<Begin Segment 18>

TL: So in your home, did you mostly speak Japanese?

YB: I would speak English to my uncle. My mother says that, "You're to speak Japanese at home. Otherwise you'll never learn." And if I'm wrong, she would correct me; (and say), "Women should never speak that way, this is what you should say." Or, "It's rude to... speak to someone," and you would say it in some way and make corrections like that. And then I got so sensitive... other people doing it, how come I can't. [Laughs] But sooner or later I learned quite a bit from her.

TL: How old were you when you went to the Japanese language school?

YB: I must have been eighteen, seventeen. I was late --

TL: And did you have to go far because...?

YB: No, it was just around the block.

TL: Oh, okay.

YB: Only to learn that the minister's wife, a very lovely person, came from Sendai, and the prefecture if you know it... Sendai --

TL: Uh-huh.

YB: And, there they speak the zsu-zsu, everything is... they can't say osushi, they say ozsuzsu. They can't say this "sh." And they can't shinbo, have a very, like it's in their mouth and they call it zsu-zsu languages. So she was that and when I came home from school, Mother says, "Well, how was your Japanese language school? What did you learn?" Well our teacher said, "Uh oh." She said, "You're all going to be speaking the zsu-zsu language!" So it didn't last too long because we would all be learning that type of language. So I concentrated more on character learning, how to write rather than language.

TL: And did you learn that mostly from your mother?

YB: The... basic... tool I learned at school. And then Mother would try to teach me, which I didn't -- would write me letters and then explain why this was used and where you can use it. And try to teach me through the letter writing. And then she passed away, so I didn't learn any more.

TL: Well --

YB: She was interested in education, very much so.

TL: Yes, yes.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.