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)

Life on board the migrant ship

I remember well what it was like on the ship. We had athletic activities and events like school arts festivals. We had something like a school on the ship and we would all sing together. But I was only five years-old, so I wasn’t in elementary school yet. So, I don’t remember anything other than some sort of kindergarten-like place where we would all sing songs together and run around.

And well, the food on the boat well, there was so much of it, we couldn’t eat it all. In 1953 (Showa 28), Japan was experiencing a famine. But on the ship, they treated us to three lavish meals a day. Our mom was pregnant and she couldn’t eat much due to sea sickness. But I remember the food, the nutrition was abundant.

When the ship arrived at Los Angeles, Japanese were not allowed to disembark given it was just after the war. But since I was only five years-old, I toddled closely behind one of the ship’s sailors and managed to get off the ship. And so, I was the only one that, you could say, set foot on American soil. And I remember I got scolded a good amount for that.

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)