<Begin Segment 15>

JC: Tell me what you know about the Japanese schools in Portland?

SN: Well because, I did go to Montavilla Japanese School at night, but going to school like that, I think that maybe if it weren't for the war maybe we would have been much better in learning Japanese. But when the war came, teaching Japanese just stopped, and we went to school, we went to this Japanese school. The man came in a Model A Ford and picked us up at 58th and Burnside and drove out way all the way out to Montavilla. Montavilla is not quite as far as Gresham. Montavilla is about 102nd, I can't remember. And also downtown kids went to a much better school. They had better teachers, and they went practically every day after school to learn Japanese, and a lot of them learned very good Japanese, I mean, especially conversational Japanese. But the other thing that happened is many of the Japanese were sent to Japan. The reason for that is that Niseis were sent to Japan to be taken care of by grandmother or grandfather because the mother and father couldn't support that many kids. And so they sent them over there to go to school to go there, and many Niseis are very bitter about that. They are very bitter that they were forced out of the family to go to Japan and live with the grandfather.

JC: Did that happen during the Depression?

SN: During the Depression days, yeah, before World War II.

JC: And then they are bitter about that experience because they had to stay in Japan or --

SN: That's right. Bitter because they're separated from the family, but not all the children went, okay? The older children were sent over there, and I have numerous examples of that where they are so mad at the mother and father for their being sent away at a very young age. It was like after graduating high school and so on, could be different. But the mother and father, Depression days, couldn't feel that they could take care of so many children and that was a very tragic thing. I have friends who are so bitter towards their mother and father, and I've analyzed, analyze the fact that they were sent off and while their brother or sister, younger sisters were allowed to stay here and they were sent. And I know it doesn't have to be Japanese. It could be Caucasian families who are, the children are sent away to live with the, and so on. They feel abandoned and so on, but that has some bad consequences that they won't speak to their mother and father and so on. People don't hear about it too much, but I know some and close people that --

JC: So when did those children then return back to the states? Did some of them get caught in Japan?

SN: They got caught, some got through the war. There are still broken up families, and they sort of separated themselves from the family completely, but some came back. There are Niseis who speak very good and write and speak very good Japanese. I mean they can write Japanese, read Japanese. And some, they are called, for some reason or another, they are called Kibei.

JC: Do you speak and write and read Japanese?

SN: I speak Japanese. I speak Japanese enough to be able to conduct business when I go to Japan and be able to order food at the restaurant, and, but writing has gone down the hill. I can write katakana, hiragana which is the alphabet type, but kanji is very difficult for me. I can't remember. But there are a lot of Niseis who are very fluent in Japanese, writes very well, especially those who were there for four or five years, went to school there. But you see, with the war did a lot of things that wasn't in the plan and the Japanese really were thinking, the immigrants, thinking of coming here, making some money and returning to Japan like a lot of Chinese did. But what happened is the children grew up. They didn't want to leave, you know. All of a sudden, and then the war came and that was the end. That's why they sent the children over there and telling the children that we're going to be coming back and so on. You just go to school and stay with grandpa and grandma and so on. That's the story, but the war changed all that.

JC: I was going to ask you, so if the war hadn't happened, what would have been different for the Japanese American community?

SN: Well, I think a lot of them may have returned to Japan, taken the children, a lot of them would. But there were many families, not hundreds, but many families, as Mary's uncle, Mary's uncle, took the whole family and returned after the war ended saying that Japan won the war.

JC: I don't understand.

SN: Well, you did. And soon after he returned, returned back there, he died with pneumonia because the food was so bad, see. There was no food at all in Japan, and there were, I don't know, a boatload of these families went back and took all the children and so on. So Mary's cousins, you know, all went over to Japan.

JC: What was the motivation for going back? I mean --

SN: She, he thought that Japan won the war. There were hundreds of Japanese who, you know, went that way, a little bit and thought that Japan won the war. And, you know, he was in a separate camp all the time because he was considered a dangerous alien. He was in a place called Crystal Springs or something like that in Texas. I can't remember the name exact, and the ones that want, the Isseis who were considered, you know, a danger were, they weren't dangerous, but they thought they were dangerous.

JC: And they thought they were --

SN: They were the leaders. They were the community leaders. That's another thing that helped my father being separated from the Japanese community, never participating. They didn't even touch him except for his business, and they checked out his business and that's it. But if he was a community leader and so on, my father would have been in a bad situation, been put away.

JC: So you had the one community leader who you say went, had some mental problems because of that. What was the general experience of those community leaders who had been in separate camps, isolated like that? Do you know?

SN: Most of them came back. I think it was all right. Some were bitter about it. I don't know people at firsthand. All I know firsthand, about Mary's uncle.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2003 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.