Densho Digital Archive - Yooichi Wakamiya Interview (denshovh-wyooichi-01-0004)

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RP: You mentioned that you were told to go to language school.

YW: Yes.

RP: And where did you attend Japanese language school?

YW: Where did I go? I went to language school three times in my life. Okay, the way it goes is like this. Prior to World War II there was a language school just across the street from where Northrop and Grumman is today, out on Crenshaw. That whole area was farmland and part of that farmland was cut out by the Japanese community and they had a language school there, and I think it was starting from grade school all the way up through high school. And one of the interesting things that I noticed was in the junior high level classes one of the students was a Caucasian girl taking Japanese, and she had advanced that far. She was doin' real well. So I've always wondered what she ever did with the skills she acquired, but never found out because when the war broke out we all split up and left and they closed down the school and things like that, (...) I went to that school after grammar school for about a year. That was when I was about, what, seven or eight years old. And then when they, the second time I went to Japanese school was when I was in Rohwer. There was some people within the block that I lived in that felt that we should continue our language learning, if you will, so they started a little school, students, for the kids in the block. And that didn't last for six months 'cause we got thrown out of camp at that point, November of '45. So we moved to California and ended up in Long Beach, in the trailer courts there. The trailer courts were opening up because they were initially used by people that worked in the docks and since the war was over those people were going home from wherever they came, so the trailers were being emptied. So it was ideal for the trailer people. They said, "Hey, we got some new tenants." So they let us use it, and so it was a camp of, I don't know how many trailers there were in that camp, but there was, each trailer was about, oh, twenty feet long typically, typical width, and so family of four living in a trailer like that is a little confining, but we stayed there for about three plus years and then we managed (...) some money for a down payment for a house and moved out. That's the way it's been ever since.

RP: Where did you attend language school at that time?

YW: Okay, at that time the local Buddhist church opened one up. I'm not Buddhist, but the language school opened up and said, if you want to come, you don't have to be a church member, but come anyway. So there was a young lady that took on the task, they hired her to teach. She must've been in her thirties, I guess. And so Saturdays we'd go, and, but this, by the time I was going there it was already, I was in my freshman year in college already. It was, there's been quite a span there and went there for maybe, a time period of maybe a year, and it got to be too hectic trying to keep both the academics of, the university life and this going, so I finally dropped that. Maybe to my chagrin, I shouldn't have done it, but that's the way it goes. You got to take something and run with it and I ran with the university curriculum. So that was the last time (...) I learned Japanese for about a period of six months to a year, so if I learned anything it was over about two and a half years worth of language skills were trying to be rammed into my head.

RP: You spoke Japanese at home?

YW: My parents did. We picked it up on the fly. What little we picked up wasn't very useful. We didn't learn enough, we didn't have enough vocabulary. And they didn't understand English; I didn't understand Japanese. Most of the families in the Japanese community are like that, I guess. But somehow we managed.

RP: How would you communicate?

YW: Enough Japanese to understand what was going on. Yeah, it's kind of hard. I have often wondered how European immigrants and their kids worked that out, but we managed somehow.