<Begin Segment 7>

JC: So here's another question I'd like to ask. As a young man, high school years, what kind of values did your family try to instill in you?

SN: Well, I really think that, I can't remember their giving big long lectures of any kind, but I feel that we learned by example of our mother and father. My father worked very, very hard, long hours, very seriously. He was not, he was no, let's say social butterfly or something like that, playing around. He never smoked, he never drank, he absolutely didn't do any of that while his contemporaries, Japanese immigrants, would smoke or drink, carouse and so on. He never, he was really, my mother used to complain about that. He wasn't the real social type. My mother was more towards being a more social person.

JC: So when you mention that you didn't live in the Japanese ghetto, for your mother, that was probably a bit of a hardship?

SN: Little bit, yeah. She would use the telephone. The telephone was a great thing. She would talk on and on and on. I come home from school and there she is on the phone and talking to all of her friends, church friends, which was really, I think was nice that there was a telephone that she had to contact because she wanted, after all, women like to talk, of course. [Laughs] But my father was just satisfied with going to visit together some of the friends, you know, once a month or something like that.

JC: So your father taught you to be hard working, nose to the grindstone. What were some of the other values that you were rewarded for, or maybe the opposite is what did you get in trouble for?

SN: Get in trouble for? I can't remember anything. All I remember is one time I got bawled out by my mother thinking that we were trying to, oh I see my friend -- the gumball machine, right? We were little kids trying to see if we could get a gumball out of there free, and my mother heard about it and really bawled me out. I can remember that. Then I was, must be like four, five, six years old, seven years old. But I think all children growing up in those years, you see, I think when desperately poor, most people and so on, they just learn values that just automatically, I think... because you see your mother and father struggling along, got to work hard, and life doesn't come easy. Naturally, you just learn those things, I think I did, by what you see around you. And the teachers too, teachers are very good role models. Teachers are entirely, attitude of teachers today are entirely different than what the teacher's attitude is, really, really different.

JC: So say more about that.

SN: What?

JC: Say more about that.

SN: About the teachers?

JC: About the difference between teachers now and then.

SN: Well, teachers then, you know, went way out of their way to interact with, even with the family, go to see the, visit the family and see if the children is not doing well, and there were a lot of children not doing well. Maybe it's malnutrition or as you know, this is the depth of the Depression. Also, the teachers were very kind. I thought that they were very kind. There were good teachers that taught students well, and the students were well-disciplined. I mean, they would be under control and so on. I think today, the biggest objection I have about teaching today is so-called tenure, guaranteed jobs. I see it all the time. On the higher education, I see these teachers get tenure, after that, they don't need to teach any classes. "I'm going to do research, and I have a lifetime job here," and so on, and that's the same situation you have with teachers here when they became unionized, you see. And the union is, the trouble is that they, the teacher, a poor teacher just can't be fired, you see? You can't fire a poor teacher, and there are a lot of poor teachers, really. I have friends who are teachers, you know, high school teachers, and they tell me there are some really terrible teachers that are there, and the principal would like to get 'em transferred out of there. [Laughs] But I think that teaching jobs, the profession has, the level of professionalism in that profession has gone down. That's what I'm trying to say. The teachers are not as professional as they should be. And I sort of fault the basis of teachers being, I mainly fault that teachers are taking teaching jobs, want to take life a lot easier, you know, and I admit that the teachers are paid low, too little. They should be paid more. There is no doubt, but not to have the union saying that the poor teacher gets paid as well as a good teacher. That's the thing I object to because that's not good.

JC: So, you said that your values came from both your family and the school?

SN: Yeah.

JC: When you were passing on family values, has it been more difficult as a father than it was when you were a son?

SN: I think so. I think that so many more factors are, changed, you see, you know. I think that things like the Vietnam War had a terrific influence on education. I think that the moral values and so on change drastically with the late '60s and changed. The situation changed drastically at that time.

JC: What are the values that you passed on to your children?

SN: Oh. Well, my wife and I just really feel that being, that I tell them that you do not want to do something that you would regret doing, that honesty, being forthright about something that happened and so on. I've had situations with my children that were really, you know, upsetting in the past. And it does affect you, affect me. It's not easy. I think when the '60s, late '60s started, you see, I think all parents would tell you that it was a very difficult time to raise children, very difficult time to raise children. A lot of them went wayward because of the war, Vietnam War.

JC: And how did you deal with the difficulties that you had in raising children? How did you and Mary work together on that?

SN: Well, what we tried to do as much as possible working with our children is to try to be as close to them as possible, talk to them constantly. I think the oldest one left the house too early. I mean, going out, I think that we didn't, in hindsight, our oldest son, I think both of them didn't mature enough to leave home. And I think a lot of cases, I think, I see other children, you know, who were sent off away from school and been better for them to be, I think we protected our kids too much. That's typical of Japanese families. You take for example, for example, in Japan, the daughters do not leave the home until they get married, okay. They do not live by themselves like the Americans' daughters do, okay, in separate apartments. And that sort of feeling of mothering them too long wasn't good for our sons, I mean, the first two sons. I mean, they had problems when they went out on their own because mother took care of them too much, and my wife was a real mother hen.

JC: Do you think one should return to the old ways of doing things?

SN: [Laughs] I guess so, maybe, I don't know. I haven't come to that conclusion yet.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2003 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.