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MR: Sometimes families send their children to Japanese school after school.

YK: They do, they do. We were so out southeast that there were no schools there. And one lady came out, she moved out in southeast, and so she had a school. And so we went about a year, I think. She wanted to teach us dancing and singing, and she taught us how to try to read and write, but I can't remember any of it. That was the extent of my education in Japanese. And like George, my husband, he went every day after school to regular Japanese school, and we never had that, and so we just sort of played. But my father always said, "You don't go to Japanese school, so I want you to learn your English really well." [Laughs] And I think... well, I don't know if he really... because when we'd speak Japanese, what we learned at home, he'd always correct us. And to this day I don't know what was right or wrong about this one little phrase I had. Which one was the correct way? I keep thinking about it, and I'm not sure. Was it de or no de? And he always would correct us. My mother never said anything, but my dad would correct our... and he never went to school; he was self-taught. So even reading, he said he read by the candlelight when he was small, because he couldn't go to school. And he learned how to read Japanese and speak it, and then when he came over here, he learned to read English, and write it, and speak it. And so you think of that, and you think you should work a little harder, 'cause we have all the privileges that he never had. And he would tell us these things to probably instill in us a little bit more ambition and desire to want to succeed.

MR: What do you think his hopes were for his children?

YK: Oh, just to be happy and do something that you're happy with in the work somehow. He never said, "I want you to be such-and-such." It was just, "Be good, be good citizens," and he always stressed the fact that we were born here and we should be good citizens and learn. And we had to excel in school, though, because things would be harder for us because we're Japanese. If they had to choose, they wouldn't choose us, they'd choose the Caucasian. So he always stressed that: "You're going to have to work a little harder than the other person," and that sort of stayed with me.

MR: Did he or your mother keep you connected to the Japanese community in any way then if there was no school?

YK: Well, you know, they were very active in the Japanese community themselves. They didn't go to church all the time, but they were mainly Buddhists. And they were active in, they call it Nikkeijinkai now, but it was called... I forgot. Not Japanese Ancestral Society, that's next. But he would become a part of that, and he'd be voted president for one year or whatever, and my mother joined, they had a women's club that she helped organize, and she would help run that. And so they were very active in the community. And so we'd go when there was a community activity, they'd take us. The women's club had a program, they were going to have the program, so everybody's doing something. And my mother cannot carry a tune, she can't sing. And so she didn't know what... they said she had to do something, so I guess she really wracked her brain, so she came home and she said, "I offered you and Yaeko to play the piano." I said, "What?" And she said, "You play a duet on the piano." And we're not really very good. And so she said she couldn't sing, and we knew that, and so we did our share. So my father calls the music teacher up and tells her, "You have to come," and we were taking piano lessons, "you have to come and help us." And so she got two pieces, "Nola" and the "March of the Wooden Soldiers," and she brought those and she worked on us. Taught us how, helped us get it down pat. And so then we got, had got new dresses, and my mother then got twin dresses, 'cause we're only a year apart. And then we had our hair cut, and then we got up there. And we played for it, and she was just so relieved and so happy. And then I thought, well, we did our share for her. But it just was something that just really, I think it made her feel like she contributed, and we were part of that. But I still remember us trying real hard. I'd poke my sister and she'd poke me back if we hit a wrong key or something. But that was sort of fun.

MR: What were your feelings being on stage the first time?

YK: It was really scary. [Laughs] We just weren't used to that. And one thing is different, is we didn't know all the Japanese children that might have been there, or the families. We know a few that was within our circle, but other than that, if we go someplace, you know, they all know each other 'cause they go to Japanese school, but we didn't know anybody. And my older sisters starting going to this, call it Girl Reserves, and this Japanese organization associated with the YWCA. And they'd go to those, and then they'd have dances and things. And they never asked me to come. I was just a year younger, but all those years I thought, they never, and I'd mentioned a couple times, they acted like they didn't hear me. They didn't want me tagging along. That was up until the war, so I was left at home all the time, and I was sort of not a part of that. And so when evacuation came, they didn't know there were any more children in our family. He thought there were just the two, my older sisters. And I said, "No, there's more." [Laughs] And you learn, and met people there at camp and stuff.

High school was... going backwards, high school was sort of fun for me because I like sports and I'd play on the basketball team, and we'd do gymnastics. The new gym teacher was just a college graduate and she had a little car, a rumble seat type, and she'd take us to the different schools so we'd play against them, high school basketball. And so it was really fun, and they were all... well, I was maybe not the shortest girl, but we'd have such a good time, and that was, to this day, one of them, I have lunch once a month with my old grade school, high school friends to this day, and it's really, we enjoy it a lot. Goes to different restaurants and have lunch. But high school was just very fast, I thought, fleeting. I had no social life, you know, just stayed home, come home, played basketball or sports and that was it.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2003 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.