<Begin Segment 7>

TI: Let's talk about your childhood memories in terms of play. Growing up before the war, do you have some childhood memories of some of the play you did, or activities?

JN: Well, riding, somehow I recall my first tricycle, my first bicycle. And the reason I say I remember is in those days, I was the first in the family to get a tricycle, bicycle. Nobody else had one. It was a big thing to get one in those days.

TI: So you had six older siblings, and they never got a bicycle or a tricycle?

JN: No, no.

TI: And how would you know you were the first one? Did they tell you? [Laughs]

JN: Oh, yeah. My older brothers used to say, "You get everything." Yeah, I was getting everything. I knew that and they let me know early on.

TI: Now, did you do much with your older brothers?

JN: Later on I did. When I was young... well, of course, when I was young, when I was about... gee, how old I don't recall. But I must have been five, six years old when two of my brothers who were right above me went to Japan, right? That left two older brothers who were too old for me to play with. So I only had my mother, really, at that point.

TI: So tell me why, how they chose the two little brothers. I mean, you have two older sisters, then you have the next two brothers, and they stayed in Hawaii, then they have the next two brothers, they went. Do you know why they did that?

JN: I have no idea. I have no idea. The grandparents, two oldest sisters, and those two boys. Why those six, I have no idea.

TI: I wonder if it's because they wanted, probably, the oldest son, they wanted to keep in Hawaii, maybe? But I was just curious why they did that pattern.

JN: I'm guessing, though, he was, expected all of us to go back to Japan. But why he had felt they had to go first, I'm not sure. It may be that he wanted my oldest brother to first graduate from high school, maybe, McKinley High School. He was going to McKinley. He was almost ready to graduate when the war started.

TI: Now, how did you know that eventually your father wanted everyone to go to Japan? Did you talk about it?

JN: Not really. I'm just, I don't know. It's just in my head, somewhere along the line, the impression I had. But I don't recall anybody saying that. A lot of the information that I got, I got from my sister Sumiko. She was, became the closest thing to my mother after my mother passed away. She was in Japan all that time. She was a character herself. She didn't say much, but she was strict as hell, and she was having problems trying to control the rest of the boys in the family. Because the boys don't listen to her and she couldn't do much because they'd just run out of the house and say, "Go to hell," and that kind of stuff. And Jitsu was only a few years younger, he says, "Don't tell me what to do." So anyway, she had a hard time. But she was the closest thing to being the matriarch of the family.

TI: Okay. Before the war broke out, you did go to school. Can you tell me which school you went to and what that was like?

JN: I was, I think I was going to Waialae elementary school, I'm not sure what grade, second grade or whatever, is when the war broke out. And then we went to camp. And at camp, it was... I'm not even sure if we had an English school in Arkansas.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright ©2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.