Densho Digital Archive - George H. Morishita Interview (denshovh-mgeorge

<Begin Segment 11>

KL: Did you guys have different roles in your family? You said you had hit your older sister up for money. Would you just kind of go through your family and talk about how people related to each other? Like was your sister the practical one, were you the... that's not a very well-worded question. Like what was your father's role in your family? What responsibilities did he have, or what was his personality toward the family?

GM: Well, he ruled...

KL: We're good.

GM: Oh, okay.

KL: He ruled the family?

GM: Yeah. Most Japanese homes were that way, although I think my mom was probably... I was telling my friends when we were younger, I said, "I still remember my father getting my mother mad." This was before the war, and my mom was throwing dishes at him across the room, and my father was ducking and laughing. I still remember that, I was a little kid, and she must have thrown more than one dish at him. I've never seen that before. They talk about Japanese wives being obedient.

KL: Yeah, she sounds like she had some of her own ideas with those discussions with the customers.

GM: Well, I found out she was the youngest in her family, and yeah, I laugh about two experience I had when I was in Japan. My oldest sister one day, when I was in the army, that is, she was busy so she said, "Oh, Mrs. So and so lives in an old house right next to the [inaudible] house. When I took my son and nephew, fifteen years later it was gone. But anyway, this lady had gone to the U.S. with her husband, and they settled in Washington, they had a family. And back in the '20s, I guess, we influenza that killed a lot of people, I guess, worldwide or something, and the whole family was wiped out and she went back to Japan. One of the things that was great was that when I came home, I was telling my mom, I said, "Mama, you used to get mad at Papa for using those old Hiroshima words that even young Hiroshima people don't understand." And I said, "When I was in the army in Japan, I used to carry a pad, wooden pencil, pen, and I speak to the people, and I said, 'Wait a minute, what was that word you just said?'" and I'd write it down. I said, "When I went to see this lady, I forgot her name now, she said, 'Oh, I'm just going to go get some firewood up in the mountain.' I said, 'I'll go with you,' so we spent about thirty-five minutes together." And I said, "Mama, I understood everything she said." And my mom had a nasty word for her. I said, "Mama, you're just jealous." See, what it was was this lady was a lot older than my mom. My mom must have been a teenager when this lady came back from the U.S. So naturally young men in the village and the surrounding villages want to hear stories about the U.S., and their dream is to come here. So they would come to visit this lady to talk to her and all that. And my mom being a teenager, probably resented her. And I laughed at her and I said, "Mama, you were just jealous." [Laughs]

KL: Did your folks learn English?

GM: My father did. My mom, actually, because my mom, we lived in the Flats area, she spoke Spanish. Because after the war, she opened up a barber shop on the west side of the river. I don't know if there was a White King Soap Company. Hewitt Street, there's a Maryknoll church there on Hewitt Street, we had the hotel there on that street. And I remember one of the early customers, I just happened to be coming home from school or something, and there was a Caucasian guy, he was not a Spanish-speaking person. My mom started to speak Spanish to him, I said, "Mama, he doesn't understand Spanish." And she goes... I said, "We speak English here." And the guy started to laugh, I said, "We were on the other side of the river."