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LT: So you lived in a predominately black community. Did you keep in touch with your Japanese culture?

GI: Well, you don't do anything intently at that age, but I was exposed to things like, we had the Shinto shrine that you light incense and pray to, and we, my father would have these samurai artifacts like a samurai doll or something with authentic armor, miniaturized. And he would have a ceramic war horse with an elaborate saddle and the rider on top of it, and that sort of thing.

LT: Did you ask him about them?

GI: Not really. We just kind of knew that that sort of thing came out every, maybe on Boy's Day or something like that. I remember he would fly the carp kites and that sort of thing, so maybe around Boy's Day that sort of thing came out.

LT: Were there other Japanese celebrations with the community or with family which you participated?

GI: Sure. The Ota family, all the seven uncles and aunts and their offspring, our cousins, and the DB Boys' families' friends and other friends, we would all go to Griffith Park in the summer, like maybe every other year or so. And they would build a stage. I would take, just like our aunt would take into the camps, and our cousins who were now grown, would be the dancers, and there would be games and potato sack races and prizes and great food and just a wonderful time.

LT: What kind of food?

GI: Japanese food, whatever you can imagine there was. Although talking about food, one of the big feasts was at New Year's. And my father, being from San Pedro, would always go to San Pedro to get these huge lobster tails, or lobsters with the heads and all that, and the antennae and all that sort of stuff. And we would always have a huge lobster feast with all the trimmings, and I remember, in the summer, he would go and bring back these huge jars of abalone, of brined, pickled or something abalone. And us four kids would devour that in about a day.

LT: Your parents had both lived in Japan, so at home, what language did they speak?

GI: They spoke, between themselves, it seemed like when we were younger, it was almost all Japanese, it seemed that way. And in the store, of course, it would be English, but it was a good mix of the two. But I wanted to mention about food, one of the things I do remember from my mom is she knew how to make nappa tsukemono, and you put the leaves in the water and the brine and you put a rock on top of it and let it sit and ferment, and she would make great nappa tsukemono, I remember that.

LT: We talked about language, and when you were younger, your parents spoke primarily Japanese. Did you learn Japanese from your parents?

GI: No. The only thing I learned, and I can't even remember what it is, but whenever you would go to school as a child you would say, "I'm leaving now," and then your mother would say, "Please come back," and then when you came home you would say in Japanese, "I have arrived home," and the mother would say, "Welcome back." That's sort of the sing-songy little exchanges, but then after maybe five or six or seven, that would kind of go away and you would just be a regular American at that point.

LT: Do you remember as a kid any special get-togethers that your father had with his friends?

GI: Sure. I remember... I must have only been about three years old, because I was still crawling around on the floor. And I remember he and his, it turned out to be his DB Boy friends would come over and you have to kind of picture this. Our little tiny house was, the dining area, kind of like a kitchenette, and then behind there was a little tiny kitchen, and then behind there was a little washroom with one of those washing machines where you crank through the clothes. And then right on this side of the kitchenette was a little door that went into our kids room and there were two bunkbeds, so we slept four of us there. And so when these men would come over to play cards and party, it was like you hear all this riot going outside your door, you can't go to sleep. So I would sneak out and I would crawl under the table, and I can remember looking up and just never seeing anybody. But the image that I had in my mind was like they were pirates from a Disney movie. And I would imagine them in their hats and coats and swords and all that kind of thing, and doing what pirates do.

LT: Your mother had been incarcerated during World War II. Did she talk about it, did you learn about it as you were growing up?

GI: No, I didn't know anything about that until I had a chance to visit Japan where my father had died. And in the family graveyard, I was shown his tombstone and there's a lot of writing on the back in Japanese. And I asked my cousin about that and she said, "Oh, that's the name of the man who was with your father when he protested the internment." And I had no idea of that story, and when I came back to America from that trip, I asked my mother and she said the reason she didn't tell us sons was because it was around the '50s and the McCarthy era and this whole syndrome going down, and they didn't want us to become politicized like the Rosenberg kids or something like that. And they wanted us to gain our majority before we were found out so we could make our own minds up about what they had done.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.