<Begin Segment 5>

TI: So the question, is there like a story or a person that just shows your interaction with a Japanese American or the Japanese American community, like something you would attend. I'm just trying to establish that you knew the Japanese American, Japanese Americans. Is there like a story that you have?

JS: Well, I don't know. I guess, well, two things. One, I had a very, very good friend who was a Japanese American girl, her name was Lucy Ikeda, and we stayed in touch over the years. In fact, when I was... I don't know what I was doing at the time, maybe when I was at Social Security. She had gotten married and moved to New Jersey and had put in a request and asked me if I could come speak to a group there in New Jersey, and I went up there and spoke with her, and I went and did the speech. And I have to say, it was really kind of odd because here was a Japanese American girl who was born in Hawaii, grew up in Hawaii, and had moved to New Jersey. And it was really odd to hear her talking with a New Jersey accent. I looked at her and said, I want to make sure you're the right girl. I'd say that one of the, a Japanese American person who made a tremendous impact on me was my biology teacher in the tenth grade, his name was Mitsuo Yuichi, and he'd say, "You call me 'You Itchy,' I'll tell you, 'Me Scratchy.'" [Laughs] It was in the tenth grade and he said, "I'm going to teach you like you have to learn when you go to college," and he made the biology course very interesting, and I got good grades, I worked hard there. We stayed in touch for a while. He became a legislator in Hawaii and he's passed away, I guess, a number of years now. But when I'd have to go out there for some reason in Hawaii, I would always look him up and we'd have lunch or breakfast or something like that, but he was a real impact on me.

TI: Yeah, that's good. Your story about the woman from Hawaii going to Jersey and having a Jersey accent, that reminded me. So you were sort of being raised primarily on the mainland, and high school, you go to Honolulu. When I go to Honolulu, especially when I'm in the community, people, the locals talk sort of in this pidgin English, it's very informal. So they probably thought you talked funny when you first got there, or did you adapt?

JS: Well, actually, it took, I guess, maybe almost two years before I would call myself a hapa haole.

TI: Okay, right.

JS: And you pick up pidgin. People sometimes could speak real good pidgin and also real good English. It's an affectation in Hawaii and when you find some newcomer or something like that, you talk a lot of pidgin in order to make sure they don't understand what you're saying.

TI: And as you say, the ability to switch back and forth. I mean, one example, Senator Inouye, who was incredibly articulate and formal, and when you talked to him in D.C. he talks a certain way, when he's with his buddies, he would talk differently, and that pidgin would come up. It's just interesting to see how those can switch back and forth as an example.

JS: Every once in a while I use it when I meet someone from Hawaii or if I'm out there or something like that, I'll do a little pidgin.

TI: I love that we're sharing this, because it will help people understand who you are and the connection to, I think, the culture, the community and all that.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.