<Begin Segment 21>
SY: And so you pretty much were fairly close to your younger brother growing up?
BW: Yeah. We would fight every now and then, but we were very close.
SY: More so than to your older brothers?
BW: I was close to my older brothers too, but they were like eight and ten years older. So actually I related with my older brothers than I did with my parents. They were, my older brothers were almost like surrogate parents in some ways 'cause they watched out for us and did things for us, helped us.
SY: And did they speak Japanese? Did, were they fairly fluent?
BW: Their Japanese was fairly good 'cause they had to speak to my parents in Japanese. My Japanese, and my younger brother too, I mean, we never developed the language skills too much because we avoided speaking to my parents and would rather interact with our brothers.
SY: So it was kind of a division based on war almost, because prewar your older brothers were really speaking more Japanese, and postwar -- even though you had your parents who didn't speak English still, right?
BW: Right.
SY: -- you really only spoke English. And how was your Japanese? What was your Japanese like?
BW: Well, they sent us to Japanese school every Saturday, but we resisted learning. But I did learn kana, katakana, hiragana, maybe about fifty kanji, but for ten years of Japanese school wasn't much to show for it. [Laughs] So my interaction with my parents is, it was at such a rudimentary level, like, oyahou, sayounara, tabemashou, that kind of thing. But we couldn't really get into feelings and, "What's your opinion about this or that?"
SY: And your, the Japanese school was from when to when? I mean, where, how old were you when you started going to Japanese school?
BW: I must've been about six. I went to Sun Valley Japanese Language School for a couple of years. And then we moved from Montague to Granada Hills and the San Fernando Japanese language school was closer, so my parents put us into the San Fernando Japanese school. So I was going every Saturday until I graduated high school.
SY: And was it only, I mean, the kids that you went to Japanese school, what was that experience like, being sort of segregated, all the Japanese kids going to Japanese school as opposed to regular school? How, do you remember feeling a sense of being...
BW: Yeah, it was like plus and a minus. We lamented having to go to school on a Saturday. We felt deprived, like, "Why do our American friends, they get Saturday and Sunday off, but we have to go to school on Saturday?" That seemed unfair, but at the same time, a number of my lifelong friends were made in Japanese school. It certainly was an acculturating kind of a thing where, even though you're resisting it, you're still picking up the culture in some ways. And so one of my good friends is a classmate that I sat next to for many, many years, so we became very close, where I could say one word and he would finish it, or he would start a sentence and I would finish it kind of thing.
SY: Were you aware that it was only Japanese kids as opposed to...
BW: Yeah. By that, by the time of my moving to, say, San Fernando Japanese Language School, yeah, I pretty much knew what it was for. It was kind of like you had your, during the week you had your school, which is public school so it's not Japanese, and in fact, you're very much aware you're not like the rest of 'em, you're not white. Although I did hang around as much as possible with my Japanese American friends, but I had other friends too. Then on Saturday I had Japanese school, so that was kind of like my Japanese school friends, then on Sunday I went to church at the local Japanese Christian church and so I had those friends, so kind of like three sets of friends, school friends, Japanese school friends, and church school friends.
<End Segment 21> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.