<Begin Segment 13>

MN: I want to go back to your days in Idaho for a moment. Despite the struggles your parents were going through, they, your mother still encouraged you to learn things and you were enrolled in a class. Share with us this voice class.

JD: Yeah, it was not so much a class. It was, because they were private lessons, and like I said earlier, my mom always had us do something, my oldest sister with the Japanese dancing, my other sister with the American dancing and piano. And so when I was in high school, when I started high school she says, yeah, we better call Mrs. Binning, who was this voice teacher in town. I don't know how she found out about her, 'cause I certainly didn't know, but she, she said we better call Mrs. Binning and make an appointment to see her. So I did and my mom and, so, but let me back off a little on that, 'cause my mom had said, "When you get to high school I think you better start taking some kind of class, and I think you ought to take singing." And so I said, well, maybe I ought to start now, and I was still in middle school. She said, "Well, if you want to, go ahead." But I never, I was always a great procrastinator, so I never did it. I never pushed myself into it. But the minute I became a freshman in high school my mother was relentless. I would procrastinate calling Mrs. Binning. She said, "You are going to call her," so I finally did have to call her, and so, because I was a freshman and she wanted to be absolutely sure that I started something, so we went to see Mrs. Binning and she tested me out and she took me in, and I was her first Japanese American student. She didn't have one before, but I was her first one. And then many years afterwards there were others who followed, but I was her first one.

MN: Why was it important for your mother to have her daughters learn different things?

JD: Well, I think it's like if you were in Japan you have to learn ikebana, you have to know how to cook, you have to know how to do this, this, this, and this, right? I think it was that mentality, except she just didn't necessarily choose it to be all Japanese. She certainly did with my oldest sister, but she just felt, okay, we're in America now, we ought to learn some of their things, and so even though my oldest sister was in the traditional Japanese thing, with my other sister and me it was mostly American stuff. But I think that was the mentality that she had. She says, well, you don't necessarily have to learn ikebana -- besides, there was no ikebana teachers in Idaho for me to learn from -- there was certainly no Japanese classical dancers, and cooking, forget that, I'm not a good cook today, as I was then. My mother was an excellent cook, but she was the kind who would say, "Well, you add a little bit of this and you add a little bit of that and you taste it and you do your own tasting." Well I can't learn that way, so, but anyway, so yes, I think the mentality was we had to learn something. I think that does come from Japan.

MN: Now, when you were going to school in Weiser, did you experience any hostility? What was school like?

JD: No. No. There was enough of a Japanese community in Weiser, not that we were the majority or anything, but, but there was enough of us in there that you made friends with whoever, and I never felt hostility amongst them, or they towards me anyway. I had some very good teachers who were very sympathetic with me. I didn't know that at the time, but when I think back about it now that's actually what they were doing. They were very sympathetic with me, and they were very kind.

MN: When you were living in Weiser, where was the main area that Japanese Americans went to socialize?

JD: It was in a town called Ontario, Oregon. Weiser and Payette, Idaho, which was another town on the Idaho side, the Oregon side and the Idaho side was just separated by the Snake River, so all you had to do was cross the bridge and you're in Oregon or cross the other way and you could be in Idaho. But Ontario seemed to be the focal point. It was, it had a large Japanese community there already, and so all the surrounding towns, whether you're on the Idaho side or the Oregon side, if there were any festivities that were held it was held in Ontario. Like Obon Odori, Obon service and whatnot, was in Ontario.

MN: Now, how far was Ontario from Weiser?

JD: About twenty miles.

MN: That's a long way.

JD: Yeah, but that's where we had to go.

MN: Now --

JD: Oh, they had a supermarket. They had a Japanese supermarket there, in Ontario.

MN: Do you remember what it was called?

JD: Don't remember too much about it, but they had, like the sashimi and the tofu and stuff like that, yeah. And then because we were so far away, that store would have a truck that came along and sold to the families, about once a week, or maybe, maybe it wasn't even once a week. It might've been once every two weeks or once a month. I don't remember the frequency of it, but yeah, they used to come. It's either that or you went to Ontario and you bought your food. So I remember that, yeah.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.