Interviews
Growing Up in Japan
There was one boy that was of a mixed marriage and we kind of hung around together for a while. I remember he found a dead rattlesnake and I took the rattlesnake and I put it in the women’s bathroom, coiled it up. Oh boy, that was my revenge. Nobody ever found out who did it. But it was rough because I didn’t know the Japanese, except the servants, and all of a sudden I’m the low person on the totem pole. I spoke fluent Japanese so I understood everything. My mother had a really rough time in camp because she was used to servants and even when we came over, she didn’t know how to cook or anything. So I would learn to cook something and then I would teach my mother and I was about 8, 9, 10, I would do that and then grandmother would also help a little bit.
Date: August 27, 2012
Location: Washington, US
Interviewer: Cindy Nakashima, Emily Anderson
Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum with support of NITTO Tires Life History Project. Courtesy of the USC Hapa Japan Database Project.
