<Begin Segment 5>

TI: So, let's move to Terminal Island. So what are some of the early childhood memories of Terminal Island?

HN: Well, it was a colony of Japanese and Japanese Americans, and many of the people came from Wakayama prefecture. Wakayama, I guess, it's a prefecture surrounded by ocean, so I guess there are a lot of fishermen. It's a peninsula, you know where I'm talking about?

TI: And so... I've interviewed other people about Terminal Island, but I want to get your perspective. So, like growing up, in terms of, what language did you speak growing up as a child?

HN: Half Japanese, half English. Terminal Island, the kids, they spoke Japanese in home and went to school in English school, and then we get together and we talk half Japanese, half English, and it's a unique kind of language in half, mixed language, Japanese, English put together and communicated. So it was that kind of, you know... (Narr. note: Terminal Island was a microcosm of the larger Japanese American community in Hawaii at that era. They also spoke pidgin and went to Japanese school.)

TI: No, I heard about, I mean, I actually hear about other people talking about the Terminal Islanders, that they almost had their own dialect, or their own way of speaking.

HN: Yeah, I think so, (spoke pidgin). It seemed that way. I never realized it until I got out of Terminal Island.

TI: Well, that's what I wanted to ask you, so when you left Terminal Island, did how you speak seem odd to other people?

HN: Yeah, but by the time I left Terminal Island, I was in my ninth grade in junior high school, so it wasn't that odd.

TI: 'Cause you would just speak English.

HN: Yeah, right.

TI: Okay.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.