<Begin Segment 2>

PW: Now, in 1930, what happened?

SK: My parents wanted to retire, so I was the youngest in the family, so was tag-along to parents and went back to Japan.

PW: And when you returned, when you went to Japan, I mean, you were Canadian-born, what did you think when you went back, and what were the conditions like in...

SK: Oh, I was in the countryside, so, and the first time I went to school, everybody stand on the windowsill, and teased me from the windowsill. [Laughs] They didn't know that time was Canada, was America, so they called beikoku.

PW: And, and what, what kind of conditions were like living and also food and things like that?

SK: Well, food, I don't know exact-, too much. I think we ate most time was fish, but one thing, I always go to the washroom and come back and go back again, because washroom was so countryside, so dirty and smelly. [Laughs] At school, too, well, school was always clean, but still, for me, it's, I can't stand that smell. I could still remember. [Laughs]

PW: And, and then you went into the Japanese public school system?

SK: Yes.

PW: And what, what was that like?

SK: It was grade three, and the part I went in, and I could understand what the teacher said, everything but the, over at Woodfibre I went to Japanese school once a week at Saturday. But the school, we didn't, just we learned how to write and how to speak. But in Japan, you have to write, and especially shuuji, so kanji I have to write it, and the teacher said that's too much part of honke is the main house, and next to, said, "You're writing like they're fighting, so write close together." [Laughs] This is how teacher always said to me.

PW: Now, then also, then you went, after public school, what did you do?

SK: Public school, I went to girls' high school, those days was jogakko.

PW: And what was it like in high school for you?

SK: Well, high school was okay. That time I was already used to how to live in Japan and everything, so it was all right.

PW: And then you graduated from high school and what happened after that?

SK: Yes, after I went to sewing school, and how to learn all the wedding clothes and men's hakama and weddings. Those days, we didn't have a white wedding or anything. Like, just like old-time, really is old time, when you get married, you married in the home. But these days, everybody we were, reception and wedding is in hotel. Some over here, too, like, so, what's very different in those days was the countryside.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2005 Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre and Densho. All Rights Reserved.