<Begin Segment 6>

RP: How about language school? Where did you attend Japanese language school?

FH: It was nearby, right next to Forest Lawn Memorial Park. The wall was here and the school was here, and we went to school every day after school, hour and a half or two hour, whatever. I remember just going. There used to be a bus that picked us up. When I was going to junior high school we would walk up the railroad track to go there, which is a no-no now. And I don't know... you know the fellow, you've heard of Sadao Munemori, his sister and I used to go to school together.

RP: Yaeko?

FH: No, her name was Kikuyo.

RP: Oh, the other sister.

FH: Kikuyo was the younger one. Yaeko was a nurse, was she not? Yeah. And then she had a brother named Bob, older brother named Bob.

RP: What was Japanese school like for you?

FH: We just went to it. No lunch, but we went to it. Then summertime we had to go. Oh, we learned and it was a good thing, 'cause to this day I could read a little bit Japanese. Had I not been there, I guess I wouldn't have. And now I have a grandson that's gonna be... he's graduating San Diego State, and he wants to become a Japanese school teacher. So, you know, things happen.

RP: Interesting circle.

FH: It is. Right, it is really. Well, now it's coming back now. And he's, he's half and half. His mother is Swedish and my son is Japanese, so...

RP: Can you describe the Japanese school to us, the building?

FH: It was just a two room building, a wall between. Collapsible wall, because when we had a, whatever Japanese school had, like whatever socials they had, they opened the folding door so it would be one big hall. And we... basically it was to read and write and to be able to understand. I mean, you and I go to school to learn, read to write and whatever, but I think in that era, most of the parents had the hopes that they were gonna go back to Japan. 'Til the war broke out. So they wanted us to know so we wouldn't be totally ignorant.

RP: Yeah, I was just gonna ask you why you, why you think parents...

FH: Yeah, I think a majority of a, majority of the Issei, the first generation, their plan was to go back to Japan, settle back in Japan, 'til the war broke out, and then it just never happened. And this became their land. And I think they were more faithful to this land than they were their homeland, because I remember my folks going to Japan, says, "Oh I'm so glad to come to America. So crowded over there. So hustle bustle." But I don't know. One person's opinion. I've been to Japan. I didn't... I mean, it was busy, it's smaller, everything, well everything's smaller. The buses are smaller, cars are smaller, roads are narrower. Everything's smaller, but I think you have that open feeling here. Freedom, maybe that's what it is. If you got elbow room, freedom. [Laughs]

RP: Did any of the kids in your family get sent back to Japan?

FH: No.

RP: For schooling?

FH: No. If anyone, I would've been, but I was one year behind. I say one year behind 'cause if I graduated high school I would've been sent to Japan, but I was in the eleventh grade and the war broke out, so I was one year behind, right? I think that's what their plan was.

RP: To send you back?

FH: Well, yeah. That's what they wanted. I can't help but think that that's what majority of the Issei parents were thinking. This was a temporary land for them, but look at how many are still here. But there's no place like home, so that was home 'til this became their home. Then their children got married, then they got grandkids and even if they wanted to go, their roots are here now.

RP: So you were able to converse a little better with your parents as a result of...

FH: Well whatever I know... see, when I went back to Japan, this is back '02, I went back to Japan. I never had the desire to go back, but somehow I wanted to go back and I went back, and when we had this orientation they said, "Don't speak Japanese. Your Japanese is not their kind of Japanese. Your Japanese is what your parents brought to this America, and they had, how many years have passed. So don't speak that." But you know when you see a Japanese person, automatically, whatever you know, speakingly, you... it comes out. And I said, "Oh, I'm not supposed to speak Japanese," and one lady said to me in, I think it was in Osaka, she said to me, "Oh, talk it. I love it. It's my grandmother's language." It was cute. It was really cute. "Talk it. I love it," she says. "It's my grandmother's language." So evidently she had ties with her grandmother where she could pick up... I mean, they could understand my Japanese, but it's a different form of... and then I married a Terminal Islander. And they talk a little rougher than we, and you married to a guy for fifty years, naturally you're gonna pick up some of his lingo.

RP: Wakayama dialect.

FH: Yeah, yeah. And they talk a little rougher than... and the tendency is to be, a lady's got to talk like a lady. But when you're married to a Terminal Islander you kinda talk -- even the girls from Terminal Island talked a little tough.

RP: A lady Yogore.

FH: Yeah, if there is one then that's it.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2009 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.