Densho Digital Archive - George Nakata Interview (denshovh-ngeorge

<Begin Segment 33>

GN: So those were some of the activities that we went through during days that we lived in Park Hotel and went to Lincoln High School and learned how to bowl and learned how to golf and joined the Nisei golf club and joined the Nisei bowling league and got my average from 150 up to 180 and long since retired but really enjoyed the camaraderie and the friendship every Friday night. We had Azumano partly as a sponsor. We had Kitas as a sponsor, and you really get to know your teammates, and you bowl in tournaments and really were extremely fun days. I remember those days very well. Mary went on to business school and graduated really in record time, I think half the time that it's supposed to take, and she got a nice job at a place called Twin Harbors Lumber Company, and every Christmas get a bonus and buy everybody a gift. And we used to always look forward to Mary coming home just before Christmas because she would not be able to carry everything back with her, just a very generous sister. And one of my recalls, to jump forward a little bit, was when my sister Michiko May came back from Japan, and her English was rusty, so she stayed with the Wessinger family had a Blitz Weinhard, lived with them except for weekends, and I'd go up and pick her up on weekends, come back. But that way, she can accelerate her English speaking ability. But we became close. At first, you know, it's difficult because you haven't seen your own sister for all these many years, but took English as a second language. She went on to White Stag just as a regular seamstress and then moved up to become the head design seamstress in their new style department. So a lot of the new things that White Stag was putting out was really designed and sewn by my sister Michiko, so she did quite well. But a week after she came back from Japan, I remember taking her downtown to Littman's and Learners and some place and buying her probably maybe her first outfit upon returning back to the United States of America and to Portland, and she became overcome that her little kid brother used his berry picking money to buy her this new outfit. And we all have stories like that, but some a bit touching, but they stick with you, and they'll probably stay with everyone for quite a long time. We worked hard. I helped my dad shovel sawdust. The great big iron things that you see on some sidewalks still in downtown Portland, you bring those up and the dump truck comes and puts on this three units of sawdust, and it's really quite a job to shovel in sawdust and shovel it into the furnace. You know, I was a skinny weak kid then, still am kind of a fat weak kid now; but nevertheless, it was hard for me to lift those great big sawdust shovels, but we did it. Sometimes even my mother helped. My sister Mary helped. And you know, when you witness things like it, it kind of stays with you. You know, a family that shovels sawdust together, you stay together kind of thing, and so we have had those experiences there.

As the years went by, we got a television set, and we bought the 1950 Chevrolet, and so things got better, and I think it became a little bit more relaxed for my mother and my father. I recall about in 1952, they decided that Japanese nationals could become American citizens, and there was kind of a rule that if you're fifty years old by that time, you could take it in Japanese. But if you're not fifty, you got to take it in English. My father was fifty years old, so he could take it in Japanese. My mother had to study it in English. Now as a person that studied Spanish and Latin in school, lived in Germany and tried to learn German, studied a bit of Japanese and traveled many times to China, foreign language is extremely difficult. But if you're forty-six or forty-seven years old and you're fluent in Japanese, Okayama-ben, and suddenly you have to learn the age minimum for U.S. president or how long does House of Representatives serves or the governor's race or what the Bill of Rights are in English. How challenging that must have been for my mother and other Issei ladies. And I remember going to a ceremony I believe it was in 1953 where a whole group of Isseis received their citizenship. Now, my mother and father never failed to vote. They studied the voter's pamphlet more than I did because English was difficult for them, and I suppose it's kind of like an Olympic athlete on the platform hearing the Star Spangled Banner because when they heard the Star Spangled Banner, when they heard the Pledge of Allegiance, when they saw the American flag, they told me how much it really meant to them, and I guess that's really hard for us to fathom. But when you work that diligently to become a citizen, how you cherish, how you value that right. So it was interesting to discuss politics with them and political candidates and the platform of the Republicans and the Democrats and some of the major issues of the day, but they never ever failed to vote. So I recall that very distinctly, and I'm sure that other Nisei, Isseis, and their Nisei offsprings also had similar experiences of a foreign born person pulling up roots, coming to a strange country with strange food, strange language, strange culture, and ultimately becoming a loyal dedicated citizen of that country. So witnessing that certainly did teach me a lesson in terms of what it means to be a citizen of the United States.