<Begin Segment 8>

TI: So I'm gonna switch gears a little bit. How about Japanese culture? Did you, were you exposed to any of that growing up?

PJH: It would be intermittent, and that would be whenever we got together with my family in Los Angeles. I would see a little snippet of Japanese culture here and there. Of course we would see snippets of Japanese culture in our home, like the classical Japanese dolls in glass cases, chopsticks, of course, eating Japanese food, but I really didn't have that many Japanese friends. They might have been through when I was little, when we lived in Marin county, there was, like, a whole Japanese association in Mill Valley area that my parents would go and do activities with them there, so this is kind of like, that kind of introduction. We would even go to San Francisco Japantown. My brother went to Japanese language class, but that didn't last more than a year. He hated it, dropped out. [Laughs]

Tom Izu: Where was that at?

PJH: That was in San Francisco. Yeah, so it would be every weekend and I remember going with my parents, family, drive my brother to Japantown, Nihonmachi, drop him off. But you know, it's really weird that I could not fathom what it was, what this community was, because it was all turned over because it was the redevelopment area. Of course, I didn't know that. I just thought Japanese, I remember seeing on movies and... war. I thought redevelopment and all these buildings that were torn down were a result of war. Yeah, it's kind of...

TI: Interesting.

PJH: Yeah.

TI: And did you ever go to, like, I'm thinking especially with your background, like Bon Odori, the Obon dances, did you ever see that?

PJH: No. Maybe I saw maybe once or twice in, where was it, in Mill Valley area. It, it was really foreign to me. It was, I didn't feel comfortable. I remember not feeling comfortable, and also hearing a lot of Japanese. It's like, where am, what is this?

TI: Now, you went when you, you mentioned sometimes you'd go down to Los Angeles, and when, there were, like, cousins down there or your family's down there?

PJH: Right.

TI: When you came across relatives kind of your age, how was that for you? So here are Japanese Americans, they're related, how did you feel about, about that?

PJH: I think we just played whenever we got together. Ate a lot of food. Of course, there's Grandma and Grandpa who spoke Japanese, very limited, it's like, "Uh-huh, uh-huh. What did she say?"

TI: So would your cousins be able to understand that?

PJH: No. So there was kind of this absence of real, real communication.

TI: Okay.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.