<Begin Segment 11>

TI: Going back to more your family life now, as you're growing up, what exposure did you have with things that were Japanese or Japanese visitors?

HM: Well for one thing, I went to Nihon gakkou and that was every afternoon after regular after Bailey Gatzert or the junior high school, I used to go to Nihon gakkou. I used to be there from about four o'clock to maybe about five thirty or so. And so I was a student of Japanese language for quite a few years, from when I was six 'til I was twelve, so about six years. So I should have been pretty good in Japanese but we were more interested in goofing around than studying. And I had a very good teacher, Mrs. Hashiguchi was my teacher. And she tried her best to try to get us to learn Japanese because she knew we weren't dumb, but we acted like we were dumb. And we wouldn't do the things she told us to do. My mother would say, after I got term paper or exam, I would bring it to her and she would shake her head and say, oh, just mutter to herself. But [Chuckles] the fact that I was handing good papers in at Bailey Gatzert but I was not so good in Japanese school and she was kind of bewildered as to why I was not trying as hard in Nihon gakkou. Anyway...

TI: And why weren't you trying so hard?

HM: I was getting too propagandized by the Bailey Gatzert system. I could say this now...[Laughs] But at that time I couldn't perceive what I was going through. In my own mind, I couldn't fathom that I was consciously being biased against things Japanese and being, like, a total American. I guess I was too naive at that point to understand some of these things.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.