Densho Digital Archive - George Katagiri Interview (denshovh-kgeorge

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SG: So I'll just first start off asking your name.

GK: My name is George Katagiri.

SG: And tell me when and where you were born?

GK: I was born in Portland, Oregon, way back in 1926, on Southwest Broadway. That's about a half block from Portland State University, and I lived there in a big old house for about five years. And at the end of five years, my mother, I had two older sisters. And at the end of five years, my mother took the three of us to Japan, and I think she was trying to find out whether it would be wise to leave me there to become educated in Japan. But once we got there, I think she quickly found out that I was too Americanized, and I was not suitable for, to be raised in Japan, so we just stayed there four months with my grandmother in Nagano-ken. And the most memorable experience, not a good one, was at my grandmother's house when I went to watch the Japanese kids walk by the house on the road to school, and so I was out standing in front of my grandmother's house. And as the children passed, they pointed to me and said, "American, American, American." It was in a derogatory way. So, and I felt it as a five year old kid, so I developed the feeling that this isn't a place that I like. And so when we got back, it's the kind of feeling I had for all those growing up years that, I just, there's something about Japan that I didn't like. But the second time I went, I went as a soldier in the occupation army. And this time, I was kind of the conqueror. And when I went back to my grandmother's hometown, people would get out of the way when we came down the street. They would actually stand on the side of the road because not too many GIs would visit the country town that I was from, and so it was kind of a different story. And so my attitude changed a little bit that, here, this time as a nineteen year old conqueror, they respected my presence, and so that kind of equalized things. But anyhow, going back to my, the five year old visit, we got back to Portland, and we moved from Southwest Portland to Southeast Portland. And so I started school, elementary school in Southeast Portland at Abernathy Elementary School which is on about Twelfth and Division. And my two older sisters were also there, and so we were the only Japanese family attending Abernathy School. And when they were in the seventh and eighth grades and graduated, I was the only Japanese boy left in the school for about a year. And then finally when I was in the eighth grade, a second Japanese boy enrolled in Abernathy School. But I grew up with mostly Caucasian friends and Italian friends and Chinese friends that occupied most of Ladd's Addition in Southeast Portland.