<Begin Segment 2>

BN: So somehow, your mom and dad got married, and then they lived in San Francisco Japantown.

HT: Yeah, all the time.

BN: And then where were you in the order of your siblings?

HT: Okay, let's see. I think I'm not the oldest one. (Number three.) I think my mother was married before, and she had my older sister. And then I think, I don't know if her husband died or something like that, but then my mother married my father. So I had an older brother, I had an older brother who passed away when he was relatively young, and he did get married and all that, and I was the next one. But we were always in Japantown, very active in the Konko church.

BN: Did you have to go to Japanese school?

HT: I don't remember going to Japanese school, but I learned (how to speak), because who I married was a Kibei, so I learned Japanese more so because he's a Kibei. But my Japanese isn't really good, it's what I learned from going to church and things like that.

BN: What kinds of things did you do with the church in terms of, you said they were pretty active.

HT: Well, I was, Fukuda-sensei, Fukuda-sensei, the Fukuda family is very big, to this day, they're very active. And I used to be, I was a good friend with one of the daughter, the one daughter, so we were always at church, and we were active doing everything, helping. Because the Konko church was right there on Bush Street, and then the Konko church owned a couple of the homes. And then in the backyard, we always played, all the kids from the church would come and play, and we had a basketball court, so it was a place where kids used to hang out. And they weren't necessarily members of our church, but they would hang out just to play basketball or things like that.

BN: How big was the Konko church community? Was it a fairly large...

HT: When it first started, it was very small. It was like a house, but then later on, they bought the whole corner of the Bush Street and Laguna, they bought that whole area. When we were growing up, it was a very small place.

BN: Was there... because most of the other Japanese were Buddhist and some were Christian, did you feel differently from the other kids, or did the other kids who weren't Konko, was it something that was...

HT: No, I know the Buddhist and the Christian church were the real rich people, kind of stuff, and I think the Konko church, like our family, we were very poor, because my father just had a job, Japanese thing and things like that. So when we were growing up, we were not really rich. And so all of us were, even like when I was a kid, like you were saying, we were in Hunters Point, and I used to deliver newspaper from when we were early kids. But we always worked, all of us worked.

BN: Was it your sense then that the other Konko families tended to be also sort of poorer?

HT: Yeah, I don't think they were really, really... but then they became, Fukuda-sensei was very smart, and then he became adventurous and he bought property. And he was very, you know how Japanese people, when the war started, and they went to camp, and then a lot of, Fukuda-sensei went to the camp and then a lot of, what is it, they were from, what is it, South America, there were Japanese that were sent to the camps, too. And then when they would not accept them back into camp, so Fukuda-sensei brought them to San Francisco, and we lived in a house, one house, Victorian house, we lived in a downstairs one, and it was just a living room and kitchen and a dining room, we were on the first floor, and upstairs it was a gentleman from South America who was just by himself, and he wanted to go back and he couldn't. And there was another family with children that lived in... three of us lived in that one, and then they were from Peru, too. And Fukuda-sensei brought him back because they had nowhere else to go, and he brought him back. He was that type of a person.

BN: We'll get to that in a little bit. Do you remember where you went to elementary school before the war?

HT: It was the one on... let's see now, up on the hill, it's on Fillmore Street, and it's way up past Sacramento, I forget. Where we were, there was a school there. I went to grammar school, and after that, I went to Marina. And then I went to the one on... what is it? I'm terrible. (Narr. note: George Washington High.)

BN: With names, huh?

HT: Yeah.

BN: That's okay. Later on you can add in the details later. Living in Japantown, I assume that most of your friends are also Japanese.

HT: Japanese, right, right.

BN: And then in your household, did you speak Japanese? Because your mom's Nisei.

HT: Yeah, but my father was Kibei. No, my father was --

BN: Issei.

HT: Issei.

BN: So did you speak Japanese?

HT: Little bit, yeah, a little bit.

BN: Did your mother, I assume your mother spoke Japanese well?

HT: Yeah, because her father was from Japan. I don't know if she could write or anything like that, but she could verbalize.

BN: What were the earliest things you remember growing up in Japantown? What were your first conscious memories?

HT: We used to... I used to go with my friends and we used to walk to the beach. We would have roller skates and we would do things like that. I'm trying to think, because Konko church was there, and then the Buddhist church was really big, and the Christian church was really big in comparison. But as the Konko church got bigger and bigger, it is one of the most beautiful ones right now, in existence. But the Fukuda-sensei family is very supportive, even now.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.