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TI: So your father had a cafe, he sold that in Bellingham and went down --

MT: My uncle.

TI: Your uncle did. Okay. And when you say they were financing fishing boats, who, who was financing?

MT: The canneries were. The canneries wanted Japanese fishermen 'cause they knew they were good fishermen. See, prior to the canneries coming there Terminal Island, before they had finished dredging the, the harbor to make the Los Angeles harbor, Japanese fishermen were living there. They originally started out, some of 'em originally started out in Palos Verdes area getting abalone, but the people, from the prejudice and all the problems that they were having and all kinds of bad rumors about how bad they were, that they were morally corrupt, everything else and they were doing all these bad things, so they passed a law they couldn't be there, so they had to quit their abalone fishing, which they were, they would dry and then send to Japan. They then moved to Terminal Island and started fishing. Now, there were a few guys there fishing already, so that's why they moved there. And the homes were on stilts 'cause it was, was just outcropping, and then they, and they had a railroad going up there. But they soon filled that whole area and they built this island of sand on, in the Los Angeles harbor. And when they did that they created specifically an area called Fish Harbor where the canneries can, can exist, so around the harbor were all these canneries and the canneries then recruited Japanese fishermen, not others. The Italian and the then Yugoslavians, Slavic people, were in, went to canneries in the Terminal, in the San Pedro area or they fished out of San Pedro. They didn't come to Terminal Island, the Japanese. Now, there were two colonies on Terminal Island. This one's Fish Harbor area, the Japanese, about three thousand lived there, then another area down further south that I'll, was called Terminal, everybody called Terminal. They were in the Wilmington area and San Pedro, was East San Pedro, the station was called East San Pedro, and they were part of, the kids there went to San Pedro schools, junior high school, high school. Elementary school was right there on the island. People on the other side went to Banning High School, which was in Wilmington.

TI: Now, would both these, these colonies be called Terminal Island, then? When you said there are two --

MT: The whole, the area was Terminal, but people say there were very few, relatively few Japanese on Terminal. They're mostly whites, Mexicans, Filipinos, whatever have you, and a few, and the people over there spoke English because that was the dominant culture, whereas in Terminal Island Japanese was dominant culture, so they spoke this pidgin Japanese. And the, because sixty percent, about sixty percent of the people were from Wakayama prefecture, and then people from another area, Mie-ken was very close to Wakayama, they spoke in the same kind of dialect, not the same, but very close, and so they, that became the dominant language, dialect spoken. But it was a combination of English, well, basically Japanese with English thrown in, words like you-ra, me-ra, you and a Japanese ending, you and me, me-ra. So this is the kind of words they would use, aside from standard Wakayama dialect.

TI: So, so Terminal Island had essentially its own dialect.

MT: Yes.

TI: I mean, that, that little village of three thousand... and so if, if a Terminal --

MT: But the thing about it, on top of the dialect they were fishermen, so the Isseis talking to each other would speak in a staccato language because when they're on board ship they can't use niceties. They can't speak politely to each other. You know, get this, do this, 'cause it's dangerous if you start saying "will you please go get this," "will you please do this." You can't do this kind of thing, so they speak in a very staccato language, a very quick and rough language, and so the kids picked it up and that's how they spoke. The Isseis themselves can speak politely when they had to, 'cause they knew the language, but the kids didn't know that as well because their basic language was the fishermen language. And so whenever they went outside of Terminal Island the other Japanese people thought they were terrible because they have this very crude, course speech, and so they didn't want their daughters, some of 'em didn't want their daughters even be associated with 'em.

TI: That's really interesting because you hear stories about how rough the Terminal Islanders were. Lot of it had to do with their language, just may not have been so much that they were rough but it was their language?

MT: Well, combination, Terminal Island were fishermen's sons and they generally were rougher, just the whole attitude. They were, physically did hard, heavy work and so they, they worked rougher. They were rougher. They were rougher, yeah. And I grew up in that, in that environment, but I was, I was young when I left, so I never did --

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.