Meeting a wonderful teacher opened the door
[Fukasawa] Did you go to high school in Japan as well?
[Shimano] Yes. I was able to go thanks to my English teacher. I was the first foreigner to attend a public high school in Okazaki City.
My mother died suddenly when I was in my second year of high school.
[Fukasawa] So you really wanted to go on to high school and that's why you went there?
[Shimano] My English teacher asked me, "How are you, Patricia? Have you thought about your future career?" and when I replied, "I want to study," he supported me with all his might.
[Fukazawa] I'm glad you found a good teacher. Did your parents always work in factories and have to work overtime?
[Shimano] I went with just my mother. My father stayed behind in Brazil.
[Fukazawa] I see. Do you live with your mother?
[Shimano] Yes.
[Fukasawa] Does your mother work overtime?
[Shimano] That's right.
[Fukasawa] After school, would you go home and watch TV alone?
[Shimano] That was the pattern. My mother didn't have the means to support me. So I had to do it myself.
[Fukazawa] How were your grades at school when you were in Brazil?
[Shimano] In Brazil, I only went to the fourth grade of elementary school. My grades were just average. I wasn't particularly outstanding.
[Fukazawa] But when you finished the fourth grade in Brazil and went to Japan, and then transferred to Japan at the end of the fifth grade, there was a big gap in the content of the classes, right? I guess you were at a big disadvantage. Normally, you would fall behind at that point and stop going to school. Why did you continue to go to school?
[Shimano] I really had nothing to do (laughs). Except going to school.
[Fukazawa] Usually, this is the age when you find friends, have a romantic relationship, and have fun with that. There were plenty of people working in factories even before the age of 16. Around me.
[Shimano] I think the biggest factor was the support I received from my homeroom teacher and English teacher. They were amazing. I think I've been able to get to where I am today because I had great teachers in both middle and high school.
[Fukasawa] So you graduated from high school in Japan too.
[Shimano] Yes. Then, when I was in my second year of high school, my mother passed away.
[Fukasawa] Eh, he died in Japan?
[Shimano] In Japan.
[Fukazawa] So now you have only one child. What happens in that case?
[Shimano] For a while, I stayed with my uncle and got special permission from the school to work part-time. I started in my second year of high school.
[Fukasawa] At that time, were you thinking about going back to Brazil to visit your father?
[Shimano] I couldn't go home.
[Fukasawa] Why?
[Shimano] We didn't have any money... My mother couldn't afford to save either. She raised me in Japan while sending money to my father in Brazil every month. Women's salaries are really low, aren't they? So we really struggled to make ends meet every month. When my mother passed away, we had zero savings.
[Fukazawa] I had no choice but to stay in Japan. What did you do after you continued studying and graduated from high school?
[Shimano] After graduating from high school, I got support from my teacher again and decided to get a job. My teacher also suggested where I would work. I wanted to go to a factory or somewhere that would pay me a lot, but my teacher told me, "Patricia, you've studied Japanese, you can read and write, and you've graduated from high school, so you should get a job at a proper place," so I became a medical interpreter at Okazaki Municipal Hospital.
[Fukasawa] Is that regular employment?
[Shimano] No, I was a contract worker. I worked there for about a year, and although my salary was low, I met a lot of different people. A year later, I started working for a temp agency called 3M as what Brazilians call a "person in charge," providing medical support and taking people to the hospital.
*This article is reprinted from the Nikkei Shimbun (August 21, 2018).
© 2018 Masayuki Fukasawa / Nikkey Shimbun
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