older than we were, so we kind of asked him for advice, too. Of course, he was a Nisei, so he didn't know much more than we did, but at least we would ask.

TI: Now, do you recall any particular example, like a meeting, for instance, a specific meeting where you had to do this? Like maybe school or something?

TO: Not so much school because I don't think my parents were at all involved in our education. They just told us to study hard, and they didn't know what we were studying or anything like that. So no, I don't recall anything of that nature.

TI: Or possibly a certain type of document that you had to review from...

TO: I think, my father being older, and he was having health problems when we were quite young. And so a lot of those things we had to translate for him and take care of him. We had a hakujin doctor out there that my father couldn't understand, we had to explain to the doctor and those type of things we were involved in.

TI: Yeah, that's a good example.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.