<Begin Segment 4>

TI: Going back to your father wanting you to go to a Christian church, explain that again. Why did he want you to go to a Christian church?

PT: Well, he thought that was an important part of becoming an American, that church was very much a part of America. Whereas it may not have been in Japan, it certainly was here. Then I joined the Boy Scouts, and I was the only Japanese on that. So that was the extent of my... but oftentimes I was very alone. I went by myself. I went fishing. Nearby was a river, and every now and then, I ran into an Indian fishing with a pitchfork, I forgot the tribe. And I learned later that the Catholic church befriended them. I use the word loosely, in other words, hired them for free labor. So it was, at the time, the area that was Indian country, and it was taken over by white people. At the bottom line, near the river, they had something that you pull down, they make beer with.

TI: You mean hops?

PT: Hops, yes. The other thing, big time farming, was tomatoes. My father did strawberries like everybody else, and he really was not a farmer.

TI: But I want to go back to your father. So he had you go to the Boy Scouts, this Christian church, so it looked like he wanted you to be comfortable or be part of more the white society?

PT: Yes.

TI: Did he have you do things in the Japanese community like Japanese language school and things like that? Did you do that?

PT: No, he did not encourage me to go to Japanese school, and he did not himself go to any church. Something happened to him. Perhaps his reading of the Bible did not fit in with what was being told, I don't know, but he valued his Bible. The other thing he did -- and most of the time he did this -- in his free time, and even when in camp he did this, was use the Bible to learn to write Japanese kanji with the blank print that you had to punch it up and so forth. He never went to school, so he used the Bible as a library.

TI: So he was self-taught.

PT: He was self-taught, yes.

TI: Was he able to read both Japanese and English or just Japanese?

PT: Yes.

TI: Both.

PT: So he stopped going. And then I started my college. I went to junior college in Sacramento.

TI: Before we go there, there's a story that you told about after your older brother died, he was cremated, and your father kept his ashes. Oftentimes people would have those ashes buried, but those ashes were never buried? He never buried them when he was in this area.

PT: Yes, he carried it with him.

TI: And do you know why he didn't bury the ashes after your brother died?

PT: My guess is that he never really had owned the place. And my other possibility is he wanted to take it back to Japan and bury it there. I'm not sure of that one, but I doubt it. Or there was something else that was going on. He felt forever guilty for the boy dying. He should have been watching him, and somehow maybe he was asking for some kind of...

TI: Not redemption. Forgiveness, maybe?

PT: I think some people do that, and so I bring that up.

TI: So I was curious about that. The other thing that you mentioned was when you were about nine, ten years old, there was a, I'm not sure if it was a friend or somebody, but a photograph that was taken of you. Can you tell me about that, what that was like? Do you remember that? A photograph of you. You mentioned that there were no pictures of you except for maybe as a baby and then maybe later on when you were much older. But then there was one photograph taken of you when you were about nine or ten years old? Do you recall that photograph?

PT: No, sorry.

TI: That's okay. Before we go to your college, what year did you graduate from high school?

PT: Elk Grove High School.

TI: What year did you graduate?

PT: One year before the war started.

TI: Okay, so right before the war. And then after you graduate, then you started junior college?

PT: Yes.

TI: Okay, so you started college.

PT: So I went to one semester and then the war started. I worked as a schoolboy and I vowed that if I ever brought a student in my class, I certainly would not treat them this way. Whenever they finish with a dish, I have to go in, pick it up, bring the other one in. Then wash the dishes, and then I have to wash the floor, and then I could study. In some ways, I wasn't lonely or anything like that. I felt that this is not fun. I only took two classes, German and a science class, I can't think of it.

TI: Chemistry?

PT: No, further down.

TI: Biology? Physics? Mathematics?

PT: Further. Either a W or a V or something like that. It's another one.

TI: And, I'm sorry, where was the junior college? Where was that located?

PT: Sacramento. And I got 'B' grades. Such stupid courses. [Laughs]

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.