Densho Digital Archive - Art Imagire Interview (denshovh-iart-01-0004)

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RP: Were there other Japanese stores or, I mean, was there a, what's referred to as a --

AI: Yeah, I don't recall.

RP: -- Japanese section of town?

AI: Yeah, I used to, my mother used to make me go to Japanese school. And it was a school called Wanto Gakuen. And it was a, after regular school we would have to go to that and I would have to, yeah, attend that and we'd have to read these, read and write out of these Japanese books, textbooks.

RP: Most kids your age pretty much, sort of, reviled that, you know...

AI: Yeah. We tried to, tried to do that to our kids and they just quit.

RP: Now you know why.

AI: And now they're, and now they're regretting it though. They, they should learn. And when we, when we went back to Japan, we knew just enough to become dangerous and if we spoke a little... you know, if you spoke, speak just a little bit of Japanese they come back at you even faster and then it's harder to understand. So we have to... it's pretty amusing, though, when we, we, when we first went to Japan, we'd hop in a taxi and, and one... we were in Kyoto and we were gonna go to the Palace Side Hotel so we told the guy, "Palace Side Hotel please." And the guy went, "Wakarimasen, I can't understand." And then I thought a minute and I said, "Parasu saido hoteru." "Ah, wakarimashita," and he took us right to the hotel. So you have to say it in the right accent I guess or else they won't, they won't understand you. And a lot of times when we tried, we tried to talk and we tried to use our pronunciation, they just couldn't understand it. But if you use their phoneticized version, then it was, then they could understand it better.

RP: And this, the Japanese school, was that located nearby your home?

AI: You know, I don't recall exactly where that was. I used to go to the West Tenth Methodist Church and I'm thinking it was somewhere close to that, but I'm not sure. My recollection that it was on a hill because one of the episodes was they had a school bus, and the school bus was parked on the hill. But the, the door was, would open but there was a telephone pole in the way. So you, I could just barely get my head in between the, in between the door and inside looking. And the kids are all in there playing and one of the kids was in the driver's seat and he accidentally released the brakes and the car, the bus started rolling down the hill and squeezed my head and I yelled bloody murder and people had to push the bus back up to get my head. And I had big dents in my head. [Laughs] Yeah, I recall that. That was... but that was at the Japanese school, yeah.

RP: Did the school offer anything other than language lessons? Was there judo or kendo offered there?

AI: No, I, my recollection is that it was part of a church, like they usually were, but part of the Buddhist. I'm not sure of that but... like the Buddhist church in Sacramento has Sakura Gakuen. And that's... they run that.

RP: It's associated with it, yeah. And then you also mentioned a Methodist church that you attended.

AI: Yes, the West Tenth Methodist Church in... a lot of the people that my mother's students went to that church. My, my folks attended that church too, so, yeah.

RP: So it's primarily Japanese --

AI: Yeah. It was primarily Japanese.

RP: -- American parishioners?

AI: But I, it's since then merged with the, I think it's called Parkside in Oakland now. So, yeah, I don't know much more about it than that.

RP: Uh-huh. How strongly religious was your family, Art?

AI: Well, my father not too much. My mother was a fairly religious person and made me go to church. Yeah, well, anyway, that she... like I say, she went to bible study class and became a Christian, so she was fairly, fairly devout. But, yeah. Then when I, when we moved to Reno I joined the Methodist church and became good friends with the pastor's son. So...