<Begin Segment 9>

TI: And so was your father aware of sort of these, I guess, larger happenings between the United States and Japan?

TH: Yeah, I think so, because I remember him beginning to discuss... gosh, I can't remember the two diplomats that came from Japan, and he would talk about, oh, whatever they said. So I (...) got a little aware that, about what was going on, the diplomacy that was going on. But if I may jump a little bit further ahead, on December 7^th when the family all gathered together, he said, "Japan's (going to) lose the war." That afternoon. And he says, he says, "No, Japan's (going to) lose the war." Because apparently he had enough information or knowledge of the difference in the industrial capability of Japan and United States. And in my later readings I realize that (...) the war with (...) the Russian, Russo-Japanese War, that the Japanese were very fortunate to have won the war because they were really at, at the end of their strength, capability. They had lost so many men, their resources were now being depleted, so, I forgot who it was, was it Calvin Coolidge? Or maybe it was the former, earlier Roosevelt came in and brought about peace, but peace in turn was more in favor of Japan, and I think there was some, some other war that, reading back, I can't remember correctly, but again, they showed that unless... again, Japan was very short on resources, and they were able to win the war in a very short time. But my dad looked ahead and he says no, Japan doesn't really have a chance, and looking at the history of World War II, you could see what had happened. I think Japan just ran out of resources.

TI: And so I'm curious, when your, your father said this on December 7th, so this is after the attack on Pearl Harbor?

TH: After the attack, yeah.

TI: Your father says, you know, no way Japan's going to win. Do you, do you remember what you thought?

TH: Oh, all the kids (said he's wrong), because what we had heard of what had happened, it looks like Japan had a very good chance of winning the war. But you reflect back, yes. And well, another thing, too, talk about the sneak attack that Japan... well, you go back into history of Japan and her wars, basically, she would strike first and then a day or two days later she would then make the declaration of war, and so that goes back even with the Russo-Japanese War, I think the war that she had with China was basically the same thing, that she would attack first and then make a declaration. In fact, there's a comment (on Pearl Harbor) that I had read of an officer and a sailor on a deck of one of the ships, battleships that were being bombed by Japan at the time, and the sailor would say, "Gee, I didn't know they were mad at us." Whereas the officer says, "Well, they did it again," knowing, the officer knew the history of Japan. So it was just two contrasting thoughts, but yet one knew the history and the other was not keeping up with history.

TI: Interesting. In going back, when you heard your father say that Japan was going to lose, lose, and yet you, you're thinking back to Pearl Harbor and the devastation that had occurred, so what, what did you think about your father's statement? You believed him or you thought that, oh, he's probably wrong, or did you...

TH: Well yeah, you'd say, "Oh, he's probably wrong," because we, we knew... well, we heard what had happened, so one would quickly draw conclusions, says, "Wow, we're in real trouble." So that was kind of interesting as it went on. But I guess the, the knowledge he had and the decisions he made, it was quite startling to look back and, look back at his life. But we don't have, I can't, I can't interview him now. He's far gone.

TI: Well, it is interesting, because in some ways he was trained, probably, to run a corporation or some... it was, like, a top business student. He was picked to, to work with a large mining sort of company, and generally they groomed them to eventually run these things, and his life took another turn and he did this, but yet he had all these skills, all this sort of background experience.

TH: But in turn, we sometimes wondered, after we got back, that, "Gee, if Papa hadn't decided to come to America, we would be in Manchuria or in, somewhere in Japan, probably doing pretty good," but what had happened in Japan after the war and from the stories that we learned from our relatives, things were pretty bad, so we thought, oh, well, maybe my dad made a good choice.

JG: Did your dad ever communicate his expectations for you or your siblings?

TH: No, not really. He gave us all the opportunity, if I wanted to do, say, go to school, fine. And in fact, after, after we came back, he switched over and got into the plant nursery business, and doing that, again it was one of these situations where it was just the opportunity because the houses and the landscaping was neglected during the war, so the business was very good. And so he was able to support, I think, five of us in college at one time, so thinking back, you say wow, that's really (something), but he was very eager for us to go to school. So he never said well, we can't afford it or anything like that.

TI: Well, following Jim's... maybe not expectations from your father per se but were there expectations from your parents about being Japanese? I mean, were there certain things that you felt, "Well, I'm Japanese, and so Japanese do certain things"?

TH: No. No, I think... I think basically we were Americans in our thoughts, and even, say, thinking about speaking in Japanese was something that was very difficult. We weren't that fluent in it. I mean, thinking of the vocabulary that we had, we, I guess, later on I finally figured out that we were using kids' language, kids' words, not adult words. [Laughs] So that's one of the situations that are -- no, we felt basically that we were more as Americans.

TI: Okay, good.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.