(Spanish) In my case, the truth is that I come from a family in which mother and father are Japanese, even though my mother left there at a young age – but her parents were very strict, and they would only speak Japanese at home. So my mother speaks Japanese, and my father, of course, being Japanese, also speaks. So, when I was little we started out speaking Japanese at home. Later on when – I’m the oldest of three – when I went to school, we began turning more towards Spanish. But my father always spoke Japanese in the house. And, in my case, later on I had the opportunity to go to Japan on a monbusho scholarship for a year and a half, and there of course I took six months of Japanese. And then since returning to Chile, I’ve spent the last forty years working for Japanese companies. Possibly, I’m an exception in that regard because I have many friends in my age range who don’t speak Japanese. It’s true, they’ve kept many customs, such as eating gohan or misoshiru, but they don’t speak [the language]. Maybe in my case the path was different.
Date: October 7, 2005
Location: California, US
Interviewer: Ann Kaneko
Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum
Journal feed
