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Second Interview Insert Key
Indented text represents the follow-up
interview conducted on May 15, 2007.
This is a test Go to URL behavior. This entire paragraph needs to highlight as a unit and when CLICKED, needs to bring up a movie that is targeted to the top-left "movie frame. Within it, however, there are several mouserollover links to definitions which need to open in the right "gloss" frame. Here is a link to ACLU. Here is a link to AINU. Here is a link to JACL. Here is a link to Model T Ford. This is not a link to anything.
Introduction of Interviewers
My name is Michael, my name is Anna, my name is Aaron, and we are interviewing Earnest in El Cerrito California.
My name is Rachel, my name is Shaunré, my name is Glynis, my name is Josh, and my name is Charlie. We are here interviewing Ernest llyama on May 15, 2007 in El Cerrito California.
Could you describe your childhood home?
Well I don't remember too much about my early childhood but I don't know if I talked about this part at all. Anyway, my whole family left for Japan when I was eight years old and I was here- I was born in Oakland California right across the street the YMCA in Oakland, right across the street from there and I was born up there. In that area there were no Japanese, so naturally I didn't have contact with Japanese. Then we moved later up further north, it took us further away from Japanese, so I had very little contact with other Japanese families during my childhood. It was only until I went to Japan that I really learned to speak Japanese a little bit. Well I had to learn it a lot.
So during my childhood we went to Japanese school once a week, on Saturday and the teacher brought her Model T Ford up to our place and picked us up went back. In those days... it was before 1920 so you could see that it was Model T I think that she was driving. One thing I remember was when we were going to school one day when she turned a corner this fellow student of mine, who was a friend of mine, was sitting on the door- and this was an open car so the door flew open and he fell out! And of course I laughed at it afterwards, but I shouldn't have because his lip swelled because he fell and he looked so funny. Anyway, things like that happened that I remember but outside of that I don't remember very much of my childhood.
While growing up in Oakland, did you interact with different ethnic groups?
No. I lived away from the Japanese community. The Japanese community was around 6th street, and we were up around 20th. That was around the caucasian area and my father owned a grocery store there. I went to a caucasian grammar school with primarily caucasian kids. In fact, I was the only one in my class that was Japanese.
What was your connection to the Japanese community?
My parents had connections with the Buddhist church, and on the weekends they tried to go down there. I went to Japanese school for a while and that was our connection to the Japanese community. I got to know some Japanese-American kids there, too.
What language was primarily spoken in your household?
In the household, there was an English and Japanese mix. We did not know Japanese well enough to speak all Japanese. My parents usually mixed Japanese with English, mostly using English words so we hardly spoke Japanese.
What was your family like in your early childhood?
I was the third son born in the family. My oldest brother died when he was an infant so there were only two of us left. We played with each other because we did not have many friends around there. We very seldom ate together as a family because my parents were busy with the store. My mother would fix up something for us to eat and put it on the table, so when we came back from playing we could eat. It was not too cohesive of a family life.
Tell us something about your father
Well when I think of it, see my father and mother both weren't involved politically in anything. But it's doing the talks and things that I guess that influenced me. Like my mother would say (Saygymnotome), (Saygy) means righteousness that you should fight for righteousness, and you should not hurt people who are down. My father was of the same type, he would talk to me and say things like (Saygi), (Saygi) is about the same the right role, or the straight role, that I should follow the straight role. I should do things for other people generally you know. They talked like that although they weren’t political at least the ideas sank into me. I guess that is where the ideas came, I can't think of anything else because they weren't politically involved and it's only these occasional talks and of course the way they treated other people too, that influenced me.
Like we had the, we lived at the hilly part and down below by the sea side was a little village where, what do they call now, these were people who were Japanese but were not looked upon as Japanese. I forgot what they called those know, but anyway. It was like the Ainu, the Ainu were also Japanese, and the original Japanese but they were pushed up. Well these were Japanese but because they were involved with killing cattle and things of that sort. See you’re not supposed to hurt cattle because they were looked upon as, from Buddhist's point of view they were looked upon as sacred animals. But to get meat they used these people, to eat the meat, they use these people to do it. Then they segregate them they say that they are not human beings. Well they started to, they were segregated and they went to segregated schools but sometime before I got back to Japan they started to bring them into regular schools. There were kids in our school that I went to that came from that.
One time I got into a fight with one of the kids. I forgot what the fight was over and he hit me with his guitar. He swung it at me and hit me in the face, it swole up. I beat him up but he, so when people heard about they said " Oh your gonna get it. The people from down there are going to come up to your place. And they’re going to raise heck with your parents". Nothing happened you know. My father's never said anything about it, but my father never said anything against those people either. He said "You leave them alone and you treat them just like any other people." So that kinda sorta I guess were some of the things that came down to me. At least I didn't discriminate against them and the same thought came when they talked about the Negros here. The same situation.
Did you feel more like an American or a Japanese?
I did not have any feeling then. The way we were living seemed sort of natural to me, and to us. So we did not feel one way or another. We did not feel that we were Japanese or Americans at the time. We weren't discriminated against very much. In fact, as a child we weren't even called names at the time.
Did you feel any pressure from your parents to be more Japanese?
No. The way we were living just seemed natural to us. We just thought that's the way it was.
What was the first time you can remember when you did face discrimination?
The first time I realized discrimination was when I came back to California from Japan and I started to go to the University of California. I got acquainted with some young democrats there. That was the first time that I learned about discrimination against black people, that they could not vote in the south. That was the first time I really started to learn about civil rights. It was my "wakening call" so to speak.
