<Begin Segment 4>

MN: Now most Japanese Americans who were growing up in your era adopted Anglican names. Did you ever adopt an Anglican name?

YH: No. My name was always Yuriko.

MN: What is the first language that you learned, Japanese or English?

YH: I think I learned Japanese first, at home, and then when I went to kindergarten I learned English.

MN: Which Japanese school did you attend?

YH: The one in Signal Hill.

MN: Did you go every day or just Saturdays?

YH: Just Saturday. Saturday morning. I think Dr. Kamiya was the president of the Japanese language school there.

MN: What was Japanese school like?

YH: Well, every time we went in the morning we would have calisthenics. We would exercise outdoors and then we would go into the, our classroom.

MN: Did you have to learn a lot of the Japanese songs, like Kimigayo and a lot of those kinds of very Japanese things?

YH: No.

MN: Now, you weren't in Japanese school very long. What happened?

YH: Oh, because the war broke out.

MN: But you were also, you were sharing with me how you were left-handed.

YH: Yes, I was left-handed, and so when I went to the blackboard my handwriting would slant from right to left, and also I would turn my page almost upside down on the desk 'cause otherwise I'd be writing off the page, and they said you have to use your right hand to write Japanese, so I said if that happened I wasn't going to Japanese school. And so, because I wasn't changed when I went to public school, and because my teacher said that if they changed my hand I would stutter, so they never, they just let me do my left-handed, write with my left hand. And then, anyway, the Japanese language school said I could go to school and write with my left hand, 'cause they say if you write with a brush everything, would look funny.

MN: And so the teacher at your American school is the one who said if you change your hand to your right hand you might stutter?

YH: Yeah.

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