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TI: Let's talk about your siblings from the oldest to the youngest. Can you tell me all your brothers and sisters?

JN: You want me to give you their names?

TI: Yes.

JN: Oh, my.

TI: And I'll help you. I have a list here, so if you forget one, I'll remind you.

JN: Yes, let me start with my elder sister Shizuka. Next we have Kyoka, then my brother Kazumi, I had another brother who passed away, his name was Kazuaki, and my sister Sumika, my name is Kazushige, Kazuharu, Kazumu.

TI: And so there were, in total, eight children, and one died, Kazuaki died when he was young. So I have a question. For all the boys, they all start with Kaz, the oldest to the youngest, and then the ending. Do you know why that was? Was that common?

JN: Oh, I don't know, I never asked my father. And also my sister ended up with K.

TI: The "ka," yeah, Shizuka, Kyoka, Sumika.

JN: Right.

TI: So no one knows why?

JN: No, I'm sorry, I don't know why.

TI: So I wanted to, we talked a little bit before the interview, I want you to describe first maybe the home that you lived in, what it was like, and kind of the rooms and as much as you can remember about your home in Peru.

JN: Well, I remember that home, but not the room. It was a large home, I would play in the shop. My sister Kyoka, she would do the cashier. My other sister Shizuka, she would do the tailoring part, and of course, my brother would do the laundry part. And I was eight years old, so most of the time I was at home. My sister Sumika, she had time to go to school there. I didn't get the chance to attend school at the time, even though I was (four years old). Uprising against the Peruvian Japanese, animosity against Peruvian Japanese, so I had no education at all. We had two nannies.

TI: Well, so let me follow up on that.

JN: Pardon?

TI: So you talked about this anti-Japanese kind of uprising, and so...

JN: Yes, it was too dangerous for me to go to school.

TI: So this happened, I think I read, like in 1940, May of 1940...

JN: Probably early '40s, well, it started in '39.

TI: And when you, did you ever talk to maybe your sisters about what it was like before and then what it was like after? Because you were pretty young, you were maybe only four years old when this happened so you may not remember. But did your sisters talk about how life changed for them?

JN: In Peru? No. I never talked with them or anything to do with war. We never talked.

TI: But for your life, because of the uprising, you didn't go to school, you stayed at home. Was that because the family didn't think it was safe for you, or why did you not go out?

JN: Well, it was kind of dangerous for me to go to school. I'm sure the family's business, everybody worked, must be the reason.

TI: And so for the business, who were the customers? Who would come in?

JN: I think the locals, but also the Japanese, the navy or any merchant ship that would come into Peru from Japan. All the business, he would bring it into his shop.

TI: With your customers or people like that, would anyone, did you ever get a sense that they maybe didn't like Japanese? I'm trying to understand the environment for Japanese.

JN: I didn't feel any of that, no. People were kind, the local people were very kind.

TI: How about when you had kind of free time and you weren't working, did you go out in the streets and play very much?

JN: No. Most of the time I would stay inside the house. Next to our main gate, and the window that I always look out all the time, see what's going on outside. Or if I'm not looking out there, I would go to the backyard and play by myself. I would gather some boxes and pretend it's making an airplane, I would then be by myself because my two brothers were really young. Tony was a month, not even one year, and George must have been about two.

TI: And how about your older brother? What did he do? Did he also stay in the house, or did he go out more?

JN: Oh, I don't remember if he went out, but he'd help out with the business inside the shop.

TI: And how about the sisters? Did they go out very much, or did they stay inside, too?

JN: Well, the others, they had a chance to go to school. But I don't know what happened when things got worse, if they stopped going to school.

YN: You mentioned that you didn't go to the school, but also I read that your father started a Japanese school? Do you remember about the school that your father started?

JN: Oh, was he, you're asking me, was he one of the founder of the school?

TI: Yeah, the Japanese school. Do you remember anything about that school?

JN: No, I don't remember. This is something I heard later on.

TI: So you never went to Japanese school.

JN: No. Like I said, no education at all.

TI: So during the day, were there, didn't that concern your parents or your sisters? Like they said, oh, you need to have some schooling, you need to learn how to read or write or anything?

JN: No. I never asked them, they never told me anything. So I was wondering why.

TI: Yeah. Because you're now, later on, you're getting older, like six, seven, eight years old, you must be getting a little, what's the right word? Like more energy, you wanted you do more things, right?

JN: Exactly.

TI: As far as just living in a house with a backyard, you want to see more. Do you remember that time? Was it hard?

JN: I remember sometimes probably the whole family would go together, especially on weekends, probably, go out and have some ice cream or go to the beach, but not often enough. So for me, it was like being in the house most of the time. Like (being six) years old, I want to really do something. I had no friends.

YN: So in Callao, there are so many Japanese immigrants there at that time. So you don't have any interaction, not that many interactions with other immigrant kids?

JN: No, I don't.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.