<Begin Segment 6>

EG: Now you were, you were born in America and went back to Japan and were in this school system as a child. Was there anything special about you then in this school because of where you came from?

TM: No. I, I felt I was no different from anybody else. Because I was so small and when I grew up, of course, I only spoke Japanese and the rest of the children accepted me as one of 'em. I didn't feel any, anything different, except after I started to go to high school. Then I guess maybe I told them that I was born in this country, United States, and that after I grow up, I was to come back here. And my friends talked about it, and they expected me to do that.

EG: So they, did they in high school, the students all knew that you had been born in America and had come back to Japan?

TM: Yes.

EG: And you at that time were thinking and planning that you would return to America?

TM: Yes.

EG: You were telling the other students that...

TM: Yes.

EG: "One day I will go back to America."

TM: Yes, that's correct.

EG: And then you finished school in Japan. You graduated from high school.

TM: Yes. After six years, six years in grammar school, I started to go to high school, which was five years. So the total education was eleven years those days. After grammar school those days, at least from our grammar school, I think about fifteen percent went to high school. The rest of them...

EG: Just, just that small number?

TM: ...couldn't go. They were too poor. High school required tuition.

EG: And your family was able to send you, your grandparents. You were living with your grandparents?

TM: No, but my father sent money to my grandfolks. And by the time I was to start high school, my mother -- the stepmother, stepmother because my mother died -- stepmother came back to Japan and, with my stepbrother and sister. So she was in Japan when I started high school.

EG: She was living in Japan?

TM: Yes.

EG: When you started high school with your, with your step-siblings, your brother and two sisters, but your father was still in Seattle?

TM: He went back to Japan a few times. But when I started to go to high school, he wasn't there. My mother took me to high school and registered and let me take the entrance examination and all that. She did all that for me.

EG: And, then you did finish high school in Japan. You would have been what, about eighteen, seventeen, eighteen years old?

TM: Seventeen.

EG: You were seventeen then.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.