Densho Digital Repository
Friends of Manzanar Collection
Title: Grace Hata Interview
Narrator: Grace Hata
Interviewer: Martha Nakagawa
Location: West Los Angeles, California
Date: March 16, 2012
Densho ID: ddr-densho-1003-10-19

<Begin Segment 19>

MN: Let me ask you a little bit also about your schooling, 'cause that also suffered.

GH: Yes. So while we were in Fukushima my mother always said that, "If you don't have your education you'll get behind in time. You'll have to go to school." So my father enrolled me into school there. By age, he thought I should be going to jogakko, but they won't accept you unless you could show completion of elementary school, so I went to the Iizaka elementary school for twenty-eight days with the kids. who were studying, doing shiken benkyou to get into jogakko. And so I studied with these kids, but the first day I went to class there the kids all heard that an American was coming to (their) school, so they all came and, you know in the hallway they have those windows for each room so when the principal walks by he can look in every room, well, I was sitting in a classroom by myself waiting because they were all out for recess, I guess. I looked over at the hallway, all these kids were like a frog on top of each other, all looking in, and they're saying in their colloquial language, "[Japanese]" you know? Like I was supposed to have a rotten fisheye or something. In other words, they were expecting a blonde hair, blue eyed kid, I guess, and they were just really curious. I felt like I was in a menagerie, and finally the teacher came in and explained that my parents were Japanese and so I was one of the village people, "So those of you who live near Ancho-san's come pick her up and come to school with her." So I had an okay time. And Ancho-san, my grandaunt's two sons she had, one became the mayor of that little town, the oldest son, whom I never met and he was already dead by then, and then the other son that I met, he had a lumber company in Fukushima shi. And he had a mountain and he was well off, and so this house that he built in Iizaka for his mother was very nicely built with the best lumber, of course, 'cause he was in the business, and we got the best room. And so the thing is, my mother always said, you never put down anybody because you never know in life when things turn around the other way, which was the case here. I went (with) my father (who) took me to school there. It just so happened that the teacher (asked me to read from the reader), it was a reading class and he told me to read something, and it was just what I already had learned in Tule Lake, so I was able to read it very smoothly and knew what it meant and all that because I just had gone through all that. And so he said, "You see that? You people live here all your life and you, you don't even speak the language correctly." And then he said it in the dialect and the kids all laughed at him, and he says, "Oh, I didn't mean to say it that way." He said, "Okay, all of you, those of you who live around her, Ancho-san's place, go pick her up in the morning and bring her."

So we did that, Geken benkyou, for twenty-eight days, and the benkyou was at one of the girls' ryokan, and so after school we all gather over there to get extra help from the same sixth grade teacher, Sanpei-sensei. And one night the owner's girl came in and she said, "Oh, we got an American here tonight." So she says, "Talk to him in English." And I said, "No, no. I don't want to get into trouble. No, no, no." And by that time Charles already came in -- his name was Charles Winter and he was at Sendai. He was with the paratrooper. And he said that he was supposed to drive this half-ton truck to Yokohama and then he was going to be discharged (to) go home, so he was on his way and he happened to stop at the ryokan. He was so happy somebody could speak English he just took his hat off and he threw it on the ground. "English speaking?" He said, "(...) How long are you gonna be here?" I said, "I think you better go away or I'm gonna get into trouble here." "No, no, no. I'm so glad I can speak to somebody at last." And so we were talking a little bit so that the girls were just amazed at the language that was going back and forth, and the teacher came and I thought, "Oh, I'm now in really big trouble." No, he said, "Go on, go on." [Laughs] So we talked a little bit and he said, "Could I come home with you afterwards?" "Okay." So after studies all these kids -- these are girls -- they go into, one of the hospitalities is their onsen so you could go have a bath, (...) have bath with the teacher. I wasn't gonna do that. [Laughs] So I went home, and of course, Charles came, walked me home, and he was just so happy he could just talk to somebody. So he gave me his picture and he chattered on, and then he was happily off that night. But I did Gegen benkyou and I got into jogakko.

My uncle up on the hill wanted me to come over and so Mother took me over there, and he said, "I saved this paper for you." He said, "You probably will never, ever get your name in the paper again, so," he said, "I saved this for you." All it was, was that I got on the list to be approved to go to this Daichi Koto Jogakko in Fukushima. And so I went there for a while, until finally my mother got notice that my oldest brother Thomas was very sick in Tokyo. So she told Ray to look after me and she left Fukushima to go to Tokyo. Thomas, within that month that I saw him last, he was like skin and bone. He was like, I had a picture of a Civil War prisoner and how depleted they looked, he looked like that. It just reminded me of that. So my mother went to look after him and told Ray to look after me 'cause I didn't know how to cook in a shichirin. It's a little, at that time, Japanese charcoal-burning little, like a tube, and then you put your rice maker on top of that. And you had to blow the fire to make the fire for the shichirin, Mother (told Ray), "She wouldn't know how to cook, so you stay with her." And so I was trying to make this rice, and Ray came along and says -- he had to quit school and he came -- (because) Mother told him to help me, so says, "Can you do that?" (...) I said, "Leave me alone." And he said, "Well, you don't talk to me." 'Cause I was mad at him because for the third time he said to me, "You all got to live with Mom and Dad." But he said, "You don't know what hardship is." And I had told him before, I said, "Everybody has hardship in their own way. I know you had hardship here by yourself, but we all had our own little hardships." So I said, "Don't push that onto me. Don't say that to me again." And this was the third time he said that, and I was so mad I didn't speak to him. So he came and said that one more time in the room, after I got the rice made and came in, I had a (shamuji).

MN: Shamuji?

GH: Shamuji. And he said something, I was so mad I threw it at him, and just at that time Obachan, my grandaunt, was coming by. She's bent over like this [hunches over], she came by and she saw that, and she thought, "Oh, Nippon jousei." [Laughs] She was just flabbergasted that I would do something like that. And then to top it all off, I kept going at it and he kept going at it, so then he did his judo thing like this and he knocked me down. I was so mad. I said, "If I were a boy I would kill you. How dare you do that to me." I was so mad at him. But anyway, it settled down, and when my mother came back my grandaunt, she (told Mother), "You don't know what went on here when you were gone." [Laughs] But after that my mother made arrangements that maybe I could go stay with my oldest brother in Tokyo, Ojisan was gonna come look me over, so I said, "Okay, Mama, I'll put my head down and I'll watch you from the corner of my eye. Tell me when to put my head up." And so that, I got approval, I was okay. So I got to go to Tokyo. Well, Ray had to take me. Again, this train, if it weren't for him getting in there, finding me a little seat and putting my stuff down there (that) Father had bought all this food for me to carry in my rucksack, I couldn't carry that stuff. I've never done anything like that in my life. And I got up there to the (train), but I couldn't get up the stair onto the train, so Ray came back and grabbed me by the neck and got me up (into the train), and he set me down in the seat. And if it weren't for that, I had to stand up and get choked by all those bags and whatever in the train for eight hours. But luckily, I said to myself then, "If it weren't for Ray I would've been dead." [Laughs] And so that's how I got to Tokyo.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.