<Begin Segment 2>

RP: Have you been back to visit?

MN: Well, only, I remember when I think right after the Depression, the economic situation was real bad so Mother took us to Japan to leave us there for the duration, I guess, until my... they had to work on a farm like a migrating worker so they, we couldn't follow them see so that's why she sent us to Japan. And left us, left us with her sister, but Kagoshima, my father's side, we went to visit. But we didn't stay there. We went to my mother's side in Kumamoto.

RP: Oh, Kumamoto.

MN: Yeah, so we stayed there three and a half years, in Kumamoto, a place called Waifumachi.

RP: Can you spell that for us?

MN: Y-... let's see, Y-... let's see, W-I-Y-fu, F-U, machi.

RP: Machi, okay. That's where you stayed?

MN: Yeah, for about three and a half, about three and a half years. And we just got back, I think it was late May of 1939, right before the war started.

RP: So overall you were there about four or five years?

MN: No, about three years, three and a half years.

RP: And a half years.

MN: Yeah.

RP: So how old were you when you left?

MN: I was eight years old, going on... seven, after I got there I turned eight. So when I got back I was about eleven years old, eleven...

RP: And who else went with you?

MN: Oh, my younger brother. He was not even five years old but my sister was one year younger than I am.

RP: So your sister, your brother, and you.

MN: Yeah.

RP: And what was your sister's name?

MN: Masako.

RP: Masako?

MN: Masako.

RP: Okay. And so your mom took you over there?

MN: Yeah.

RP: On the boat?

MN: Yeah.

RP: Uh-huh. So how, what was that like for you?

MN: Well, we couldn't... we couldn't adopt it right away. So we had a lot of ups and downs and we'd get into fights and there's a lot of prejudice. They called us gaijin. That means foreigner.

RP: Gaijin?

MN: Yeah.

RP: Did you have to... you had to defend yourself?

MN: Oh yeah. On top of that, my guardian, the uncles and aunt that we stayed with, they get called in from the school principal. And, in other words, they'd tell the story of why they would pull them because we weren't conformed to their rules and regulations. Because Japan gets pretty cold in the wintertime, and Mom knows that. So she used to send us like a navy peacoat, for wintertime, wool socks, things like that. Well, we couldn't wear those because school regulation forbids that, see. All you could do was wear a uniform, school uniform, that's it.

RP: What was your uniform?

MN: Well it's a, it's a trouser, black trouser. And it's a two-piece job. You have a jacket, you have a cap. And it's a, the shoe you wear, it's not leather. It's rubber, rubber, canvas and rubber. It's a canvas but the rubber is moulded onto the canvas. And that's all.

RP: So how were your language school, language skills when you went to Japan? What were they like?

MN: You mean for, in Japanese?

RP: Yeah.

MN: Not, not too great.

RP: Had you been attending Japanese language school before you were sent over?

MN: No. We were too young yet.

RP: So you, but did you speak Japanese in the home with your parents?

MN: Yeah.

RP: So you had some --

MN: Yeah, right, yeah.

RP: -- some background. But the way Japanese is spoken in Japan --

MN: No, [Shakes head.] You gotta stay there. You gotta use it otherwise off, right off plane you can't... but even if you spoke with your family, some of the Japanese is broken.

RP: Right.

MN: So we got by as years went by, at least we could understand the uncles and aunt. They say things but they try to make it simple where we could understand. Not the way we usually spoke with each other. But when we listened to them a lot of times we can't understand what they're talking about.

RP: And there's the, sometimes there's dialects too.

MN: Right, and especially my father's side, Kagoshima dialect, oh, it's a... when they talk, Kagoshima guys, they talk and I just sit there and try to make out what they're saying but it's pretty hard because their dialect is so different. Now it's a, you know, normally it's a Tokyo dialect. That's the most simple way. You could understand it, but when you have Kumamoto-ken dialect, Kagoshima-ken dialect, yeah, it's pretty difficult.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright &copy; 2011 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.