<Begin Segment 8>

TL: What are some of your favorite memories of activities that you did with your mother, your father?

YB: You know in those days -- I don't know if it is the same with the Chinese oriental family -- but the older parents, fathers especially, don't have, didn't have too much to do with children. It was usually the mothers. So whether it's education, or activities, or church going, or whatever it was always the mother that had to say something. And being raised by the Yamada mother, I did go to church, very faithfully. Went to language school, then she taught me the characters at home. I said, "I don't want to learn all that chicken scratch." She said, "Oh, dear." She says, "Don't speak that way." She says, "Respect your grandparents. [Laughs] They need you [Inaudible] in writing and reading and everything." So I really got called on the carpet. But she did, she was very well educated in character writing and speaking, she'd correct me every time. So that if I would be with other people, they said I was too polite. But then, having had teachers in our family for a... what do they call that language school. It's a school where nothing but nobility went. And that is where my aunt taught. And when her daughter came to this country, I could not understand her language, it was so polite. But Mother put me in her home for a year, and I didn't dare open my mouth. She spoke English much faster than I learned Japanese. And spoke beautiful English. They say if you speak good Japanese you can learn English as well. And she did, she learned very fast.

TL: You mentioned that your mother put her in her home for you? I mean that you lived in Japan or...?

YB: Here. In the States. She had two little children and I was there with them, and went to school. So I'd listen to her talk and I'd have to respond in the same way. And not use your everyday language. And if there was anything wrong, I would have to be corrected. So when I went to (Japan)... that was before, but if I did speak with people who came from Japan, they said, "Have you been to Japan before?" And I said, "No. I hadn't gone yet, then." They said, "Well for that you speak very good Japanese." But I was constantly being corrected, "That is not the language women use, or girls use; only men are permitted to use a sort of a rough type of Japanese." And when you have people working for you, men, and you hear it constantly, you're going to use the same language.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.