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TI: Well, let's talk about your father a little bit more, because he's Kibei, so at one point did he go back? How old was he?

JT: My father was born in San Francisco, was sent to Japan for education when he was about five years old. Came back when he was about nineteen, so he is a true Kibei. He spoke mainly Japanese, he had very hackneyed kind of English, but with us he spoke Japanese, and we understood him. As we got older and we started losing the language, with a couple of my brothers he would talk to them in English, such as his English was. It was a mix of English and Japanese. With me, he kept talking to me in Japanese.

TI: So were you the oldest?

JT: No, I'm the youngest. I'm the youngest of four boys, and we were, between my oldest brother and me, there's a five-year difference. So it was one after another, and I was the last one. And my father, in fact, said to me when I was thirteen years old, I was helping him wash the car, and he says to me in Japanese, however you say it, "You know, you were the last disappointment." And I carried that for probably four or five years, thinking, "Oh, crap, this is what he thought of me." And my mother said, "Oh, no, it wasn't that he was disappointed in you, we were hoping for a girl. And when you turned out to be a boy, that was it, no more babies."

TI: Oh, interesting how you interpret that.

JT: Yeah. And he never told me that, he just said, "You're our final disappointment." And I'm thinking, well, I don't live up to my brothers, because they weren't disappointments. And I once told him, "You know, that was kind of mean of you." He didn't know what I was talking about, he didn't remember. Oh, you know, it's just this chitter-chatter you do with your father when you're doing something.

TI: But you carried that, thinking you were never going to be good enough for him.

JT: Yeah. And then I would think about all those situations I got in as a younger kid, that I was the one who was sort of the kozuro, and getting into trouble. And things like in school, if a teacher really demonstrated a lot of racism, like, "Japs are all really evil people," I would say something. I knew the principal's office pretty well. Not so much in elementary, because I didn't have the confidence or the wit about me to challenge a teacher. And teachers in elementary school are generally pretty nice, and there were so many Japanese kids, they were fine with us. It was when we got to junior high school that I started encountering that. I would stand up or raise my hand and say something, and get sent to the principal.

TI: So this great, because you are kind of this pattern of really standing up to things. I'm not sure exactly where that fighter, sort of, mentality came from, I mean, it came from the streets, your father, from maybe being the fourth son, having older brothers, but it's clear that you were, at a young age, a fighter.

JT: I think it's 'cause I kept thinking I'm the final disappointment. [Laughs] I don't know where it came from. Because my grandfather, who was one of the biggest influences on my life, was such a calm and peaceful man. He was a real classic Issei, he was all of these things, and we put the Issei on pedestals. We sort of glorify the Issei. A lot of them were drunkards and roustabouts, and playing around with women, but we forgave that part of their lives because we appreciated what they gave us.

TI: But it sounds like your grandfather, you still hold on that pedestal.

JT: Yeah, I do, except I did see him once drunk and smoking, and it shocked me. It was almost traumatizing, I sort of peeked in a window and I thought, that's Ojiichan and he's drinking sake and had a cigarette in his hand, although he never smoked. But that was what the Issei were like. I mean, my grandfather would do that when he went to visit a friend who owned a farm, and so we'd stay in one of the workers' sheds. And he would go to the farmhouse at night after I was supposed to be asleep, and I was awake and I snuck out and went over to the farmhouse and was looking through the window and there he was, drinking away. I never had seen a drink...

TI: And he was probably hiding that from you, too.

JT: Yeah.

TI: That's so funny.

JT: But that was the way we viewed the Issei.

TI: See, it's so different, my grandfather loved to drink. I remember going there, and I'm like five or six, and he's trying to have me drink whiskey, like taste it. And I thought, oh, this was just horrible that he could do that. [Laughs]

JT: I did that with sake. One New Year's, my father's friends came over, all men, and they're sitting and drinking sake. I was probably about eleven or twelve years old, and so I kind of snuggled my way in and I'm sitting there, and I asked his one man if I could taste the sake. My dad said no and told me to leave, these other men said, "Ah, let him have it." So I drank some, and I thought, "This isn't bad." So they gave me a second one, you know, these little cups. So I think, "Oh, I can handle this."

TI: And you just knock it back?

JT: Yeah, because I'd watch them. So I had a couple of them and then my dad said, "You should go." I got up and stumbled and fell, I couldn't get back up. [Laughs]

TI: And they all laughed.

JT: Of course, they're just roaring with laughter.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.