Densho Digital Archive - Ted Hamachi Interview (denshovh-hted-01-0006)

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RP: Would you characterize your upbringing as a child, as being some traditional Japanese culture as well as American culture?

TH: I think so. It probably won't get me into trouble today but if I said something like this years ago, but the Japanese schools in our local area, we used to go to a New Year's participation. They used to have the picture of the emperor and empress but it was covered and they had it on a, like velvet background. They had it covered and so you didn't get to see the picture too well because you would have to stand and they would say, "Saikeirei," which means to bow. And then they would open up the pictures and I think you would say your three banzais. If we did this, that was a tradition. I don't think too many Niseis ever brought that up in the oral interview but if I did, I don't have too many more years to live it down so I can say something like this because it was a true happening. This will also show other nationalities that the Niseis had a real strong ties a little bit with Japan. That's why we went to Japanese school and things of this nature.

RP: And that's some of the statements that were made by military and political authorities before the war was that these Japanese language schools were just basically places of emperor worship and indoctrination.

TH: As a kid, you're sort of ignorant of what's happening. If you had to do it today, you could sort of walk away but if they told you to do something, you sort of had, you sort of obeyed the older people. It was a tradition, I think. It means that we were growing up in the United States that they just wanted to keep up their own tradition that happens in Japan.

RP: Speaking of language, you speak Japanese in the house and English outside the house?

TH: In my mother and father's era, we spoke Japanese. In my family, after I got married, we spoke English, we didn't try to instill Japanese although my kids went to visit their grandma and grandfather, they were spoken to in Japanese and they tried hard to say a few words in Japanese. My kids tell me they wished they had learned Japanese language when they were growing up. I sent my kids to this Japanese school here, the West Covina Japanese Community Center Japanese school. I didn't force 'em though. I didn't tell them, there was a time when they were coming, the older kids were coming, and I asked my two boys that were older, I asked them if they wanted to go to Japanese school or play Pop Warner football and they opted to try Pop Warner football. They didn't have that well of athletic skills but they were happy that, I was happy too that I exposed them to the opportunity to play football. They learned discipline and so forth and so on. They got lot of team and stuff like this.

RP: Did you get much out of your Japanese language school experience?

TH: That was sort of dreadful. We got a ride, my dad would wake up on Saturday and he would drive us to Japanese school but on way home sometimes he didn't come around. He was busy or... and we walked maybe three miles, maybe four miles to come home. When you're not a big person, you're sort of a runt, you dread it because you don't have the energy. You have the energy to get going but later on just to sustain that walk is pretty hard work.