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SY: But now your family was at the same time was very religious, right? Your mother and grandmother, would you consider them?

PS: No, not my mother but my grandmother.

SY: Your grandmother was very religious. Now sort of describe...

PS: Well, she was somewhat religious I guess. She taught me things from the Bible, Bible verses. To this day she taught me the 23rd Psalm that I find it comforting, I use it to meditate, to go to sleep. So she had some positive things that she instilled in me.

SY: Because that stayed with you.

PS: Yeah, right.

SY: And I assume that your mother was but was she Christian, did she believe?

PS: Yeah, she attended the Holiness church with us after the war, after I became more active but wouldn't call her religious at all.

SY: I see. So the Holiness church was something that your grandmother first --

PS: Yeah, there was a church on Thirty-fifth Street or Thirty-fifth Place right across the street from the big elementary school there just south of Western. And that church was rather fundamentalist evangelical type church.

SY: And was it interracial?

PS: No, it was a Japanese American church.

SY: Japanese American church.

PS: Yeah, the Holiness denomination is fairly interesting because it's the only indigenous Japanese denomination. That is, it wasn't attached to a Caucasian group like the Baptists or Methodists or the Presbyterians. It was founded by some people in Japan and they came over here. So yeah, I became more active in the church after I left high school so that was a positive thing for me and fortunately when I got a job teaching in the valley we transferred our membership to the San Fernando Holiness Church. But then about the mid-70s the pastor decided he wanted to start to work more towards the western part of the valley which he did. Ren Kimura was his name, Reverend Ren Kimura and so we were struggling along in that vein for years. The people who joined this didn't want to become Holiness people so we were non-denominational for over ten years. We finally again through Paul, Paul Tsuneishi, we got chartered as a Methodist church and it's been a good move for me. I just am very thankful for... another reason I'm thankful to Paul because he was activists and he got us going in the Methodist church. The Methodist church I think is... I feel very comfortable in because it's more open, more accepting of people and it's a big, a much larger tent, it's accepting of people who have a wide range of beliefs and I'm on the left end. I'm in the liberal end of the Methodist church.

SY: So all those years that you were going to the Holiness church it wasn't really considered... you said it was evangelical without having the name?

PS: No, it was a Holiness church.

SY: Oh, okay.

PS: The L.A. Holiness church and then when we moved to the valley it was the San Fernando Valley Holiness church.

SY: Okay.

PS: It's a huge operation. They're doing very well and they have a lot of young people, Sunday school and the whole thing. Whereas in contrast the church I'm attending now in Chatsworth it's one that has always been very small, mainly seniors, in fact I'd say about a hundred percent seniors. And we merged with a struggling white church, the Chatsworth church that was established, probably one of the oldest churches in the valley.

SY: I see.

PS: So it's worked out well. It's helped me personally I think deal with some of my hangups that I've had. Because I've worked with white people all my life but never felt comfortable. So it's forced me to come to grips with that part and so it's been good for me.

SY: Because your church is very mixed ethnically.

PS: Yeah, it's some old...

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