Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Hiroko Nakashima Interview
Narrator: Hiroko Nakashima
Interviewer: Tracy Lai
Location: Seattle, Washington
Date: October 15, 1999
Densho ID: denshovh-nhiroko-01-0025

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TL: You mentioned earlier that when she had told you and your sister that she wanted you to have a Japanese high school education, that she had these hopes for you. After you got to Japan and, of course, you did all that, you did the high school and, of course, there was the war, did she come around to accepting that you both still wanted to go back to America or did she hope that going to school would change your mind about that or did she just leave it to your choice?

HN: I think she left it to our choice because, well, I kept saying I was going back all during the war. I kept saying I wasn't going to stay in Japan. That's why she let me go. She said, "Okay, if you want to go back, you go back." But maybe if she knew if the war was going to start, I don't think we would have gone back in 1939 because it was all of a sudden when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. I don't think anyone knew because they were still negotiating or something, the prime minister in Washington, D.C.

TL: It must have been hard for her, not knowing what would happen and not being able to talk it over with your dad.

HN: Uh-huh.

TL: And just having to wait.

HN: Oh, yeah. Because no one knew how long they would last, the war. But after the atom bomb, when they bombed Hiroshima and then Nagasaki, I guess Japan decided it was about time we ended the war. The whole country was suffering. Yes. So I think, most of the people I talked to, the people in Japan, they were all really happy that it ended because I think the people in Japan were suffering more than the people in the United States, yeah.

<End Segment 25> - Copyright © 1999 Densho. All Rights Reserved.