<Begin Segment 2>

LD: You were a pretty good student?

EM: Yes. Well, I say yes because it wasn't that I was a genius or anything like that, but like everybody else, I was doing all right in school. Of course, being children of immigrants, we all had to start off at the bottom, ABCs and everything, and trying to learn how to speak English and everything. But of course learning how to speak English wasn't the only thing. Because that was only in the school that we learned how to speak English. But outside of school it was something else. The young kids in Hawaii at that time out of school had their own language, a very mixed up language among the Japanese immigrants, children, English and Japanese and some Hawaiian words. And then the Hawaiian boys there would be mostly English and some Hawaiian words, and for the Chinese, would be the same thing. Some Chinese, some Hawaiian, and some English, and mostly English, of course. But mixing all, everything up together, we always were able to converse with each other and get along pretty good. But the thing was, in order to do, well, in order to make it all worthwhile, we had to learn our English in school in order to be able to keep on going and to get enough schooling so that we'd be able to get jobs which would be, well, would give our parents some kind of happiness and that, would make them feel that their efforts and their sacrifice had been worthwhile.

LD: When you were in high school, did you have some idea of what you wanted to do with yourself or what you would like to do?

EM: No, not exactly. But I thought right after high school maybe I could apply at one of those firms in town and get a job there doing whatever job might be open at that time. Not only myself, but a lot of the other kids were also thinking the same way, too, because they were all the same level, same boat as we were, their parents were working very hard, and they were thinking of helping their parents, helping take care of the family and earn some money on their own. So I was thinking the same thing, too, so after high school, with my brother already at the university, I felt like my dad was having... well, I thought it was too much for my dad alone to do it, so I thought maybe I could help, and help my brother go to school at university. And where that caused some argument in the house because then my brother thought that he should be the one helping me get through high school, and then if everything goes well, he might be able to go to university. So we had those arguments at the house here and there, but my father was always the one to make the decision. "No, you people keep on studying and continue going to school, and make sure you study hard and make something out of it so that when you get out, you can get a job that would be worthwhile."

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 1986 The Center for Educational Telecommunications and Densho. All Rights Reserved.