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MN: Now, how many years later did you go to Hawaii? How old were you?

AT: I came when I was eleven, twelve, around that time. That was, yeah, my mother wanted me to come earlier, but then there was no permission granted to come. But finally, it was granted around six years later, so then I was able to come. But I came to Hawaii where my grandparents, Yabiku grandparents were, and my aunts and uncle. But my mother and sister had already moved to Los Angeles at that time, and, but I stayed in Hawaii for a few months, living with my aunt in Kauai, and went to school for about three months.

MN: Now, what kind of passport did you come with?

AT: I came on Ryukyu passport. It was issued by Ryukyu government under U.S. occupied.

MN: Now, once Okinawa reverted to Japan in 1972, do they still issue the Ryukyu passports?

AT: No.

MN: The Japanese passport?

AT: The Japanese passport.

MN: Now, when you received permission to travel to Hawaii, your grandmother went, your Oshiro grandmother went as far as Tokyo with you. Now, you had a Nisei uncle stationed in Tokyo from Hawaii. How did -- so since they were from Hawaii, how did they prepare you for your trip to Hawaii?

AT: Well, they just, yeah, they told me Hawaii is gonna be -- because it was winter in Tokyo, very cold, so they said, "Okay, it's gonna be much hotter in Hawaii." So Hawaii, it was, you know, "It's gonna be different from Japan and all that." But there wasn't too much that they had to really tell me about. But as far as English and anything like that, not that, nothing that they taught. So they encouraged, "You have to learn English right away to communicate with anybody." That was, yeah, my uncle, but actually, that's my mother's cousin, one and only cousin. [Laughs]

MN: You're traveling by yourself. Were you scared, were you excited? What were you feeling?

AT: I don't remember as being scared, but, yeah, half maybe excited. But I didn't think, I wasn't scared at all. But there was a lady who was going to Oklahoma, and my uncle had talked to her and to the airline, so they sat me right next to her. Because, and from there, I was on my own, but it was twenty hours, I remember. Ten hours, we fueled in Wake island, and my uncle told me, "Okay, when you reach Wake, there's a bus there and you'll be taken to this place and you'll have breakfast there." So bus was like a tram was waiting there. And we went to, in fact, that Wake island, that's about the building I remember had in that whole island. [Laughs] So we had breakfast there and then got on, and then another ten hours to Hawaii. And yeah, when we reached Hawaii, I thought, oh, it was beautiful. Because all the leis that I got, and as you drive out of airport, you see all these lei huts just lined, standing next to each other. And had, every place was lighted, so I was so excited. I was asking Uncle, so he said that was the place that you, they sell the leis. And then when I went to my uncle's place, they had all these food. I guess now, I think about it, it was Japanese American food, but it was something very new to me like potato salad and all those things.

MN: So you stayed in Honolulu for one night before going to Kauai with your, to be with your Yabiku grandparents. Now, on Kauai, were there a lot of Okinawans in the community?

AT: Yes, I think so. Yeah, our neighbor, there were a few, but yes, they did, because while I was there, was that the time... it might have been there. I remember dancing at some Okinawa shimnenkai.

MN: But not at that time.

AT: It might have been at that time, yeah. So that... of course, I had just came in, my grandmother, father was excited that I knew dancing, so was, yeah, someplace that I danced just to show them. So maybe it wasn't shinnenkai, maybe it was just a family gathering there.

MN: What was the dominant prefecture?

AT: I would think it's Hiroshima. Because at school when I was going there, there were Japanese kids, I mean, knew that I was, I had just come from Japan, and they tried to speak to me little Japanese, and I couldn't really understand them. So I went home and I asked my aunt and she said, "Okay, this is what that means." So I said, "Why is it different?" She said because they were mostly Hiroshima dialect. So I think in Hawaii there's, lot of Japanese are from Hiroshima. Hiroshima was dominant.

MN: Now, when you were living in Kauai, what did you feel about having come to Kauai?

AT: Oh, they have electricity. [Laughs] The stove, you don't have to use the wood to cook, and you have a bath, you can take a bath every day. Those daily, just routine was very special to me.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.