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MR: So you mentioned that you went to Japan, and when did you go, and what was the reason?

MB: When I was sixteen years old -- oh, because I am homely. My mother, when I was still young, my mother said, "No man is going to want to marry you because you're ugly, you're homely," and she says, "You won't have any happiness. I will give you, I'll make you happy and give you all your happiness now," so she took me places, you know, to visit, and then she also let me learn how to play the piano, and then there was a Mrs. Sato who taught Japanese dancing. She let me take lessons from Mrs. Sato. And of course, I excelled in everything I did, and it was the envy of other mothers, you know, whose daughters didn't do as well, and so the mothers used to pick on me. But then my mother let me learn different things. Oh, I danced for the Queen of Rosaria twice, and some of the Japanese didn't like that. And I know one lady after I came off the stage said in a loud voice, she says, "You with makeup cleverly applied, you're still not pretty." And she not only made me feel bad, but she also lost a lot of her friends. In fact, she lost all of her friends for making that statement. Now, I forgot what your question was.

MR: So how did you go to Japan?

MB: Oh, I was a good dancer, and I had, at school, they were putting on a play, and, a program, and I was to dance on stage, and I collapsed, and they took me down to the nurse's station, I'd had a heart attack, and so Mama took me to the, Doctor Robert Shiomi who was a doctor then and he had a heart specialist come to see me, and the heart specialist said, "You won't live to see your nineteenth birthday." I was sixteen at the or, yeah, sixteen at the time so that he was giving me two years to live. And so Mama took me to Japan because she couldn't take care of a sick child and raise a family, and so she took me to Japan to die, and she left in me Japan, and that's how come I landed, went to Japan. And in Japan, I never knew it why, never knew why. My classmates, oh, when I started Japanese school, here I was a seventeen-year old going in class with six and seven-year-olds, you know, but those kids taught me. I didn't know Japanese, and they taught me, learn, and they stuck with me all the time so I'd be up with their class. And when I graduated, I was one of the top students. And when you go to school in Japan, to go to high school, you pick the school you want to go to, and they give you exams. It's a three-day exam, and they ask you different questions. And if you pass... I mean, three tests. And if you pass all the tests, they'll accept you in the school. If you fail that high school, these exams are staggered. The highest academic school has the first test. If you fail that first test, you could take a test for the next high academic classes. And you can go to school that way, I mean, that's the way they chose the students. And once in school, if anything happened or anything, I was the one always selected to represent the school. I never wondered why. I even questioned that, I'd say, "Why me? I'm from America. I don't know Japanese or the Japanese ways. I don't know what to do. I'm not very bright. I'm not pretty, why me?" but they always chose me.

When, back then, it was the Showa Period. The Emperor Hirohito was, he was emperor. And at that time, he had a daughter who was sixteen years old that particular year, and she was touring all of Japan, and she was going by trains, by train, and she stopped at the capital city of each prefecture and visit with the students. And so whatever city she stopped at, she'd, they'd pick a delegate, there were four boy schools and four girl high schools, and I was the delegate for my school, and I know, I didn't know the custom, the Japanese custom. You're not supposed to speak unless you're spoken to. Well, this I didn't know that, you know, having come from America, and so I just rattled off, jabber, jabber, jabber, and I said a lot of things, and I was entertaining to the princess. She would ask me all kinds of questions. She was supposed to ask questions of, a question to each of the students, but after she, one boy, she never asked any question to because she was asking me all the questions. And usually, she just met with the students for one hour. She spent two and a half hours with me because she didn't want me to quit talking, and the men that were with her would tell her it's time for the students to leave. "No, no," you know, and she'd keep on talking. And then finally, the men came in said, "Well, you have to be rested up because remember, you're going to meet with the city people," and so we were led off the train. And anyway, after that happened and about a week later, after the tour was finished, she visited thirty-three cities. And after the tour was finished, it came out in the newspaper, she listed all the cities that she enjoyed, top one and so on. Number one city that she liked the most was the city that had changed the name of the city like if it was Philomath, Oregon, they changed it to her name, whatever her name was, and so that was her favorite city. The second favorite city was in Shikoku, and that's the island that has four prefectures in it. And what they did was they toured the whole, outside the island by boat, and so she enjoyed that, number two. Number three city she enjoyed the most was "where that girl from America was." And I know after that, the city folks, one or another of the city people had me have dinner with them every night. So for about two weeks every night, I'd have to go have dinner with them. And then someone decided at that time we were, the whole school was invited. They'd take us down to the coast, and so we rode the train and went to the coast. And for many of the people, the school had never been to the coast, and they would probably never go there again, and they had a lot of fun playing on the beach. And for their lunch, everyone enjoyed a box lunch, and a box lunch in Japan is real good, you know. I would have liked to have a box lunch, but no, I had to go eat with the dignitaries of the city. And it wasn't until 1983 that I found out why I was always chosen as a delegate from the school instead of some other smart student. Back in Japan, they have what is, they used to have the caste system. The emperor sits top, number two is nobility, then the warriors, commoners, serfs. I was a nobility, and that was why they chose me. This I didn't know that, and now I know why the kids here in America shunned me. They never played with me. They couldn't. They weren't, but if they were in Japan, they couldn't play with me, so they didn't, and that's why I was real lonely as a child because no one would play, well, no one would play with us, you know, and I thought it was me. I mean they shouldn't let, they should tell kids why, but I was never told, and so I thought I was a nobody.

MR: That must have helped to find out.

MB: And it wasn't till 1983. We went to this one restaurant in Beaverton, Oregon. It was called Shoji, and since our name was Shoji, we went to the restaurant, and we've been going there for about three years. And one day we went there, it was, the lunch hour was almost through and very few patrons were left in the restaurant, and Mr. Shoji came to our table to talk with us. And after we were talking for some time, my sister asked, "Oh, how do you write Shoji?" So he wrote Shoji and showed us, and then he wanted to know how we wrote Shoji, so my sister wrote. And after he saw what my sister wrote, he bowed, he bowed, bowed again and he left. We finished our meal, and the waitress never brought our ticket, and so I went up to the counter to pay for my meal. "You don't owe anything." "What do you mean you don't owe, I don't owe anything?" "You don't owe anything." Mr. Shoji said, "You didn't owe anything." I says, "Well, you, I do owe something," and I figured out how much worth we ate, and I slapped some money on the counter and left. Two weeks later, we went there again -- we went to Shoji restaurant quite often -- and that time, they wouldn't let us into the main dining room. They took us to this one room that had plants all around the room, you know, so all the tables were secluded and tablecloth the tables and everything. I said I didn't want to go there, and my sister said, "We don't want to go there. We want to eat in the main dining room," and they said, "Well, this is where you sit." So we sat down, and they brought us all kinds of food, and we had, instead of one waitress per, one waitress per several tables, we had three waitresses all for us. And every time we finished eating something, they'd spoon something else onto our plate. And my sister says, "I could serve myself. You don't have to help me," but they ignored her and served her. And when we were through and ready to leave, they wouldn't charge us anything, and so I was arguing, I was raising my voice. I was getting angry. I was raising my voice. And then the owner's wife came, Mrs. Shoji came, she was a Nisei like I am. Her husband was born in Japan, and he observed the Japanese way, and she told us that, about the caste system, and I told her, "Well, I owe you money," but she wouldn't take any money, so I says, "Well, I'm not coming here again." We never went after that.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2003 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.