<Begin Segment 6>

TI: So let's talk now about... because you said your father wanted to send you to Japan?

PF: Yeah.

TI: Because you were too much like a tomboy, you said?

PF: Yeah. And then my girlfriend said she cried three days, so she didn't get to go. And I said, "I didn't even cry when I left my father and mother." We just said goodbye and we left.

TI: Oh, so say that again. So your girlfriend was supposed to go to Japan, but she cried...

PF: Cried so much.

TI: So the parents said, okay...

PF: "You can't go." But she tells me that after I come back here, not before.

TI: Well, when your parents told you that you were going to go to...

PF: Japan.

TI: What did you think?

PF: Then I thought, "Oh, Japan, yeah. That'd be nice." It didn't even dawn that it was that far or anything, but the history I know, Japan is so small. How come we're going there? To learn Japanese. So my father said, "You have to go." And then my sister and I, we went together with my uncle. My father's next brother, they took us. So we didn't even cry. We just said, "Goodbye," and we went. And then my mother don't hug us or everything like that, it wasn't like that. She said, "You go and you study," she told me that, and then I said okay.

TI: And how long were you supposed to go to Japan? When they sent you there...

PF: Oh, five years.

TI: So they said, "Okay, Peggy, five years..."

PF: Five years, and then if you like it, you stay there, or whatever it's gonna come out to be. And I said, "Oh, I'd like to teach Japanese when I come back to America." So I said, oh, five years. But yeah, the war started and that was terrible.

TI: So before we go there, so how old were you when you went to Japan?

PF: Eleven. I was eleven, March, and then before, after Thanksgiving we went, right away. So it must be December, yeah.

TI: So you just turned...

PF: I was eleven.

TI: Eleven years old. And how about your sister, did she want to go to Japan?

PF: We decided together, but she didn't say that she like it or what's she gonna do. We went, my sister and I. And then my... see, we didn't go alone, my uncle went with us. So, and because he had his wife and his daughter in Japan, so I said, "Okay, we go." But I didn't think about, it was that far, you know. Yeah.

TI: So tell me about the journey or the trip to Japan. How did you go and how long did it take?

PF: I think around thirteen, fourteen days, they say, but I don't remember. But I got sick three days on the boat. But it was nice. Oh, and then the boat, the captain said, "You have to go up the deck." See we have to practice up the deck. And then I told him, "If the boat go down, I'll go down." [Laughs] I wasn't scared at all. Yeah, he said that, "The boat gonna go down, and where you gonna go?" I go down.

TI: But he wanted you to practice getting --

PF: Yeah, go up.

TI: -- into a lifeboat.

PF: But I was too sick to get up there. And I said, "No, I'm not going up." And then he brought the food down, but I couldn't eat it, no. I was too sick. But when the boat stop and we went Hawaii, I was the first one get up. And then we look Hawaii, yeah.

TI: Now did you have anyone in Hawaii that met you?

PF: No, no, nobody. We told 'em we're going Japan. They said, "Oh, yeah, that's nice." The Hawaii people said that, "That's nice." Boy, but when I went to Japan it was cold. Hawaii was like that, but Japan was cold.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.