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TI: Well, so when you were around eight, you're going from a very matriarchal environment back to your father, which now would be very patriarchal.

ST: Yes.

TI: So talk about that transition. What was that like for you?

ST: You know, I really never noticed it. It was, of course, you realize that when I lived with the Browns, I was always the baby. I was the youngest, I was spoiled, I was the only Asian around, people would pick me up, they always wanted to pick me up and hug me. I was used to being the center of attention. When I started kindergarten, I remember one of the last days of school, we went to get our report card to see if we passed to first grade. One of the teachers came down the street and she picked me up and hugged me, she says, "Oh, I can't wait 'til you're in my class." And, you know, I was, frankly, teacher's pet all the way through, I was in the, I had finished the first half of the third grade when I left that school. I was so protected. I don't think anybody would have dared to say anything nasty to me, somebody would have squashed it. And at the church, I was entered on Cradle Row, and I was not Baptized because, of course, she felt that Dad would not want me Baptized. However, she asked Dad whether it was okay for me to go to the Christian church, because she knew, of course, he was Buddhist. And he said, "Oh, yes." He was always very open-minded about religion, and he said, "They all have a good base, and it's better to get some kind of good religious background and that kind of philosophy than nothing." And so he said, yes, he could see nothing bad in it. And so I went to the Baptist church. And this is, lot of people don't, haven't been to these old-fashioned Baptist churches where they had the complete immersion in the, on Baptism night. It was like a huge, huge ofuro. And in the back of the, back of the altar, the wall would rise, and then there was this huge, it was like a ofuro, square. And the women would all come that evening dressed, they would have their best clothes on and their hair all done because this was an important occasion, especially if they were an adult. And they would both go and stand in this, in this ofuro, and he would put a handkerchief over their face and lower them into the water and say a prayer. And I always used to wonder, at that time, "What if they can't hold their breath long enough?" [Laughs] But, and when I left that church, they called me up and they presented me with a Bible inscribed from the church. It was usually given to you when you joined the church and when you came of age. But because I was leaving the church, they made a special... so you know, they were all very nice.

TI: So you were really embraced by the family, by the community, by the school, everything.

ST: Everything. However, having said that, it was quite a lot of surface acceptance. You all know that below the surface, there's always the, "Okay, we accept this in theory, but..." Because looking back, you know that I had really no friends that would come to play with me at my house, and I was never invited to their houses. But I never noticed this, because I had the family, and I did have actually one friend, he was a half a year younger than I was, who lived down the street. And he came over to play almost all the time. And we, I used to bully him because I was a half a year ahead, and I could read and he couldn't. And so I could read the comics to him. And he was just a very nice little boy. In fact, the Christmas before, the last Christmas before we left, I left, the doorbell rang, and it was his mother, who I had never met, because I never was invited to his house, and him. And he handed me a Christmas present. And she said -- and I didn't want to take it, you know -- and she said, "He saved his money up for this, and he insisted that we go down to Meier & Frank's and buy this." And it was, it was a small pearl necklace. Well, you know, imitation pearl, but pearl necklace in a jeweler's box. And that's the last I really remember of him.

TI: And this is, like, third grade?

ST: Yeah.

TI: Oh, wow.

ST: Well, I wasn't in third grade yet. I would have been the -- see, in Portland you could start school midterm, it was semesters. So you could be first semester, second semester. So because my birthday was in February, they let me start in January.

TI: Okay, so you were just going to enter into the third grade.

ST: Yeah, so I was a midtermer.

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