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MN: So now it's 1935, your grandfather decided to return to Japan, and take you along, and your brother. What was your reaction to that?

FH: I didn't want to go, because you know, going to a different place, I have to miss all those friends, Jack and Bob and Chester and so forth. I very strongly resisted. But I was brought out, and my father said that, "I'm going to buy a toy, toy fire engine." And so with that, I was bought out, and so I finally conceded and decided to go to Japan.

MN: Do you remember if you took that toy fire engine with you to Japan?

FH: I don't recall. But one thing I recall is that we went to Seattle, Washington, the Japanese consulate over there, and had to sign the application for the paper to go to Japan. And there's my photo, but I could not spell out my name, Hironobu. Because as you know, the Japanese language is an open vowel language. After each consonant, there is the vowel, open vowel language. I could not spell it out. I spelled H-I-R-N-O instead of H-I-R-O-N-O. And so that's one of the reasons that when I came to the United States, I'm not going to use this name Hironobu. Although all the records in Japan, schooling records, are in the Japanese name. But here in this country, I decided to shift to the English name.

MN: So your Japanese language, it sounds to me, was pretty limited before you went to Japan. Is that correct?

FH: Yes, very much so. Very much limited, yes. And for example, whenever we were told to speak Japanese language at home, I used to do that with my brother. But whenever we got into a fight, you know, automatically shift into English and so forth, yes.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.