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TI: Okay, so we're going to go to the second hour. And where we ended up the first hour was we were just talking about your time with Mrs. Brown and her six (children). And we had just, at that point, were just starting to talk about going back and living with your father and sister.

ST: Okay.

TI: And so let's talk about that. So what was it like going back and living with your father and sister?

ST: Well, you know, there was nothing really strange about it. I mean, you know, it wasn't a new experience because I had visited a little bit. My father had... well, because he did not speak good English, I was always used to my sister being the go-between, and this continued. In a way, I suppose that's why my Japanese never really got very good. And, but my dad did have kind of rules that he wanted to kind of... but he put it a good way. In the first place, I was left-handed, and at the time, Mrs. Brown, the doctor told her that I was going to be left-handed, she asked him, "Is it okay, the doctor suggests it would be good not to try to change her." But you know, at that time, everybody tried to change their child. And so I was raised, I could use my left hand for eating and everything. Well, I was using my left hand for chopsticks. So my dad said, "Well, it's all very well for you to use your left hand for chopsticks, and it's fine at home." But he says, "You have to practice to use your right hand, because," he said, "when we go to these banquets" -- 'cause there were frequent banquets that you had to attend to, and he said, "They're seated very close together." And he says, "Everybody has their elbows out," and he says, "If you have your elbow out on the left side, you're gonna have a very hard time, and the people next to you are not gonna be happy." So he said, "It would be very good to practice so that you could be able to not have any problems." So that's the way he put it. And so I would practice, you know. So I got so that I could eat fairly decently with my right hand. And, you know, like he'd say, "Well, you should practice a little tonight," so I would do that. So I got so I could do that. Now, I felt very proud of myself when we would go to a banquet, that I could pick my chopsticks up in my right hand and eat, you know. So there was that.

The other thing was that he enrolled me into the Japanese language school. Now, this was a very interesting experience because I did not really speak Japanese. And I found out that most of us started the first grade, we were all third-graders. But like most families, they just waited a little bit, you know. So that's where I met several people from the east side who were in this situation. And, but they spoke Japanese and I didn't, so I just memorized everything. I didn't know what I was saying, but I could memorize it. And I could stand up and read because I learned the characters and everything. But it was every day after school from four to six, and then Saturday morning from nine to twelve. And the Saturday morning was kind of like performance time. You were supposed to read something that you'd written, or you were supposed to tell a story in Japanese. Well, I couldn't do that. I could probably, I could write a little bit, figure out how the words went together and where the nouns were and the verbs, but, and then I'd have my sister check it over for me. But in order for it to, for me to say it, I'd have to memorize it phonetically. And that was pretty hard. If you made a mistake, you were shot. And so... and the teachers knew this, but they had to say that everybody had to do it. So I would avoid it as long as I could, and then they would say, "Well, Tsuboi-san, you haven't, it's your turn, you know, you haven't done yours yet." And so I'd have to do it, and of course all the kids were ready to laugh, because they all knew I was memorizing. And it was very hard. But you know, kids tease, but it was okay.

TI: So besides the language, when you start spending more time with other Japanese children, your upbringing up to that point was very different than theirs.

ST: Yes.

TI: I mean, were there other things that you noticed that you were different that others?

ST: Yes. I always raised my hand in class. I always spoke up. If I didn't agree with something, I spoke up. If I wanted to know something, I spoke up. Because that's what I'd done all my life and I was used to being answered immediately. I didn't think I was doing anything different. But the grammar school I went to was Couch Elementary, and it was a K through 8 school. The Japanese community in Portland, the central area, was largely divided into two groups: those north of Burnside and those south of Burnside. We lived north of Burnside. So, and the community was not as large as it is in Seattle. So although most of us in that part of what is called Japantown or Chinatown went to Couch Elementary, there were more Chinese than Japanese. And in my class, I was the only girl, Japanese girl, and there were two or three, two Japanese boys. So there were just three Japanese in that class. There were more Chinese, actually, probably twice as many Chinese, but over half the class was white. We didn't have any blacks in school. And so it was, you know, it was not probably like Seattle where Bailey Gatzert was really quite high percentage.

TI: So for you to raise your hand and speak out didn't seem odd at all in this environment.

ST: No, we all did it. I mean, but I didn't realize this until later on. [Laughs] But even so, I always liked to talk. And so, you know... and I was competitive. We'd have spelling bees and everything, and everybody's jumping up and down. I noticed the other Asian kids were, the Chinese were very quiet also. So you could say that they were also very retired, they weren't the kind that waved their hands. They knew the answer, but they would not raise their hand.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.