Densho Digital Archive - Jim Tsugawa Interview (denshovh-tjim

<Begin Segment 7>

AC: Did you ever go to take any trips to Japan?

JT: When we were in Hillsboro, my mom took us to Japan in 1939, my sister Helen, who was three years older than I, and we went back to Japan to visit her father because he was passing away. And she was very fortunate to talk to and see her dad before he died. And I think we stayed with an aunt, and she did quite well, I think, because I think she had a bathhouse, you know, Japanese bathhouse. And then I went to school there, and I lost all my English, and I spoke nothing but Japanese. And I remember, seemed to me like it was a mountainous area that we had to walk through, and I think I remember that down in the flats where the ocean water would come in and they would block it off and they would get salt. But I spent about, I think, seven months in Japan and then lost English. Finally, in 1939, we came back and, of course, they never passed me because I'd missed seven months of school. But they did pass my sister. I don't understand that; she must have been smarter. But anyway, so I had to repeat first grade.

AC: Because you were six years old at the time?

JT: Six, seven years old then. I was an old kid in the first grade.

AC: Do you remember how you got to Japan?

JT: On a boat, something maru.

AC: Out of which port?

JT: I think out of Seattle. Out of Seattle. I don't remember how many days it took, but I do remember... of course, when you're young, the flavor of food is really enhanced, but I can remember the, just plain old white bread with butter on it, and it was so tasty. I can remember that.

AC: Did you have much white bread with butter growing up?

JT: Pardon me?

AC: Did you have much white bread with butter growing up?

JT: I don't remember; I'm sure we did.

AC: But for whatever reason, onboard ship, that was exceptional.

JT: It was tasty, very tasty.

AC: And you went to... do you remember which port you landed in in Japan?

JT: Oh, no, no, I don't remember that.