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MA: And then you also attended Japanese language school.

HT: Yeah, Saturday and Sunday and then we would, Sunday after one hour of Japanese school we had church.

MA: And which church did you attend?

HT: The Buddhist church.

MA: The Buddhist church.

HT: Uh-huh.

MA: Do you remember the name of that church? Was it --

HT: Just Jodo Shinshu. No, it wasn't Jodo Shinshu, it was the other one. Right now we're in Jodo Shinshu. I can't remember now.

MA: So it was a church for the Parlier Japanese Buddhist community?

HT: Yeah, Japanese. There were one or two that were Christians that came to Japanese school, but that was very unusual in those days because everybody was bukkyou, Buddhist. And it was pretty nice. It was big, they rented, and they built it up and it was an old garage. It was an automobile garage or something and then they made it into...and I have pictures of that, they took pictures of that. And then the Japanese school and the teachers were really good. I learned a lot, I really did. The teachers made us do haiku and then Japanese, see how much we could write and all that. So, it was nice. We had, and then we used to go over to Fresno for, I don't know if you know what sakubun taikai. You write a story and then they had a contest and I won a little medal on that. It was about my first bicycle. I used to buck my sister to school and I wrote that and they put it in the paper. That's what that picture was.

MA: Did you go to Fresno often? Was that --

HT: That's a big trip, every time there was a big deal we would go to Fresno and then they, whenever they had a big party or not, big get together, then we would all go to Fresno. The whole county would go in. And my mother-in-law was a schoolteacher in Manmoth and she saw my picture of the sakubun. She says, "You were there?" And I said, "Yes, I was there." She said one of her students won. And I told my husband, I said, "I met you mother-in-law before I met you." I didn't meet her or anything, but she said she couldn't remember me either.

MA: But you were at the same place at the same time.

HT: Yeah, same place. She told me which child that won. She was a school -- she was a, I learned a lot from her. My mother had only a third grade education, but she was, I couldn't ask for a better mother. But after I got married, when I would say certain things, she said, "That's not right." She would teach me the correct way because she graduated from college in Japan.

MA: And then she was a language teacher? A Japanese language teacher?

HT: Yeah, here in California. That's how they made, because they had a farm also and they couldn't make money, but she got a little bit of money from teaching.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright ©2009 Densho and the Twin Cities JACL. All Rights Reserved.