<Begin Segment 26>
MN: You went to Japanese school at Crystal City. What was that like?
MT: Oh, it was regular Japanese school. You have the classrooms and everything. There, you know, there's a Bonsan, the preachers, they were fluent in Japanese and they know how to teach, so they were the teachers. So we were, like the one that we had was a very good teacher, but he was a preacher. He'd tell you something, you'd better listen. It isn't one of those, like in America where you'd get away with it. He says, "Listen," and you listen.
MN: How many days a week did you go to Japanese school?
MT: Five days.
MN: How many hours a day?
MT: Whole day, eight hours. So we learned quite a bit of Japanese before we went to Japan.
MN: Is that why you started to go to Japanese school?
MT: Yeah. That's why we really, I studied a lot in Crystal City. I wanted to learn how to write and all that, I learned as much as I could there. Because I knew, my father kept saying, "We're gonna go to Japan." "We don't want to go." "No, we're gonna go." We knew we were gonna go.
MN: Who in your family wanted to go to Japan?
MT: Well, my father thought my brother was still alive there, for one thing, and he was the oldest son. He thought that, hey, everything there is gonna be mostly his. So he thought that if he goes over there, he won't have to starve or anything like that. He was really mistaken.
MN: What about your mother?
MT: She didn't want to go. She wanted to stay back, my brother and I, we both wanted to stay back, but my father said, no, we're going to go back, so we went back.
MN: So you never thought about, "Well, I'm going to stay, you can go back by yourself"?
MT: No. We weren't raised that way. We were raised so you listen to the father. He is the boss.
MN: Were you in Crystal City when you heard that the war was over?
MT: Uh-huh, oh, yeah. We left Crystal City and then we came to California again and got on the boat. We were... gee, what would you say? When the war ended and they said, "You can go back," we were the first boat back to Japan. As a matter of fact, we were on the ship that was a flat bottom boat, it's not the regular v-shape. Well, for crossing the ocean it should be v-shape, but this was a flat bottom boat that was used between interisland in Hawaii. So going back was rough, oh, boy. We hit a storm, we stood in the back of the ship and we couldn't see... like that. Yeah, it goes up and fall down, then the water just splash out. Then the soldiers, "Hey, get away from the railing. You fall overboard, we're not going to rescue you. If you fall over, we're going to throw you a life vest and that's it, you're on your own." So we stayed away. But that's how it was, because the soldiers are there, they had bullets in their guns.
MN: How bad did you get motion sickness?
MT: Well, I didn't get seasick, neither did my brother. My mother and father, they didn't get sick, but she was on the same boat. [Indicates wife.] She said she got on the ship sick until she got off the ship. That was two weeks. She didn't eat too much. That flat bottom boat, so it was rough, very rough. But what can we say? They were using that to carry the troops overseas. If it's good for the troops, it's good for those "Japs."
MN: What month was this?
MT: Oh, they got into Tokyo Bay on Christmas Eve, '45.
MN: So going back a little bit, when you heard that the war was over and Japan had lost, how did you feel?
MT: Gee, I didn't think too much, I was too busy going to school. Only thing is, hey, I got to learn, I got to learn, I got to learn.
<End Segment 26> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.