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Getting an English Name

Yeah I mean uh I was...they couldn't... My name was Teruaki and they couldn't pronounce my name, the..the American teacher, you know?  And she said "Terry" "Truey" "Terry..ah" "Terry-eiki" and I says no it's "Te-ru-a-ki."  "Teru - Teruaki."  "Nope. You have to get an American name," you know.  And it went around through all these schools that there are no Japanese names used.  They...they have to have an American name, you know.  Or, or an English name.  So, my brother was on the other side of this camp in a school.  I mean, it's all in an area -- school.  Because he was two years above me.  He...he had the same thing. 

So I...I chose Jimmy because... some comic book character I ran into, you know.  And my brother chose James because he decided by feeling it was a good name.  So we went back at home and still known as Teru and Jun.  And uh so I never, we never, went by our American name.   All the way through camp, coming out of camp, then even in grammar school I was in a different school in sixth grade, my brother was in high school and he was using James and I was using Jimmy. 

You know the only time I found out...when we moved to high school and I was called before...cause I was fighting then I was kicking in doors and everything.  So I was called to the principal's office quite often.  And one time my brother was there and, and he was called James.  "Would Jimmy come to the principal's office."  And then we both stood up and I asked him what he was doing and he didn't know.   And then I realized...then I heard that he had kind of the same name but we were so ignorant that James and Jimmy are two different sounds.  But we never related it together.  Then I, then I said wait a minute maybe that is the same name, you know.  And my mother and father didn't know.  Even if we did, even if we did find out they would think that's a different name.  That could be John and Jimmy, you know?  Whatever, you know, so basically we kept it, you know, because I never thought I was gonna...I wanted to go back to Japan anyway.  So I thought, you know, Jimmy's gonna be gone when I go for living in Japan.


names

Date: June 29, 2012

Location: California, US

Interviewer: Chris Komai, John Esaki

Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum

Interviewee Bio

Jimmy Murakami (1933 – 2014) was inspired as a child to become a film animator by watching the Disney cartoons that were shown to Japanese Americans confined at the Tule Lake concentration camp during WWII. After attending Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles, he worked as an animator for UPA. He later founded Murakami Wolf—a company that produced many well-known commercials in the 1960s and 70s—and became a feature film director of When the Wind Blows and The Snowman. After establishing residence in Ireland in recent years, he passed away in February of 2014 at age 80.  (June 2014)

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