<Begin Segment 8>

FK: How did you find out about Pearl Harbor?

BT: I remember it was a nice winter day, and I was outside doing something, I don't remember what. But we had the radio going on the outside and that's how I heard about it first.

FK: Did you have a feeling or a reaction when you heard that?

BT: Well, I don't remember. I know that I wasn't celebrating, but other than that, I don't remember my inner feelings at the time.

FK: Did you have any conflicts or confusions about being Japanese American and not being a Japanese national, seeming like people were confused between the two things?

BT: Yeah, I encountered that a lot. Like you go to areas of the country that don't have Asians or Japanese Americans, they marvel at how you can speak English and things like that.

FK: Now, how would you react if somebody said that to you?

BT: I try to be polite, but my mind is thinking.

FK: What's your mind thinking?

BT: Well, I don't blame them, but it's just that they hadn't been told or not roundly educated, or racist. [Laughs]

FK: Now as a Japanese American person in Japan, how did the Japanese react to people that were Japanese Americans?

BT: You know, the people you know, there's no problem. But I don't know what the people that you don't know.

FK: Was there any conflict in your wife's family when you decided to get married?

BT: No, there was no... her family is only her mother and her sister. Finally took off someplace early in her life.

FK: So as soon as you got married, did you move to the States or did you live there for a while?

BT: Well, I lived there about four months. I'd been over there four years already.

FK: So you must have spoken Japanese pretty well then.

BT: Well, you don't get much opportunity to speak when you're in the military, American airbase. My Japanese was very poor. I guess I was, I talked to my houseboy quite a bit. I wasn't worried about my grammar with him. [Laughs]

FK: Well, if your future wife worked on the base, she must have known English.

BT: Oh, yeah. She was, we'd primarily talk English to each other. English is difficult for a Japanese person. But she mastered it pretty good, I think.

FK: Did she have much of an adjustment when you moved over to the States?

BT: No, no adjustment. She gets along with, I should say, Caucasian Americans. She's very sociable, unlike me. [Laughs]

FK: So how you end up, excuse me, how did you end up in Kent?

BT: Well, when I retired from the Air Force, or even before I retired, some of my friends went to work for Boeing in flight crew training. And they asked me to join them and they set up an interview for me. They hired me as an instructor flight engineer, and I was living at McChord on base. And went looking for a home, and that's where I settled, I guess.

FK: So how long did you work for Boeing?

BT: Twenty-four years.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2007 Densho. All Rights Reserved.