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TI: Now, were there very many other Japanese American classmates?

RH: No. In the school I was going to, no. It started out, it was fairly mixed, predominantly white, but as I mentioned, that neighborhood drastically changed in a very quick time span.

Tom Izu: Did your parents, did they talk to you about some of these conflicts that were going on, or when you talked to them about trying to fit in, I mean, was there any kind of discussion about that? Any sense you got that they were trying to figure out how to, how to raise you in a way you'd fit in, or was there any talk about that?

RH: Well, they would, naturally, want us to be engaged in Japanese customs and culture as much as possible, and so from early on we would have to, we were going to, like on Saturdays, to Japanese language school and then to the Buddhist church for services and things like this and different kind of cultural events within the community. East Oakland is not a large Japanese community there. There were, there were Nisei living there, or Issei and Nisei living there, but not a lot. That's mostly downtown Oakland or that area. So she'll, they were trying to keep us engaged in that or just doing that, and just within our home there were the celebrations of Children's Day and Boy's Day, Girl's Day. My mom had a collection of the dolls that were displayed and so every year she would put this up, the displays for us, and she was very proud of doing that. And so, and it became known in our school, actually, when I was going to school, that she did that, so we even had our class come over and see this display at our home, so it became sort of a very proud moment for all of us, that she was able to explain what it was and why it's important and what Children's Day, or Boy's Day and Girl's Day is about. And she would make Japanese food for the kids to try out, so it was, it was her way to try to educate my classmates or other people around the area about what we were as Japanese and Japanese Americans.

TI: You mentioned the Japanese language school and the, and the Buddhist church, did you have very many Japanese American friends?

RH: We, well naturally, because our, my parents kind of kept within their, a Kibei community and so it wasn't like my, our neighbors were Japanese, but a lot of our friends or family friends were naturally Kibei or Japanese, and so those are folks I remember growing up with in different ways through that, along with some of the neighborhood ones and naturally school friends.

TI: Were, and so, so you're kind of still within this Kibei subculture, when you met and got to know Sanseis who had parents who weren't Kibei, they're just a Nisei who had always lived in the United States, were there differences that you'd notice in terms of, of how you were raised and how you thought versus a Sansei who had just Nisei parents?

RH: You know, I did start, and especially I started a little bit in college, when, that's when I got more involved in Asian American studies and, and I was a very, when I started college, I guess, politically and socially, there was just a lot going on in our country and in our lives, basically, but meeting other, I guess, Sansei kids who were from Nisei parents, I guess some of my more immediate things I noticed is that they perhaps didn't always like the Japanese food that I enjoyed or ate the different kinds of Japanese that I had eaten or knew about, and for them perhaps New Year's wasn't as, as meaningful for them. And so when I talked, "Oh, did you eat your mame beans?" Said, "What is that?" Or, "So did you eat your soba?" "No." "How about ozoni?" Said, "No." Maybe mochi, but that's about it. And so I was kind of surprised that some of those customs didn't carry through with some of those, some of my friends who, who were Sanseis still but just grew up in a different experience that way.

TI: And these Sanseis, were, were they kind of aware of Kibeis and things like that? Did you ever have discussions about this, like in college, about your parents and them being educated in Japan? Because what I find is a lot of Sanseis aren't really that aware of the Kibei experience, so I'm just curious what, what you found out.

RH: Yeah, I would always, I would always try to be very, bring the point out that my parents were Kibei and that they're not Nisei and so I grew up in a Kibei experience, so I always, I always felt I was different from them because of that and that naturally my parents were different than their parents because of that. And so it was, I just made it a point that, to always raise that with people to let them know that that was my background and that was important for me, and not that maybe we're so much different because of the, in general the Japanese American experience at that time was basically impacting us all the same way, no matter what our parents grew up with, so it was still kind of the same for us as Sansei at that point.

TI: Okay, good.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.