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SY: Okay, today is January 31, 2012. We're in the home of Hy and Mitsi Shishino, and we're talking to Hy Shishino; Mitsi's here in the room. It's, we're in Cerritos, California. My name is Sharon Yamato, and Tani Ikeda is on camera. So Hy, can we start with you giving us your full name and date and place you were born?

HS: Well, my first name is Hayao, but that's hard for the hakujins to pronounce it, so that's how it got shortened to Hy when I was, I think I was in high school when it happened. But I was born in Los Angeles, California, June 25, 1924.

SY: And did you have a middle name, or was it just Hayao?

HS: No, just Hayao. And teachers couldn't pronounce it; one of 'em called me Heso. You know what heso means? [Laughs] Bellybutton.

SY: [Laughs] So that, Hy has stuck ever since?

HS: Well, one of my, in high school, one of my Jewish friends, I was absent on Yom Kippur, so he says, "Thank you for observing our holiday." I said, "No, (Paul), I was sick." He said, "No, no. You observed our holiday, so we're gonna make you an honorary Jew." [Laughs] And that's how, they started calling me Hyman, and that's how it got shortened to Hy.

SY: Interesting.

HS: Yeah, I'm an honorary Jew. [Laughs]

SY: So your parents were from what part of Japan?

HS: It's Kagoshima, southern part of Japan.

SY: And both your mother and father were from Kagoshima?

HS: Yeah. And they have a dialect that only Kagoshima people can understand. Not many people have ever heard Kagoshima-go.

SY: Really? And your, is that what your mother and father spoke?

HS: That's all they spoke, but they called it the spy language because nobody outside of Kagoshima could understand what they're saying when they used their own dialect.

SY: Is that true to today?

HS: Yes, it's true today.

SY: Wow. And Kagoshima was also notable for other...

HS: Well, they're samurai were considered the best of its time, and so they were the most trusted samurai in Japan for several hundred years.

[Interruption]

SY: So what did your father do in Kagoshima?

HS: Well, he was only nineteen when he came to America by himself.

SY: And do you know why he decided to come to America?

HS: About that time, the samurai, there was no jobs for them once peace was declared and Japan was unified, and so most all the young people at the time, they had nothing to look forward to. So my father came, was it 1900? No... 1910? I forget which one of 'em. He came when he was nineteen years old, he came to America first.

SY: And did he have brothers and sisters in Japan?

HS: Yeah, he was chonan, but I don't know how many brothers and sisters he had. Never really thought about that.

SY: So you didn't know your grandparents, then, his parents?

HS: I never met the grandparents. They, but my, I think my sister-in-law made a family, of the branches and how the, both sides of the family. It's somewhere in my papers, if I haven't thrown it away yet. [Laughs]

SY: But as far as you know, you didn't have a personal relationship with any aunts, uncles in Kagoshima?

HS: No, none of my uncles and aunts, I've, I've never even met 'em. Even though, of course I only went to Japan and I never went to Kagoshima 'cause it's too far south and we were on a, couldn't go down. There's sixteen of us, so we stayed 'round, went from Sapporo down backside of Japan, but my knowledge of, I never went to Japanese school, so my Nihongo is terrible.

SY: Really? So you didn't speak Japanese when you were young?

HS: Never. I only learned it, took me sixty years to learn what I can converse with now. [Laughs]

<End Segment 1> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.