<Begin Segment 11>

HH: In your home that you were growing up in California, what was the primary language in your home?

HU: Well, because my mother and father, my father could speak English than my mother, so my mother was mostly Japanese. But in school, everything was English, so I had no problem with growing up with Japanese in the home and English outside.

HH: Many Nisei went to Japanese school after regular school. Were you among those?

HU: Yeah. My parents thought that I should learn Japanese, so I went to, I was sent to Japanese school. I went about ten years, I went all the way through high school. Forty-five minutes a day, six days a week for ten years.

HH: Six days a week?

HU: Six days a week. We used to go on Saturdays, but it was only forty-five minutes a day.

HH: Do you still maintain your language?

HU: Well, on and off.

HH: Can you read and write?

HU: I can read a little bit and I can write enough by referring back to some... I bought a book, how to write letters in Japanese, you know, in Japanese now, the simple one. And so sometimes I write letters to my relatives in Japan, my cousins. But although some of the cousins, I can write, like my Christmas letters all in English, and I send that to them and sometimes will write something in Japanese.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 1994 JACL Philadelphia. All Rights Reserved.