<Begin Segment 8>

TI: Okay. So I'm going to now jump. When you were about nine years old, you went to Japan. So let's talk about that. Why did you go to Japan?

YK: Summer vacation, my mother wanted to go back for a visit. She's never been there since she came over here. So I went with her, 1938. Yeah, that's right. First time I'd been on a ship, got seasick, I remember that. Not very long, though. I think I got seasick for two days, and seemed like the boat took about ten days. We landed in Yokohama, and we took a train to Toyama. That's when we had a, I guess, family reunion, 'cause we have a picture with all her relatives lined up. So I remember the one bad thing about Japan was they had mosquitoes, and I had mosquito bites all the time. Some of 'em got infected, had a big pus-like thing grew on me. That's one thing I didn't like about Japan. Other than that, we did a lot of traveling. It was... I can't remember too much about it, but I remember going fishing, and what else? Not much else. Mostly was visiting people and places.

TI: At about your age, there were quite a few Niseis who, when they were kids, would go to Japan, and some of them would stay in Japan because either the family moved back or they were to be educated. When you visited Japan, could you see yourself living in Japan? Could that be something that you would feel comfortable doing?

YK: Yeah, I guess I could have. Fortunately, I had enough Japanese language training over here, and I could get along with the others. In that sense, I guess Japanese school was helpful.

TI: Yeah, you must have had a really good Japanese school, because for you to feel that way, I think many Niseis felt that their Japanese wasn't good enough, and so it was really hard for them when they would go to Japan.

YK: Well, I guess a lot of it's because you're among relatives. There's a certain amount of give and take there, so it makes it easier to talk and understand. Especially out in the country where you have different dialects. And the dialects weren't too bad because at home our parents would speak the same dialect, so it wasn't that bad. When I got home, the spoken language was a lot different than the language that you had a dialect with. But it was, I guess I had fun, I enjoyed it. It was about three months, summer vacation. I don't remember coming home, the ship coming home.

TI: Were there any Japanese relatives that you felt really close to after those three months?

YK: No, because we kind of moved from one relative to another. And they all seemed like, pretty accommodating, but I guess that's okay.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2013 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.