Densho Digital Archive
gayle k. yamada Collection
Title: Kan Tagami Interview
Narrator: Kan Tagami
Interviewer: gayle k. yamada
Location: Mililani, Hawaii
Date: January 5, 2001
Densho ID: denshovh-tkan-01-0002

<Begin Segment 2>

gky: Do you consider yourself a Kibei? You were there from the time you were eight years old until thirteen.

KT: Yeah.

gky: Do you consider yourself a Kibei? I mean, I know you don't speak with an accent.

KT: Not exactly, because I didn't have the Japanese accent. I spoke, I got my fluency back once I got back. But I understand that I could be classified as a Kibei, but I didn't feel that I was.

gky: Even in terms of knowing the mentality behind the Japanese, how they were trained, how they were told to bow to the emperor, things like that?

KT: Yes. I do know emperor was looked upon as a living god, and at school every morning you bowed to the emperor picture which was on the school ground. As far as discipline is concerned, I guess they more or less fall into it once they are told what to do. But I remember one time when I entered school as the only American, I didn't bow to the emperor, emperor's little place, and the principal called me in. He says, "Why didn't you bow?" I said, "Well, I'm not a Japanese," you know. He says, "Well, you're in a Japanese school," which is true. "I understand what you're saying," he said, "but there's an old saying, 'When in Rome, do as the Romans do,'" which is pretty apt, I think. So I told him, "I'll bow if that's a rule." That was the only thing that -- but, there's a difference in how I feel and how the ordinary Japanese feel. They're not very independent like I was. Maybe I was too independent, I don't know. So I stayed in school and as soon as I got my Japanese fluency, my class rating went from thirty something to number five, or something. The reason for that is I read everything that I could get my hands on, even scientific stuff which I didn't understand. But that's how I acquired fluency in Japanese as far as, because I read everything.

gky: Yeah, but, only being eight years old starting to do this, or ten years old, that's pretty young for that kind of determination.

KT: Well, I don't know. I was all by myself. My parents weren't there. I had no one except my grandparents and they weren't that close to me anyway, so I was sort of all by myself, which meant that I had to be more or less independent in my thinking and...

gky: Is there any difference between the Hawaiian Nisei and the mainland Nisei?

KT: Yes, there is. Hawaiian Niseis are, have never been isolated and treated as a second-grade citizen by the Americans or white population. So, definitely, as I got to know them, they were a very independent lot as far as catering to existing custom and pretty much independent, in that sense. Not that they were any better than the mainland Nisei, but mainland went through that. As they grew up, they found that they couldn't go to swimming pools every day. On Friday, they could go because the water. [Laughs] Couldn't go to restaurants with a date or they won't wait on you. Couldn't go to theater because they won't sell you tickets. Things like this, sort of, the mainland Nisei grew up with and they weren't too aggressive about getting a better deal. So the difference in the two groups, Hawaiians were sort of brought over and brought into this group and the Niseis were independent. They weren't gregarious, they were individual, but they didn't go in for aggressiveness as far as customs, local customs were concerned because they were beaten on the head so often that they said, "Oh well, won't bother, you know, we'll live through it." That's the difference between Niseis of the mainland and Hawaiian. Hawaiians were gregarious; they grouped together and did things together, but the mainland Niseis were less aggressive and more individual, individually independent.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2001 Bridge Media and Densho. All Rights Reserved.