<Begin Segment 6>

TL: Okay. I'm wondering about when you first learned that you and your sister would be going to Japan. Do you remember how you found out or what you were told?

HN: Oh, my sister had finished grade school, eighth grade, and my mother said she wanted us to go to high school in Japan. And she said she wanted us to get a Japanese education. I guess she was kind of lonesome too, she wanted to meet, see her brother and sister in Japan. So it was during the summer. We thought we were just going to go back for summer vacation or something. But it ended up we had to go to school over there. That was in 1939. And since our Japanese wasn't that good we thought we should learn more. So our uncle, he was a former school teacher, and he taught us some Japanese during the summer. And then we started grade school that fall.

TL: Before that trip had you ever been out of Spokane? Had you at least gone into Seattle or --

HN: Oh --

TL: Other cities?

HN: We went to Japan when I was about two years old.

TL: Oh. To visit the same relatives? Your mother's family?

HN: Yes.

TL: Had you visited your father's family, too?

HN: I think we did. But my father, he lost his parents when he was quite young. So he had a older sister that lived in Basara, and she took over the name and the land. My father, he had to give it up when he came over. But we went and visited them, too.

TL: Did you, when the trip was being explained to you, was it clear that your mother would also stay with you while you were going to high school, or did you kind of think that you might be just staying with her relatives and she would return to help your father?

HN: No. She wanted to stay over there. She didn't say she wanted to stay there indefinitely. But my father, he came back with us, too, and stayed for about, couple (of) months. Then he had to go back. In the meantime, the war started in 1941. That was when we were in high school.

TL: So you mentioned that you went back in the summer, and I'm wondering if you remember, oh, what kinds of things you packed.

HN: We took the piano back with us.

TL: That must have been hard. [Laughs]

HN: I know. But all the kids around there kind of envied us 'cause we had a piano. And we made friends, and they wanted to come and play on the piano. And when I was in grade school, when the, the school used to have a gathering and the kids used to sing, they wanted me to play the piano. But we didn't take lesson after that, after we went back to Japan. It was too expensive.

TL: So you took the piano. And did you take all your clothes and all your favorite things, or did you have to make some choices about what could come and what had to stay?

HN: I think we just took our clothes back with us 'cause we didn't really have that many furniture, since you live in hotel. But after the war started my mother had to sell the piano for, since my father couldn't send the money. He was sending money back for, so my mother didn't have to work. But after the war started she had to sell the piano because we didn't have any income. And we moved up to where our aunt lived in the country 'cause they, they had a guest house. So we moved up there and lived there during the war.

TL: Could you tell me a little bit about the first house that you stayed in when you did have the piano and when your father helped you settle in?

HN: Oh, that was a nice home. It was right in town of Yanai. It was right by a temple. And there was a Yanai River, a little creek like, what they call the Yanai River, that ran in front. And the people that were living there were in Korea, so I think this was more like their second home 'cause they were businesspeople. But they came back after the war, I mean, during the war. But it was close to school, and we, we only had to walk about three, four blocks to school. So we had to give that house up. And when we moved up to Basara, that's kind of like a suburb of Yanai, it was, must have been about a mile and a half from town. So it was far, when we had to walk to school.

TL: So in Basara, this was your mother's sister?

HN: No. This is my father's --

TL: Oh, father's.

HN: -- older sister's place.

TL: Okay. And were they farmers, and at that point did your mother then kind of --

HN: She kind of helped.

TL: Helped out, as a way of...

HN: Earning money, extra money.

TL: Sure.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 1999 Densho. All Rights Reserved.