<Begin Segment 5>

DF: At that point, did you consider yourself Japanese American or Japanese or an American?

AT: I considered myself an American. I never once thought of myself as being Japanese because it was not a good thing. The war was over although I knew I was Japanese. You weren't treated quite the same being in Japan, being Japanese. You were denied a lot of things, and I couldn't afford not to be like my friends. You choose to be like everyone else that you're with all the time, and I chose not to be Japanese at that time. It was not a good thing to speak Japanese although I did. I could, my mother and father both spoke Japanese at home, and we spoke English in return. We always answered in English.

DF: What was the difference that you noticed? What things, aside from speaking English, what things were different from things that you did at home to things you did with your friends in order not to be Japanese?

AT: Well, I don't know. You were just an American. I just chose to be an American which I was. And if you were Japanese, you spoke Japanese. You ate Japanese foods which we did at home of course. But we were as American teenagers as we could be. Everything we did was as a teenager. We wore jeans. We wore peacoats. We played basketball. We played baseball. I never had a Japanese friend while we lived in Japan. My little brother did because he was raised in that area, but I didn't and my older brother didn't either. All of our friends were from the mainland, or from the United States.

DF: And how did your parents feel about that?

AT: They were fine with it. They didn't ever feel that we needed to speak Japanese. My brothers both learned to speak because they wanted to. My older brother was asked to help a Japanese businessman learn to speak English, so he would go over to their home and help him or speak to him in English, and he did pick up some Japanese, but he didn't really learn to speak Japanese until he left Japan, went to the University of Hawaii, and took some Japanese classes. My younger brother on the other hand learned to speak Japanese as a child because of his friends, and he continued, well actually, he didn't even take it in the university because he spoke fluently, and he still does, and that's his business is to, he's an attorney and he speaks Japanese. He has lots of Japanese clients because of it.

DF: So back in Tokyo, do you remember what it was like as being rebuilt?

AT: Oh, yes. Oh, my goodness. When we got there, everything in Yokohama, of course, was a disaster. It was bombed heavily. In Tokyo where we were, it was not because the United States decided not to bomb certain areas, and that was the area where we lived. They decided not to bomb around the Imperial Palace. They didn't bomb the Diet Building. They didn't bomb the downtown area, the Ginza area, very little of it was gone. But as soon as you got out to the outer areas of course, that was all in rubble. It was hard to get around. If you stayed on the main streets, that was easy. But anything outside of the main areas, the streets were very, very bad. In Yokohama, it was just heavily, heavily destroyed. But the United States in all its wisdom chose not to bomb certain areas, and they didn't. They didn't touch it. They didn't touch Osaka. Osaka was built so that if there was a fire or if it was destroyed, they had wide enough streets so that it would save everyone on the next street. Well, in Tokyo, they just didn't bomb these areas. They left the Imperial Hotel. They left the Takarazuka Theater. All that whole area was left intact. As soon as you got out a little ways of course, then they were destroyed. But most of the areas that we saw were still intact.

DF: What were your thoughts when you were looking over Yokohama?

AT: Well you know I was perhaps eight, nine. All I could think of was darn, I lost my comic books. That was my only thought. I'm sorry, that's how shallow I was. [Laughs]

DF: And what kind of comic books were they?

AT: They were classic comic books. We were devastated to lose them.

DF: And by classics, you mean --

AT: Well, they were the classics like Jane Eyre and The Kidnap and all these wonderful books that if I'd had them now, I would be so thrilled to have.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2004 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.