<Begin Segment 9>

TI: I want to go back a little bit more to your life now, in terms of school. Let's talk about your schooling in Salinas. So what was your school like?

RT: Well, it was this very small country school, only three classrooms with a auditorium. And first, second -- we didn't go to kindergarten in those days, so I immediately went into first grade -- first grade, the classroom was one, two, and third grade in one classroom, and four, five, and six in another, and seven and eight in another classroom. Just three classrooms. And it was mostly Japanese. I think there was one hakujin boy when I started school, first grade. And in first grade, well, in the classrooms in first grade we had to listen to the teacher teaching the second and third grades and so forth, so we always did our Japanese school homework during one of those, when she was teaching the other grades. And also, we naturally had to listen in when she was teaching the older grades, so when I left Spring School at age eleven I was in seventh grade. We just kind of skipped classes.

TI: Going back to first grade, how good was your English?

RT: Terrible. 'Cause I was the oldest and I was surrounded by adults, so my first language was Japanese, and so I had a hard time. It was, "Run, Dick, run," and "Run, Jane, run," and I couldn't pronounce the R. [Laughs] I think I was on that first for a long, long time.

TI: But I'm guessing that that was probably the case for many of the first graders coming in, you said it was mostly Japanese, that, that for many of them they spoke Japanese up until that point.

RT: If you didn't have older sisters or brothers I think we all had a hard time.

TI: And so once you started school and started learning English, when you went home, did you still speak all Japanese?

RT: Uh-huh.

TI: And then with your friends it'd be English?

RT: Yeah. Well, friends, in those days we had very little contact with friends except at school, and once we left school, three days a week I opted, my parents opted for us to go to Japanese school after grade school or go to Japanese school on Saturdays, and we didn't want to go to Japanese school on Saturdays, we wanted to play, so we went during the week, after. And my parents, they took turns driving us to Japanese school.

TI: Well, how about this question, when you're first, second, third grade, on the playground when you're with your, your Japanese sort of classmates, what language did you speak with each other?

RT: I think it was mostly English. But then when they didn't like somebody or something they said bakayaro or something. And we thought baka was a really, really bad word until I went to Japan and found out baka only meant foolish, fool. [Laughs] It wasn't really that bad.

TI: But growing up, that was the, the worst word you could use?

RT: Uh-huh, that was the worst word.

TI: Oh, that's interesting. And so tell me a little bit about Japanese school. Who, who was the instructor at Japanese school?

RT: It was a man, I think there was a Japanese school that was run by the Buddhist church, Salinas Buddhist Church, and another one, and I think our, Mr. Takizawa, from what I understand, was a Christian. But we didn't go to the Buddhist church Japanese school because that was only on Saturdays, so we opted to go to the other one across town, which was closer, I think, to our farms. And Mr. Takizawa was a very nice man and he taught us Japanese. And there was a library not, only a few blocks from the Japanese school, so I was able to go to the library and take out books, and I loved to read, so...

TI: So it sounds like you were a pretty studious person.

RT: Well, you had to be, in those days. My, the Isseis used to tell us, "You're never going to win over the hakujins" -- well, there was another word they called the hakujins -- but, "You're never gonna beat, win over the hakujins with your strength, with your body, physically, but do it with your brains. Study hard. Says, that's the only way you're gonna get ahead. Can't get ahead with your physical strength. Do it with your brains." So as long as we studied that was okay, so I'd take out books from the Salinas Library. We can take out only three books at a time, but I'd take out books, and then we used to buy comic books for five or ten cents and it used to go around our friends at school, and I would always have comic books underneath the library books. And my parents or somebody came I would open up the, I would put the comic books underneath and look like I was reading the library books. As long as we studied we didn't have to do the farm chores. [Laughs]

SF: What was the meaning of the word for hakujins? What, what did it mean?

RT: You mean ketou?

SF: Oh, isn't that --

RT: It was a very, it's a derogatory word.

SF: Did it have to do with hair?

RT: Ketou means hairy people.

SF: Uh-huh, and that was seen as just bad -- well, just, I'll put that, if you were hairy in Japanese.

RT: Yeah, ketou. But Japanese, when the hakujins started coming, the Portuguese and, started coming to Japan in the olden days, they were very hairy and so that's why they were called ketous. They weren't called hakujins. And so the Isseis usually refer to the hakujins as ketou, and of course we were referred to as "Japs" or "dirty Japs."

TI: And so, so that term came from Japan, when the, say, the Portuguese first came. In that case the whites were in the minority and the Japanese were the dominant sort of culture. In the United States it's kind of reversed, where the whites are the dominant culture and the Japanese were the minority. How did the Japanese feel about whites, in terms of, did they still kind of look down at whites even though the whites were dominant culture? Do you have a sense about that?

RT: No, I don't, all I know is that there was a few Catholic, there was a few hakujin girls in school and they always wore these long stockings and I think they were Catholic, so we, I don't know if you would call it discrimination, but we always thought differently of them. They were kind of different.

TI: Because they wore different clothes and...

RT: Yeah.

SF: Speaking of different kinds of folks, did your parents talk about burakumin or eta?

RT: I don't think so.

SF: That wasn't talked about in Japanese, the Isseis didn't...

RT: They might've, but I probably didn't understand. I didn't know about the etas until I went to Japan.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.