<Begin Segment 4>

BN: You mentioned your father had a pool hall?

JB: Uh-huh.

BN: Was that continuing into the war?

JB: No. He had a pool hall I understand, and then my brother tells me that he invested in the oil, and I guess there was a big oil boom until he lost all his money, so he had to go back to gardening again. And then depression hit, so it was the worst time for him. And I think just before we were evacuated, he was finally able to get a secondhand truck, and I remember that was one of the things he had to leave behind, and I don't know what happened to it or anything like that. But he had had his ups and downs. But the thing that kept my father going mostly was his gidayu and teaching that to the men. And he had quite a few students. And although I never learned gidayu myself, when the men would practice in our house, I could always tell when a man would hit the wrong note, and I'd go, oh, my god. [Laughs]

BN: Was this part of his livelihood? They would pay for this?

JB: Yeah, he was known as... they would call him shishou or sensei. So this was more his life than the gardening, the gardening was secondary. So growing up in that kind of atmosphere, I've always loved Japanese theater, Japanese dancing, even though I was never really good at it myself. I think my mother and father spent a lot of money on me thinking that one day I would probably become a natori or dancer. But war came and I never did follow through on that. But in camp, Santa Anita and also Rohwer, when the authorities finally decided that they would allow Japanese dancing, we were performing almost every weekend, Japanese dances. And that made the Isseis very happy. So Kansuma performed in Santa Anita, she performed in Rohwer, and then she was able to travel to different camps to perform and teach.

BN: And did you also go?

JB: No. I went to Jerome. About six of us went to Jerome to perform. But later on, in Denver, I did one or two recitals for her, but then she was here in Los Angeles so I didn't follow through with that too much. When I was about eighteen I was probably through dancing. But I recently went back to her a few years ago, and I was going to try to learn again, but my body doesn't move that way anymore, and I can't remember all the steps. But it was good to see her again because I enjoyed just being with her.

BN: Does she still teach at age one hundred?

JB: Yes, I think somebody... nobody has told her that she's a hundred, so she acts like she's fifty or sixty, she's remarkable in that she has the energy and the strength and the mind, she remembers everything. And I can't remember from week to week, but she remembers dances that she choreographed back before the war. She'll remember every dance that she choreographed. And her dances are, I think this is the genius part of her, she was able to not only do traditional Japanese dancing, which most people found kind of boring, she was able to tell stories with modern music, which would be like, what we would call maybe jazz in American music, she was able to be a contemporary dancer, and that was her talent. So it made the audience enjoy her dancing more, because it was not this traditional dance. She made it come alive with stories, samurai stories and things like that.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2018 Densho. All Rights Reserved.