Densho Digital Archive - Jiro Sugidono Interview (denshovh-sjiro-01-0009)

<Begin Segment 9>

TI: You mentioned earlier your father spoke English.

JS: (Yes).

TI: How about your mother? Did she speak English?

JS: Well, not, not like my father. She, she did broken English, you know. In fact, in the '50s, she wanted to become a citizen. And at that time, if you wanted to become a citizen, you got to take a test in English. So what she did is she wrote, the word in English, she put kana, you know, if it says "fish," she'll point and say in Japanese, "fi-shi," something like that, and that's how she learned.

TI: So she used the Japanese katakana.

JS: Kana on the American words, see, that's how she learned. I don't see how she did it, but she got her citizen in the 1950s. High school, the teacher was -- in fact, I had a teacher when I went to high school, Mr. Rowland. He was a government teacher, so (yes), he was a nice guy. 'Cause I remember when I was in school, high school when the war broke out, he's the first teacher when we had class, he told all the students there, he said, "Well, I want to make an announcement that this is not for the student here, Japanese students. What happened is not their fault, it's from Japan, so behave accordingly."

TI: Okay, so this was after the bombing of Pearl Harbor --

JS: (Yes), right after Pearl Harbor.

TI: -- he made that, he made that comment.

JS: Still went back to school.

TI: Okay. So we'll get more into that later. I want to talk a little bit, so when you were at home, you and your brother and sisters, how did you communicate with your parents? Was it in English or Japanese?

JS: [Laughs] You know, to tell the truth, I never did communicate too good with my father -- I mean, my mother. Especially those serious thing, like about money or health, anything like that, I couldn't express that in English or Japanese. So I ended up getting mad and just walk away, 'cause I can't say it. I never did, I didn't learn that Japanese language too good. I went to Japanese school, but I always was playing hooky or something. [Laughs]

TI: How about your younger sisters like Grace and June who were just a little bit younger? Did they speak more Japanese?

JS: (Yes), they seemed like learned a little more. 'Cause when you speak it, you could learn more that way, and I didn't, see. So only way I kind of maybe talked to my father, 'cause he spoke mostly English to us. My mother, she spoke broken English, and I guess she got mad, too, 'cause she couldn't understand what I'm trying to say. [Laughs] So it was hard. If you want to talk to your family, you gotta have the same communication, you know.

TI: Well, with your father, did he ever talk to you about being Japanese, what that meant, like being Nihonjin or anything like that?

JS: No... I hear some of the parents like Shig Kizuka, he told me his father was really against staying here after the war. He was really against it 'cause he got pulled in right after war started, he got thrown in the whatchacallit, camp right away. And so my father, I don't know, I never said or heard them say anything derogatory, you know, anything against the United States. 'Cause it might be, this story might come later when I was in camp, when I volunteered, I thought maybe he might get angry at me, you know.

TI: We'll do that later. I want to do that in more sequence. But things like, they sent you to Japanese school before the war, so they must have felt that it was important for you to learn Japanese.

JS: (Yes), they were. Of course, at that time, when we went to Japanese school, well, it was in the '30s, so those times were pretty rough. So they charge, not individually, but the family. So we had, what, five kids going. Well, actually we had four, 'cause my younger sister was too young. And we had a Japanese teacher from Japan and boy, they were pretty strict. [Laughs] They got a ruler and if you're, don't pay attention, whack. (Yes), it was... but I don't know why, but I just couldn't get the, get the hang of it.