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DG: Okay, can you tell me more about the language, like, that your parents spoke and that the kids spoke...

ES: All Japanese, mostly. I don't know how we understood, come to think of it, but they... but we didn't communicate that much with each other, actually, a lot of it. They used to communicate with each other but they didn't... I don't... 'cause I did more communicating with my own brothers and sisters than with my parents. They really didn't say that much to us. 'Course, we hardly saw them because they're working all the time out in the fields, and the only time we really saw them was when we had our meals together. So, I... yeah, most, it was mostly Japanese that they spoke.

DG: And the kids...

ES: And by motioning with their hands and things what they wanted done. And our chores were all kind of... we all kinda knew what to do. Like we used to pump, we had to pump water to fill our furo they call it, the tub, Japanese tub, and that was outside. And I remember every so many days we had to clean the tub out and fill it with fresh water. And then it was the, I think it was more my father and my brothers that kept the fire going under it to heat up the water. In between, in between, when we didn't, when we didn't go in the furo, we used to have a washtub, a big washtub in the house. And every night our parents made us wash up before we went to, went to bed. And we used to hate that, but, which we had to do it. [Laughs] And, let's see...

DG: Did you attend Japanese school?

ES: Oh, yeah, just, just before the war I went to Japanese school. So, only, it was only about a year or so, or maybe, yeah, about a year, and that was in Winslow. And there was a Japanese, there was a lady teaching our Japanese there. And that was on Saturday, Saturday morning we used to go there. And our parents made us, wanted us to learn the Japanese. But, I don't remember my parents ever trying to learn English from us. I don't... but I remember studying every, every, about couple days before we went to class on Saturday, I remember we had to study our Japanese books then. And I really didn't learn that much, because it was only once a week. And after that was over, that class was over, we kind of forget, you know. So, that's about it on the Japanese school.

DG: So, do any of your brothers or sisters know any Japanese?

ES: Oh, I think my sister knew the most, 'cause she was the oldest. No, I don't... they knew the very basic language, you know, like eating and how to say goodbye and things like that. But not to actually carry on a conversation. And then when other of our parents' friend used to come over, they used to speak all Japanese, but we couldn't understand lots of what they were saying. But, we just never had the real urgency to learn the Japanese language.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.