<Begin Segment 11>

AC: You mentioned something, though, that piqued my curiosity. What do you feel that your parents gave to you?

JS: Well, that is the same things as probably you'll hear from all Nisei, from practically all Nisei, those things, those words that they use, they'll apply to me and they'll apply to my wife, and we're all different kinds of people, but the, basically, one of the strong things in our, that have kept our families and our people in, in a good place in society, is the things that were taught to us by our parents. You work hard, you're honest, you obey the laws, if you get in trouble in school you're gonna be beat twice as much when you get home... No, white people went through this too, so nothing different there. But when we look at society today and see what, everybody is entitled to their own opinions, they can speak up as much as they want... today's society, even religious groups feel that because of their way of thinking they're above the law, and this is, I don't feel like this, even though I may be a Christian in my fellowship and beliefs. Why, that doesn't mean, really doesn't mean as much to me as it would to a lot of people, because people, when they believe their way of looking at, of getting close to God, or whether you're a Buddhist or whatever, I feel like a lot of people, they're gonna end up in the same place anyway and it's gonna be on your own record, how you're gonna end up. So what I've done, I have no worry about the, about where I'm gonna be in the future, what my spirit, however my spirit and my body gonna separate and go different directions, and how I'm gonna be looked at, that's no concern of mine because my concern is how I'm gonna create the record today. And some of the things I do today I'm not too proud of, but part of what you are.

AC: So how did you feel having to move from Carver all the way to Ontario?

JS: Well, like I say, I was still a kid, you know? And I guess it was kind of an adventure. When you think... I really don't know how it felt, anymore. But we knew what the situation was. It wasn't a good future for us on that farm. The farm was washing away. And my dad was -- this is 1934 -- he was about fifty years old, I imagine, and it's a, you've got three grown kids and very little cash money. You cashed in everything you owned and leave, I don't know how much money he had when he came here, whether he had a hundred and fifty dollars or two hundred dollars or what. I know that we were, he didn't have very much savings. Trying to hold a family together gets kind of tough too, 'cause like me, had a teenager like me to put up with. Why, I just, see, I'd been out of school quite a while, and while the other kids were going to school I was working. And so I'm looking at my future in a different light than they are. I mean, I'm looking like this is, "Gee, I've been out of school for four years, and I haven't got anything. I still don't have a car." And my dad, the Japanese system was that, if you're a farmer especially, the oldest son got everything. Well then, I got, I get to thinking, "Well gee, what's all of nothing?" It's just kind of, probably the frustrations in my younger days. I was twenty-three when I volunteered for service, when Uncle Sam asked for one-year volunteers. And there was a song called "Goodbye Dear, I'll Be Back in a Year." Most people your age have never heard of it, but it was a song then. And so I didn't tell him I was gonna volunteer; I just did. Then he was, he's upset about it, but my brother Abe had graduated from high school, and so it wasn't that bad. And so when the time came, why, then he could tell his neighbors, "My son volunteered for service." It was kind of a good thing in those days, because patriotism was such a part of your lives. Up until the time things were getting hot, why, if you weren't a soldier, you're either too lazy to work or too dumb. That's why you became a soldier, back in the '20s and '30s when times were tough. Some joined, became, joined, enlisted in the services, or else they joined the CCCs, which was a very important part of our society at that time, 'cause that bailed a lot of people out, young people didn't have any place to go. Young men joined the Three C's and they went all over the nation doing government work, but it was good work that they did. And so I guess, in a way, I wasn't just patriotic; this was kind of a way out for me, to see if I could get some exposure to some other ways of life.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2004 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.