<Begin Segment 8>

MN: So now you're going to Japan. Who went with you to Japan?

FH: Well, my brother, Ted, and also there was a friend of ours who was the Kawaguchi family, there were two brothers, and there was another girl, Ueda, I think her name was, Shigeru Ueda, but that's a girl, was already a high school student in the U.S. So all these kids, about seven... one, two, three, four, five, six of them, no, five of them, my grandfather took all of us to Japan in the boat, NYK line.

MN: And when you got to Japan... now, in the United States you were in the fourth grade.

FH: Uh-huh.

MN: But in Japan, you had to start in third grade. Why?

FH: Because of the linguistic handicap.

MN: But in one year, you reached the fourth grade, and you and your brother became yuutousei, honors students.

FH: Yes.

MN: How did that happen?

FH: Well, my dad, you know, I think that he was, although he had education only up to the eighth grade, but he was doing very well, and he was earmarked by the principal of the school. And so my dad wanted us to look at Japanese language, and so contacted this teacher, his name was Mr. Tomioka, Shuichiro Tomioka, but contracted him, and asked him if he would tutor myself and my brother. And so we got a new bicycle, and every day after school, we used to go to his house, and there he had two daughters, both of them Japanese high school graduates, and so they literally tutored us, every day on every subject. That's why we were able to catch up so quickly in the academic work in Japan. I'm very grateful to my dad.

MN: Were you ever teased at elementary school?

FH: No, I don't, I don't recall being teased at all. Sometimes, we had been called "Jap," but I don't have any recollection of feeling bad about it or antagonistic and so forth.

MN: In Japan.

FH: Well... oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, not here, but... okay, I'm sorry, I'm mixed up. In Japan, no. No, I'm sorry.

MN: But you're saying in America, sometimes you were called "Jap."

FH: Yes. But not really in a bad way. But in Japan, you know, our first shock was that we had to cut off our hair. No long hair was permitted over there, and then we had to have a uniform, and the backpack and so forth, to go to school. There was quite a cultural change over there. But in spite of that, we got melted pretty well into the Japanese culture and so forth, because all these families in the countryside, they are living there for years and years, and so they're just like one big family. All my schoolmates and so forth are friends. And so I didn't have any... any friction with them at all. Very smoothly.

TI: That's a little unusual, because oftentimes, when the Niseis, especially if their Japanese wasn't really strong, they were often teased or bullied in Japan. But that didn't happen with you or your brother?

FH: Well, once I recalled there was a Japanese language course called the Niisan no nyue, my brother's being drafted into the army. And there it says that Kouchou sensei, Sonchou san. Kouchou sensei, the principal, or the village master there to send him off. And I knew that, the mura, because in the lesson it says, "The train went through the tunnel, and out there, there was a village out there." And so mura I know. And nagai, nagai kasha deshita. The long train was right there, I knew the word "nagai." And so instead of saying "sonchou san," I read, "muranaga san," and everybody just laughed. Because those who were living there, they know sonchou, that's a daily, you know, they use those kind of words every day. But I'm not used to that, and so I thought -- but not in a bad way, just, I remember that. It was a big laughter at that time.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.