Interviews

1. How he met his wife

2. Life on board the migrant ship

3. Closed Japanese community

4. Japanese language education for children

5. Proud of having been involved in human resource development

6. Brazilians with a Japanese identity

7. I want to restore my Japanese nationality

8. What is Nikkei?

9. What made your parents decide to move to Brazil?

10. From scrubbing pad factory worker to tailor

11. Occupations of early Japanese immigrants

12. My father forced me to speak Japanese at home

13. Winners and losers

14. The winners who remained at the beginning of the migration

15. The Japanese government's mistaken assumptions about Japanese Americans

16. Since childhood, he has been interpreting for his father.

17. Foreign language education was severely restricted during the war

18. From immigrant boy to doctor of Law

Professor of Law, University of Sao Paulo, Lawyer, Translator (b. 1948)

Since childhood, he has been interpreting for his father.

Well, there was no hope. My dad lived in Brazil for 50 years and died without being able to speak Portuguese properly. So, I was five years-old and it was easy to learn a new language. So, I was promptly tasked with translation starting around six or seven years of age.

After my dad left the brush factory, he went around to Japanese people to take clothing orders. He did his sewing at home and then delivered the items. And with that, he bought the fabric and accessories and delivered the finished items. Ultimately, he would go to the morning market and it was all Japanese people, so even if he couldn’t speak Portuguese, he could still buy groceries. But in terms of fabric and accessories you need to speak Portuguese, so he would take me along to interpret.

I guess living in Sao Paulo, you really didn’t need to learn the language.

interpreters languages linguists

Date: September 19, 2019

Location: California, US

Interviewer: Yoko Nishimura

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

Interviewee Bio

Masato Ninomiya was born in Nagano Prefecture in 1948 and moved to Brazil at the age of 5 with his family. He currently maintains a legal office in São Paulo, and in addition to working as a Law Professor at the University of Sao Paulo, also serves as Special Assistant to the President at Meiji University and as Visiting Professor of Law at Musashino University. Since its founding in 1992, he has served as President of CIATE (Center for Information and Support to Workers Abroad), Advisor to the Japan Society for Promotion of Science (JSPS) for Central and South America, and also a Committee Member of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). Additionally, he is considered a Nikkei community leader in Brazil, supporting various activities such as improving the working conditions of Brazilian Dekasegi, and the education of Japanese-Brazilian children. . (May 2021)