Densho Digital Archive - Aya Fujii - Taka Mizote Interview (denshovh-faya

<Begin Segment 6>

RP: One other question about growing up. How did you communicate with your parents? How much of a barrier was the language?

TM: There wasn't any because we grew up speaking Japanese and my oldest brother had the hardest time when he went to school because he, you know, he didn't know very much English. And he was really taunted when he went to school but the rest of us, we just, well, I think through my brothers we all learned how to speak English, you know, because they're older than we were. But I do know that George really had a hard time when he was going to school.

RP: Were any of your siblings sent back to Japan at all for schooling?

TM: No, we just went as a tourist, you know, afterwards, but none of us left... I know there are many families that said after school, the parents sent them to Japan, but no, none of us.

RP: Do you recall your dad sending money back to family in Japan?

TM: Yes.

AF: I think Mom took several of us back to Japan just to visit and stayed like two months at a time, right?

TM: Yes, but then we never, you know, like a lot of families send their kids to Japan for study or but none of us.

RP: Right, they become the ones referred to as Kibei.

TM: Right.

RP: Did either one of you attend a Japanese language school when you were growing up?

AF: Oh, yes, we both went to Japanese school.

TM: See, here again, you know, we had this school in Banks where there was more Japanese living and we went once a week on a Sunday to go for maybe six, seven hours, maybe not even that much.

RP: So you had time after school during the week to --

TM: No, we had a little homework but we went there just to visit with our Japanese friends. And so we were not... [Laughs]

RP: Do you recall any other social activities that you were involved with while you were growing up on the farm?

TM: Yes, we had a young Japanese group that we would have social dances and that was about it. Well, we had picnics, I guess, we had a picnic in the summer time at a park, you know, that was not too far away.

RP: Was that a kenjinkai type of picnic?

TM: Yes, that kind.

AF: It was like a community picnic.

RP: And that was in Hillsboro?

TM: No, it was between Banks and Hillsboro there was a park that we would go to. Yes, those are the events that we kind of looked forward to, my mother would say, "Well, we're going to take you to the picnic so you got to work hard." And after we went to the picnic she says, "Well, you got to work hard because I took you to the picnic." [Laughs] We had to work for it and we had work...