Both my parents were working—and basically our grandmother raised us and brought us up. She could speak very little English—probably could understand more than can speak. She would study the English with the textbooks that we brought home from grammar school along with us. But as children, she sang us the nursery songs from Japan, told us stories about the Momotaro. Once a month, they brought a Japanese movie, and usually it was the sword chambara, the sword play action movies. As a child, they were fun to watch, so I used to go with my grandmother to the church movies. So as children, we played cowboy and Indians, but also we played samurai with a stick in our belt serving as a sword. So unknowingly, there’s a lot of interaction with our Japanese background even though we felt in our school and in our upbringing that we were American.
Date: November 28, 2003
Location: Saga, Japan
Interviewer: Art Nomura
Contributed by: Art Nomura, Finding Home.
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