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MN: You know, with your father being a former schoolteacher, and being a business owner, how active was your family in the Japanese language school?

KM: My father continued to be a member of the Japanese school, I think they had a Japanese school board, Board of Directors or whatever. And so he had strong ties with Japanese. As a matter of fact, just last Saturday, I attended a funeral of my Japanese school teacher who taught me first grade. She lived to one hundred years old, Mrs. Takayo Kobayashi, who was my first grade teacher, and she passed away last Sunday. I attended the funeral last Sunday, and she was 101 years old. And her husband is still alive, he's also one hundred years old. Both of them who taught me for probably about eight or nine years in Kahului before they moved to Honolulu in Wahiawa. And they started a Japanese school in Wahiawa also. But they were the ones that had a great influence in my life. Because all of the so-called social functions, including sports and whatnot, involved the Japanese school very likely because as we grew up and got engaged in all these various sports, the boys especially, we did everything we could to get away from classes. So what we did was you'd practice baseball, when baseball season starts. Even now you take your child out at five o'clock. But in our days, we would schedule the practice hours during school hours. So we tell our Japanese school teacher that, oh, you know, today, we have to play or practice baseball. So can we be excused? And that would mean all the boys would get out of this class, basically boys. But then it came to basketball season and we'll do the same, football season you do the same. And these were all excuses. And so even today, I often wonder, how did I communicate with my parents? Because being the youngest, I don't remember speaking Japanese to my parents. It was "You ga, me ga." You understand what is very basic, broken, Japanese. Come to think of it, all communication, I think, at my age was through my elder sisters, my sister Fumiye and my sister Tsukie, because they spoke Japanese. That older second generation spoke Japanese pretty well. But my time, my older brother, I don't think we spoke more than two, three words of Japanese. And so I often wonder, how did I communicate with my parents strictly with the broken English, you know.

MN: How was your parents' command of English? How did they communicate with you?

KM: Very little because they could, they could get by without having the command of the English language. Life was such that Japanese, Japanese American, we were Japanese American but on all levels, yes, we spoke English, but within the parents, you could live and do business with Japanese, strictly Japanese, you know, our generation. Of course, I'm the youngest of the second generation because my older brother's, my older brother was ten years older, Tsukie was twelve years older, and they spoke Japanese very fluently. But I do remember my Japanese was picked up after the war, after World War, after I came out and got discharged and I started getting involved with high school baseball from Japan, and I started getting involved with the Ozumo. And for a period of time from 19... I think it was 1955, within ten years after the war, is when the 442 Veterans Club started to get involved with high school baseball. So we were in contact with these Japanese people, and it was from then on that my Japanese speaking ability improved.

MN: When you were a child, though, with your parents speaking Japanese, what was --

KM: I think I understood clearly what was said. Even today, the kids can hear and understand, but they cannot speak. And I think that was probably the same with me. But I do recall that... see, I took a trip to Japan when I was five or six , my pictures showed when I was five or six years old, I took a trip to Japan. And I recall that the short time that I stayed in Japan, when I came back, I have clear incident when I first went to get a haircut. I went to get a haircut and I came home bald-headed. Because when I was in Japan, that's what it was. Everybody had their, you know, five or six years old, you have bald head, you cut your hair all the way. Not shaved, but, you know. And so my recollection is that, and then I think I was able to, there was no problem communicating, growing up. Because, you know, I'm sure you understood what your parents were saying, although you couldn't respond.

MN: And, you know, because you were excused from Japanese language school often, you know, with all your sports activities, what did you get out of Japanese language school?

KM: Oh, there were there were enough. I mean, it wasn't 100% absentee, you still had all of these periods of instructional learning. Especially, you see we had, in English school you had called Social Studies. A comparable subject in Japanese curriculum, I think was shushin. Shushin was the first curriculum subject matter that MacArthur abolished in the Japanese school system. And according to him, or according to the publication, as I recall, was that shushin emphasized Emperor worship is what I understood to be the reason, one of the reasons why MacArthur ruled out the teaching of shushin. But I think it's wrong. I don't think it was emperor worship. I don't recall emperor worship being the subject matter of shushin. Shushin had more to do with, I think, with Confucianism, Chinese culture of family, importance of family, importance of ancestry, and the importance of getting along with the neighbors. And this, to me, was shushin. And I cannot go along with the idea that MacArthur's first, one of the first thing was to wipe out shushin. And to this day, I think, shushin is not taught, not one of the curriculum in Japan. And I don't know why because I guess the biggest subject matter of shushin was you had this Ninomiya, Kenjiro, and you have the stories of Nogi Taisho, you have the stories of Togo, Admiral Togo, and their virtue of loyalty to the emperor, yeah, to that. But they were individual. My understanding, it was individual concept of loyalty.

Just as much as we learned about the feudal system, a lot of these two movies... not Japanese school because we had all these years of... Japanese silent movies was very prevalent growing up. It was silent movies, we had what we call a benshi, you don't have it in American, but I'm sure in early American history you had silent movies with people on the side giving in the music and telling the story as it went along, you know, I think it was it the same concept. And growing up in places like Kahului, the movies wasn't played every day of the week, once a week or something like that, it would come around. And we'd know that it was movie day because the way how they notified everybody in camp was there would be a truck going by and they would play the drums and then they would throw out leaflets telling what movie is being played, where, what time. And normally, usually, as I remember, in Kahului, it was an open yard where they put in canvases to block off the entrance so that you can control people who are going to come in. And usually the Buddhist yard, Buddhist churchyard or the YBA yard. And us kids, we grew up, you're always sneaking, crawling under the canvases, you know. But this was, being exposed to Japanese culture just as much as Japanese school. Because it involved as far back as I can remember, I recall the style of The Forty-Seven Ronin. And playing over and over just like Tom Mix, play the same movie. You go to the English movies, you see Tom Mix and then you see Tarzan, well, you go to Japanese movie, you see Chushingura, and you see Kunisada Chuji and you see all of these. Because Japanese movie, you play the same thing over and over. But it's too bad to me that in modern Japan, that they don't have this concept of shushin because it was so important in the family life of Japan.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2021 Densho. All Rights Reserved.