<Begin Segment 6>

TI: Earlier you said that you didn't think of yourself as Japanese because you were around all your white friends. Did your parents ever talk about Japanese or how, how...

MO: I don't think so. I don't remember them, I mean, I knew I was Japanese, but it wasn't stressed as being different or much of anything.

TI: Now, when you were growing up, what language did your parents speak to you?

MO: We were mostly English, but of course we mixed certain Japanese phrases.

TI: And how about, for you learning Japanese, did you go to Japanese language school?

MO: Later they had, they enrolled me in this Japanese school at Green Lake, and I must've gone two, three years anyway. I remember it was a schoolhouse out in Green Lake. It was the country. It seemed far away at the time, but I guess it's not that far away now.

TI: And so it was a, was it a classroom just for Japanese language, or was it part of another...

MO: No, it was a Japanese school. They had, the principal and his wife taught, and there was another lady, real nice teacher, Mrs. Takagoshi. I remember that name for some reason. It was such a hard name. [Laughs]

TI: And so tell me, how many other students were at this, the Green Lake Japanese school?

MO: Well, it went from first grade up to when they were seniors, I guess, so I don't know how many there were, but I just remember two friends that I made there. One was Esther Hiyama, and Miyeko Hirano, the only two I -- oh, there was another girl, something Kashiwagi, but I didn't know her very well -- but I, where I made two Japanese friends.

TI: And so did the Japanese school have things like an annual picnic and things like that?

MO: No. I don't know if it was school that had the picnic. The picnic I remember, I think it was Shiga-ken.

TI: Okay, so a kenjinkai picnic.

MO: I don't remember that the school had the picnic, not actually.

TI: How about things like, earlier your husband talked about they had, on the Emperor's birthday they had a special celebration. Do you recall your school, like on the Emperor's birthday, doing something special or anything else?

MO: They did have something. They talked about Tennouheika. I remember that. Yeah, at Japanese school they mentioned Tennouheika and birthday, but I don't remember the celebration or anything.

TI: So tell me about the kenjinkai picnic then. What was that like? Where --

MO: Every year, well, that was either, I'm not sure if, there were two different ones. There was a Shiga-ken picnic and a dye work picnic, but I think it's the Shiga-ken one that I remember, and it was always at Lincoln Park. And I didn't know too many, all I remember were the two, maybe two families that, Japanese families that, and we sat with them. And one was the Kojima family, and one was the Shigaya's. That's all I can remember.

TI: That's amazing, your memory's good to remember all these names. And growing up, you talked about your playmates being Swedish, did you visit their homes when you were, like play at their houses and things like that?

MO: Yeah, Gloria Anderson and her mother and her father -- that was her, I think that was her stepfather -- anyway, they had this hotel right by the Fremont Bridge, and they had a lot of changeover in their hotel clients that came in on the ship apparently, from boats that were down on Lake Union. But anyway, Gloria and I were friends from before, I don't know, she was two or three, 'cause my mother used to tell me she used to have to change Gloria's diapers all the time for her. [Laughs] And then we went on to B.F. Day School and the Sunday school together. Yeah.

TI: Now, was your mom kind of a stay at home mom? Was she at home?

MO: Well we had a dry cleaning store and my mom and dad worked at our, and we lived behind our business, so they worked together and she did alterations. My father did alterations and pressing, and he blocked hats. Yeah, my father could do quite a few things. He was pretty handy.

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