<Begin Segment 17>

VY: Did you ever, so when your family had time to do things, like say, do you remember when you were a kid, going to picnics or anything like that with other families?

NH: It was usually church sponsored, or prefecture or something like that, we would go.

VY: So those were mostly Japanese American?

NH: Yeah. And my grandmother and mother, I guess, would make an obento type of Japanese food, they'd have activities for kids, sack race and all that kind of stuff. Actually that was, fairly, only exposure, before church, attended church on a regular basis.

VY: With other Japanese Americans?

NH: Yeah. My dad would visit a few families here and there that he knew, but we never played with (these) kids, too far away.

VY: Too far away. So how often do you think that happened when you would have these picnics?

NH: Once a year maybe.

VY: Once a year, so not very often. Do you remember meeting other kids and what you thought of each other?

NH: No, I don't remember.

VY: You were probably little.

NH: Yeah, except when we would go to church. Junior high school, part of high school, I kind of went to church, too. Locally, San Lorenzo.

VY: Did you like church, did you like going to church?

NH: Not really, shhh. [Laughs]

VY: Did you learn Japanese when you were a kid?

NH: I took Japanese, no, I didn't. I didn't want to go to Japanese school, I didn't want to take piano lessons, I should have, to be musically... I don't know. When I went to Cal, I took Japanese One at Cal. Flunked it. [Laughs] I thought I could learn all the kanji or all the hiragana just before the final, that's how stupid I was. I thought I could memorize it. That's (just) when my mother passed away, just before. Passed away in December, so we were on a semester basis.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.