My parents spoke Japanese to each other. My mother would speak English sentences with Japanese words in them. But they never spoke to us in Japanese and they never insisted that we learn Japanese. One reason, I think, is because didn't have very much money to go to a Japanese school. Also, my father thought, We're not going to go back to Japan and there's no reason for us to learn Japanese. So, the kind of Japanese traditions that we had were very few.
Of course, we ate rice…my father's from Hawaii, so the rice that we had was...we'd have rice with spaghetti, rice with everything, you know. So rice with beef stew, you name it. Every meal had rice and something. But I think that's a part of the Hawaiian diet. But as for anything more than just our diets and things, there wasn't much emphasis on Japan.
Date: November 13, 2003
Location: Kyoto, Japan
Interviewer: Art Nomura
Contributed by: Art Nomura, Finding Home.
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