How was your schooling in Japan different from your schooling in America?
In Japan, we studied harder so we learned a lot. When I came back to California, I was supposed to go to high school to learn English, math and science. However, when I went to high school the math and science they were teaching me were things I had learned already. Those two courses were easy while I was going through school. The only thing was English and, of course, I learned later that my grammar was okay but the way I wrote was not like a real English-speaking person.
How old were you when you went to Japan?
I was about eight years old when I went to Japan and when I returned after graduating high school, I was eighteen. So I was in Japan about ten years.
Why did your family move to Japan?
Well my father was the oldest son and when he came over here, he came over primarily to make money. I found out after I went back to Japan that family was an old family and had a pretty good background because they were village masters and things of that sort. My father was a teacher before he came to America but they ran out of money, they had land but they didn't have money, and they couldn't pay taxes and that's why my father came over to America because he figured he could save enough money to pay taxes. That's the reason he came over. After he stayed here several years his father, my grandfather, asked him to come back because he was getting old and he said he would like to have him back there. That's how my father picked up and took us all back. I was about eight years old. After that my life was in Japan.
Did you the Japanese kids treat you differently because you grew up in America?
Well they only thought of me differently in the sense that I was from America, so I was more or less they looked upon me as a different person when I went back to Japan and my brother too. Of course we didn't know any Japanese so my father paid the teacher to stay after school and teach us Japanese, so we stayed after school. We went from the first grade and after we finished each reader we moved up to the next grade. We went through up to the fourth grade and we learned through this Japanese teacher and because of that we learned quite a bit because we concentrated on the language and nothing else. Then when we became high school age, our father wanted us to go to high school but we didn't have enough education to get into high school so what we did was- he said we'll go to-they had a second school above grammar school like a junior high here, for two years so we went to that for a little while. In the meantime my father negotiated with a private high school in Hiroshima and we went there at night school. We went there for about three months. After we did that the teachers felt we had enough know how of the language to get into the regular high school. That's how we got into regular high school. Of course, we started three months late. It was funny because by the time I was in the third year of high school I knew more Japanese than the Japanese. I tried to remember each new word and I would mark it in my dictionary and write it on my notebook. And because of that extra effort it stuck with me a lot more then it did with other kids, and for that reason I knew the Japanese language a lot more.
Why did you come back to the United States?
Well, I don't know. I guess we are kind of idealistic when we are young so I thought rather than stick around and have my father and mother support me to go to school I would try to go it on my own. Of course I didn't know what I was getting into so I said, "I would like to go to America and study at the University here. But my father tried to get me to stay home and go to a Japanese University but I said no I'll go over and for that reason I came over by myself. But it didn't work out the way I thought it would.
Were you supporting yourself in college?
Well I had to finance myself so it was difficult. I worked for one year. Of course a friend of mine who was about my age and we knew each other when I was a child, we played together over here in America. He said he could use me in his store. So I went to his store and helped in there. He paid me for working as a clerk there. Of course I learned the language in the meantime and the labels of the canned goods and things of that sort. I did that for one year, and in the meantime I went up the University of California, in Berkeley, and tried to get in there. They said I had to go back to high school and take English, Math and Science for one year so I went to Oakland Tech for one year. Science and Math, in Japan, was way ahead so it was easy for me. In fact the teacher always asked me to come up and put it on the board for her. Every time they gave us homework they said “Ernie, come up and put it on the board” so it was easy for me. But English, of course, was different. So I when I came up to Cal I had to take Subject A, they had Subject A for those who were not proficient in English to enter the University. So I took that for about three months and then the leader for the English Class said "Your English is good, your grammar is good, but your writing is a little bit different but I think you could learn that as you go along" He took me off and said he would get a refund for me for the rest of the semester and so I got off of Subject A and I became a regular student.
How did your brother feel about it?
Yeah, it is kind of hard-when you think of it-it was hard. When I think of it, I don't know why I made the decision even. Because after, when I came over, it was hard there were times when I cried. It was so hard for me. At that time that was what I wanted to do. I didn't think it was going to be difficult or anything. I didn't want to burden my parents anymore. That was the idea that was in me. They wanted me to stay and go to the university in Japan; they said they would have paid the way in there. So it would have been easier for me but when you are young you are idealistic, so you think you can do a lot of things that you can’t do. So I said I want to go over and try it and that was the reason I came over here.
When you left Japan, did you feel more American or Japanese?
I didn't have any feelings at that time. I had to learn Japanese and that was all. I didn't feel one way or another that I was American or Japanese.
Was there a noticeable difference between the Japanese culture and the American culture?
Oh yes. After I went to Japan, I played with Japanese kids a lot, and I played with people my age. I had a lot more kids to play with. Whereas in America the number of people I played with was limited because there were only a few of the kids in my neighborhood. We used to go to Mosswood Park, which is about a block away from where I lived. We had baseball, basketball and playgrounds there.
Did you hang out more with Japanese kids when you came back from Japan?
I was the so enmeshed in learning English and things of that sort. I did not feel anything about being decimated against or anything of that sort.
Can you describe your feelings during the first time you experienced discrimination?
As I said, the first time was what I learned about the treatment of the blacks. That was the first time I learned about discrimination against blacks and of course, eventually I found out about myself, too. There were laws passed against us. That was how I got involved with civil rights. This affected the rest of my life because that was what I got involved in amongst Japanese-Americans. Eventually, I learned in the JACL that they also discriminated against the blacks. Because of that, their stand on the civil rights was different from my stand. A few of us got together and discussed forming a separate organization. That was how we organized Nisei Young Democrats, which we eventually developed later.
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