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BY: Earlier you talked, you said something about going to Japan. When did that happen and how, what influence did that have on you?

CH: So I was at U of O.

BY: Okay, in Eugene?

CH: In Eugene.

BY: Okay.

CH: And it was around '76, and I had been studying History of Japan, and I can remember slamming the book down and running out of class because I was so angry. It's like, why didn't I learn Japanese? Why didn't my parents teach me Japanese? I wouldn't be going through all of this, all these questions. I read about a clan that came from China during the Shin Dynasty that was all given the name Hata. So I started writing my uncle, who held a lot of the history, and my dad's side got letters back and he said, "Oh, you're connected to this rich history," and a lot of samurai on that side of my family. I just wanted to go to Japan. And so also during this time of identity, I think that was the trip that I wanted to find a new name. And my dad said, he wouldn't even talk about it, like no, no, no. But my mom, who'd never been to Japan, said, "I'll go." So my mother and I went to Japan, leaving my three kids at home with their dad for a month, almost a month. And traveled, we had made contact with some family there, and the trip was all arranged. And we stayed with, it would be my mother's cousin from my mother's mother's side, and her daughters. So just these four women staying in Tokyo and getting to know each other, discovering Japan.

BY: Did you speak Japanese?

CH: No.

BY: How about your mom?

CH: Oh, yes.

BY: Okay.

CH: Probably really rough because she went to Nihongakko in Hood River.

BY: And then she'd been living in Des Moines, Iowa.

CH: And then she'd been living in Des Moines.

BY: Right.

CH: And that Japanese was older Japanese that they learned. But she could understand, so she roughly spoke.

BY: And so that was an important experience for you?

CH: Yes, it was definitely a life changing experience. And my mom was pretty funny because I guess right before that time, I'd always talk about identity, and she could see my struggle of the questions. Who am I and what are my roots? I remember one day in particular she said, "So I was walking down the street" -- this is my mother saying -- "and I saw an Asian woman coming in my direction and I crossed the street. Is that what you mean when you talk about denial?" I was like, "Yes." [Laughs] Like there's something, because I was talking about my identity so much that she thought about it. But when we went to Japan, it was kind of a curious thing. She had never worn a kimono, so in Japan our family dressed us and we went to some garden. The first thing she saw, a hakujin guy, she's like, "Well, hi, I'm from Iowa. Where are you from?" and I'm like, oh my gosh. [Laughs] But she was, didn't shy away from who she was, where she was from. She didn't try to pretend she was Japanese in Japan, she's knew who she was, she knew who she was.

BY: Interesting. And she had a, for a Nisei, I think, kind of an unusual experience growing up and living for so long in Iowa.

CH: Yeah, definitely. And she was wasn't the person to sit around. She went back to college, she became a docent at the art museum, she loved architecture, and she loved to fish.

BY: That must have been from her Hood River days.

CH: I think so. So when she was teaching little children in the Home Start program, she always took them fishing. She wanted to be sure that everybody knew how to put a worm on a hook. She didn't care if they kept the fish, she just wanted them to be able to put the worm on the hook. [Laughs]

BY: That's great. Okay, so then, so that was an important experience for you.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.