Densho Digital Archive
Manzanar National Historic Site Collection
Title: Rose Tanaka Interview
Narrator: Rose Tanaka
Interviewer: Alisa Lynch
Location: Las Vegas, Nevada
Date: August 9, 2011
Densho ID: denshovh-trose_2-01-0009

<Begin Segment 9>

AL: You'd mentioned earlier, I'm going to be skipping around just a little bit to fill in a few pieces. But your parents were Shinto, you said that your dad was Shinto.

RT: I think my father was more Shinto, I don't know that... it didn't make a lot of difference, they were very closely related. It's not like in this country. It's a little different setup. It was more of a cultural thing, but I didn't understand it very much, obviously.

AL: So things like... I know, at least in the camps, they weren't too enthusiastic about having Shinto because of the connection to the emperor.

RT: Yes, that Shinto was mainly a deistic... it had to do with the emperor, and also, as I said, Michizane was elevated to sort of a Shinto, in the Shinto fashion to a god. But to me it was just all very... well, how do I put it? I have a different take on religion, so I'm not a deist.

AL: So between... if you have Japanese culture on one end of the spectrum and Americanized culture on the other, where would you say your parents were in comparison to the kids? Like you said Katsuma was very culturally Japanese.

RT: I'm always grateful that my parents did not indoctrinate me, if that's what you're saying. I didn't have to believe everything the way they believed it. I mean, they had this feeling they were in a different country. Perhaps if they were in the country of Japan, they would have to be responsible for continuing that religious part of it. And I don't think that even in Japan that there's that much strictness in many families. And my parents never did impose that on me. So when a lady up the road who was a, who had missionary instincts, and saw this pagan child looking, we became friends and she came by and she wanted me to go to the Presbyterian church with her, I'm sure she got permission from my parents. "Could I take" -- I was going by Rosie in those days -- "could I take Rosie to church?" And my parents were agreeable. I mean, it wasn't that they were so addicted to... I shouldn't say addicted, but that tied to their religious background that they would object to my being taken to a Christian church. And my father also, going back many years, he had been taken, helped along in his younger days by a Christian minister, so they were very open-minded. And so when Mrs. Gannon came by and wanted to take me to the Presbyterian church, I went. And took me every Sunday, Wednesday night and Sunday to church. I got a big dose of church.

AL: How would you spell her name?

RT: G-A-N-N-O-N, Gannon.

AL: Did other members of your family, your sister or your brothers...

RT: No, I was the only one that got picked to go. [Laughs]

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2011 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.