Interviews

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

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

3. How he met his wife

4. Japanese language education for children

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

6. Proud of having been involved in human resource development

7. Brazilians with a Japanese identity

8. I want to restore my Japanese nationality

9. What is Nikkei?

10. From immigrant boy to doctor of Law

11. From scrubbing pad factory worker to tailor

12. Occupations of early Japanese immigrants

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

14. My father forced me to speak Japanese at home

15. Life on board the migrant ship

16. Closed Japanese community

17. Foreign language education was severely restricted during the war

18. Winners and losers

Ninomiya,Masato

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

This page may include translations provided by Google Translate. [Original]

Life on board the migrant ship

I remember a lot about the ship. There was a sports day, a school performance, something like a school, and we all sang songs together. I was only five years old. I didn't go to elementary school yet, so all I remember is kindergarten-like things, singing and running around together.

Also, the food on the ship was so, how should I put it, the portions were so large that we couldn't finish it all. The diet in Japan in 1953 was very poor, but on the ship we were served delicacies three times a day. My mother was pregnant and got seasick so she couldn't eat much, but I remember the food on the ship being very nutritious.

When the ship arrived in Los Angeles, it was right after the war, so no Japanese were allowed to disembark. However, I was only five years old, so I clung to the crew and got off the ship, and I was the only one to set foot on American, how should I put it, land. I remember being told off a lot, but I remember that too.

Brazil ships

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)