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Title: Lawson I. Sakai Interview
Narrator: Lawson I. Sakai
Interviewer: Patricia Wakida
Location: Emeryville, California
Date: March 13, 2019
Densho ID: ddr-densho-1000-472-3

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PW: What was your full name when you were born then?

LS: It was Iichiro Sakai. People ask me, where did I get the name Lawson? Well, I'll explain it. I spoke Japanese at home, as all of us did, because our parents didn't speak English to speak of. So at age five, my older sisters were already in school, they dragged me off, and this is a Christian, Seventh Day Adventist, one house with two rooms. The elder minister taught five to eight, the wife taught one to four. The younger four ages are grouped, and he taught the larger group. Well, I didn't speak English, maybe one or two words. So I get into this classroom, and the teacher can't understand what I'm saying, and I can't understand what she's saying, so it took a while to get myself to learn enough English to be able to read and write and so forth. Well, as a young kid, you pick it up pretty fast. At some point, their name happened to be Mr. and Mrs. Lawson. They happened to be English, and they had been missionaries for the Seventh Day Adventist church. Well, Mrs. Lawson said, "You need an English name, so I'm just going to write 'Lawson' on your, everything on your paperwork, and then when you get older, you choose a name that you like and just replace it." Well, I never did. So all through grammar school, all through high school, junior college, I was Iichiro, whatever they wanted to call me. In 1943, when I volunteered to go to the 442nd, the military would ask you, "Last name, first name, middle initial." Well, everything is written "Lawson Iichiro Sakai," so I had to answer "Sakai, Lawson I." Ever since 1943, I became Lawson. So that's where the name came from.

PW: Did you regularly go to church in addition to the school?

LS: I didn't regularly go, but because my parents were Seventh Day Adventists, the White Memorial Church in Los Angeles is the biggest Seventh Day Adventist church. And it's connected to the College of Medical Evangelists in Loma Linda, California, which is nursing and medical doctor school. Well, a long story is, there was a missionary that went to Japan, became very fluent speaking Japanese. Mr. and Mrs. Herboltzheimer, German, well, the White Memorial Church had this big building, and the congregation would meet in there. But they had a basement room, and the Japanese, there were about twenty-five Japanese Issei that were members of the Japanese church. They would go in the basement, and Elder  Herboltzheimer would speak to them in Japanese, so they would correspond very well. So the Japanese really enjoyed it because they didn't have to learn English, they could understand the Japanese. But I used to go with them on Saturday. Sometimes I'd go to the church, sometimes I'd go down to the shops, I wasn't a very good churchgoer. Well, a lot of students, mostly from Hawaii, that wanted to go to medical school or nursing school, would end up from Hawaii going to Loma Linda, that's near Pomona. And as they would graduate, going into internship, they would come to the White Memorial Hospital, one of the largest hospitals in L.A., and do their basic, you might say, training there. Well, one of them was named Perry Sumida from Honolulu, very poor family. He worked his way through the school. He and my older sister started dating, this is in the late '30s. Well, in the late '30s, as he's dating her, my parents wanted me to go along as the chaperone. And so Perry had a classmate named Ernest Ching from Honolulu, that was in the same medical class. So the four of us would go wherever, to plays, some movies, car shows, whatever, the one night a week or a month I would go out. So Ernest would be my date, you might say, and we'd kind of break off, and he'd take me places, and even showed me how to eat a hot dog, which at Seventh Day Adventist, we never had meat. We had chicken, but very seldom had any meat, and hot dogs basically being pork, it was taboo, because Seventh Day Adventists don't eat pork. Well, Ernest, "Hey, try this, put some mustard on it." [Laughs] But most Hawaiian kids, even Seventh Day Adventists like Dr. Kuninobu, a famous doctor from Hawaii that graduated Loma Linda, he would eat the dried duck, he'd go to Chinatown in Los Angeles, pick up three or four of those ducks, break it, he'd pass it out to everybody, say, "Let's eat duck," when we'd have lunches. The Hawaiian people didn't have any problem eating... duck is a webbed foot bird, well, you know, that's the Old Testament in the Bible, they don't eat animals with, they call it cloven hoof, it's the hoof with the cut like this, or you don't eat fish without scales, like an eel, or you don't eat fowl with webbed feet. So those were taboo.

PW: Did your parents, were they involved in community events, or were they involved with any organizations?

LS: Only in church, because they worked six to seven days a week. But usually they took Saturday off, and that was their holy day and they went to church. And when they would be at church, they would look around and see if there were any Japanese people there, would be the youngest students in medical school during internship. Well, they would bring them home and give them a Japanese lunch and bring them back. So I got to know a lot of Hawaiian kids, and they're not kids, they're adults, but I got to meet a lot of them.

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