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TI: While we're, we're on this topic, I'm wondering, for you growing up, were there any issues having Kibei parents, I mean, in terms of your friends? Did that ever become an issue, or did you, were you aware of that, that there was sort of this, as you mentioned earlier, almost a subculture within the Japanese American community?

RH: Well, I grew up, we, my family moved to east Oakland. At first, actually when I was born our family was living in Alameda, in the projects area there, and then they, shortly after I was born they moved to east Oakland, which is where I grew up, and so, and that, east Oakland was, I guess when we first moved there was a pretty half decent neighborhood. By the time I finished high school it was predominantly a black neighborhood, but, so living there, but living there, that whole, growing up there was really kind of a challenge in many different ways, but for my parents, being Kibei, things I would -- first of all, my oldest brother, from what I understand, when he first started school, kindergarten, he didn't even speak English, and so he had a little bit tough time because basically he, my parents, that's all they taught him, Japanese, or that's what he was speaking when he started school. And so when I start school, naturally I was understanding more English and was doing that, but I just remember, like when I was in the first and second grade, that I had to start taking these speech classes and, and you know, they would send me off and say, "You have sit with this speech therapist to go through something." I never understood. "Why am I so different from the rest of the kids in my class?" I think I'm the same, but anyways, so I didn't realize much later that, because my mom had taught us, so naturally her pronunciation of different words was much different than it was supposed to be. [Laughs] And that's how I was speaking, so I didn't really realize that at all until I started having to do this and make this corrections on how I, like "brother" or "butter," it's like, they couldn't say some words right, so, and that's the way I was speaking in, as, in my early school. So then I started, it started to dawn on me, yeah, my mom does speak a little bit different English than other kids or parents and it's more Japanese. And sometimes, like when we'd go to the school, naturally, and for lunches and things I'd be bringing different things that my mom'd put in my lunch that other kids never had and they'd be kind of checking it out and says, "Wow, what is that stinky stuff in there?" It's kind of this takuan or whatever. And she would put, like, musubi or whatever in my lunch sometimes, and a lot of times it was just sandwiches so that we'd be more like what other kids are, but there were times where, and we would eat it at home, so for me it was like no big deal, but...

TI: But in that school lunchroom environment, when you pulled out the musubi or other Japanese foods and, and people would sort of check it out and say, "Hey, look at what you're eating," how did you feel about that?

RH: At first I guess I was a little bit ashamed because I guess when it first started happening I was a little surprised that other people would be kind of surprised, but, and they'd say it's kind of stinky and look, "Why you eatin' a rice ball like that? What's those, what's that manju thing? What is that?" And the, or whatever it was that my mom stuck in there at the time. But I figured, well, this is stuff we always ate at home. I like it. It's not that I don't like it. It's fine. For me it was like, wow, okay cool, but I was little bit, I guess, like most of the other Sansei friends who have experienced the same thing, little bit, little bit mixed about it, whether you should try to defend yourself or just say, this is what it is or try to just get away from saying, "No, I'm not gonna bring this anymore to school, so don't, don't put musubis in my lunch. Just make a peanut butter sandwich instead." [Laughs] And so it was just, I was just trying to compromise myself.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.