<Begin Segment 5>

LT: So you talked about being the star of the play Momotaro. I'm wondering, growing up in Japantown with parents who were from Japan, how did you learn about Japanese culture, and what do you remember most about that?

DS: Well, when we were young, small, my mother... I took violin lessons and my youngest sister took piano lessons from these two Japanese sisters who lived up the hill. And my other sister took koto, koto lessons from this lady who was, had been a professional dancer and Japanese musician. And so I think that's why, how we were introduced, and I knew girls who took odori dancing, Japanese dancing, from professional ladies. And although I didn't take any Japanese instruments or learned how to do the Japanese dances, I was, I had friends and girlfriends who did, and I would go to their programs. They came to my recitals, and I think slowly it just sinks into you that you are Japanese, and culture is something that you're bound to grow up with. That's probably the extent of my...

LT: Did your parents talk to you about being Japanese or how you should behave as Japanese?

DS: No, not really. Not really. We were a minority race, naturally, a minority race, and like going to Bailey Gatzert was nothing because they were all minorities. And when we went to high school, that was a different story. I went to Franklin High School, which was on the south side there, and there were... most of the Japanese I think went to Broadway High School or Garfield. My sister, older sister, had gone to Franklin, so I went to Franklin, too. There weren't as many Japanese kids there as at Broadway or Garfield, so you kind of integrated more into the Caucasian society. The kids, they were all nice, we never felt any, I never felt any discrimination in high school, in all my classes. And I was lucky to be graduated from high school before the war started. My sisters, I think, finished their high school in camp, but my brother and my older sister and I, we all went to Franklin.

LT: Do you remember any adjustments when you moved from grade school, where most of your classmates were Japanese and Chinese, to middle school, or junior high, as you said, where there were many more Caucasians. Was it an adjustment, did you have to think about differences? Did you have "aha moments" where you thought, "Wait a minute"?

DS: No, we didn't have a junior high system. We went from eighth grade straight to high school, and I never felt that way of going to high school and being in, where all were, the majority were all Caucasians in all my classes. I may have been the only Japanese in some classes. And I just accepted that, and I never was discriminated on in high school. I don't remember anybody discriminating against me because I was Japanese. I think I was accepted with all the teachers and the kids.

LT: As you were becoming more involved with the hakujin community, your parents were still speaking Japanese, and they were more Japanese culture. How did that work for you and your family?

DS: My mother and father never tried to impress on me that I was Japanese, and that I should act like a Japanese. I mean, that was never an issue in our family. They accepted what we did in school, and there was no problem there, and no problem of my being accepted by the Caucasians in school, no discrimination, I never felt any discrimination in high school. I worked in the office, too, in high school, during my study period, so I got to know the teachers, all the teachers and the kids who were in charge of honor society or something. And I never, in all my four years in school, felt discriminated on because I was Japanese. I felt that I was accepted, and to me, that was not a big thing. I didn't... actually, it wasn't that important to me to be in school and to be... and I was accepted, so maybe that's why it wasn't important to me, because I was accepted.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2013 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.