Snippet 14. We took the train to Kokura to have a family gathering. My Aunt Naoko, Uncle Shigeru, Kazuo and my grandmother were there from Kokura, my Uncle Toshio came in from Kobe. Grandmother lived in a bedroom she rented on the second floor of a house and my other relatives didnt have room for us so Okaasan and I stayed at a hotel. We met Aunt Naoko and Kazuo for a meal at Grandmas. My grandmother was a tiny woman who came up about chest high on me. Although she was about 70, she either was dying her hair or it was still black, just as my mother didnt have any white hair at 50. She had been the one who had bought me the kimono I took to Hawaii with me, one of the few possessions I had from my life in Japan. It was for my photo taken at age three in the Shichi-go-san (7-5-3) tradition of dressing up in the national dress of Japan and going to temple for blessings. When my escort and I got off the Pan American flight to Honolulu in 1956, the kimono was unfortunately left behind on the plane. Later the stewardess who had checked on me during the flight discovered the box with the kimono and made the effort to track me down to Hilo and fly from Honolulu on one of her flights from Japan to bring the kimono to me. She came to our house in Kaumana with the kimono. She was Japanese and I think understood the significance of the kimono and how much it would mean to me as she had found out on the flight that I was the first child from Japan being adopted by a family in Hawaii, a big enough event that we made the front page of the Japanese language newspapers as well as the Tribune Herald. The young stewardess spoke to me in Japanese and I responded politely to her questions in English. Other friends of my family in Hawaii had tried to get me to speak Japanese but had been unsuccessful. After about 15 minutes, she broke down my resistance and I started excitedly and animatedly conversing with her in my mother tongue. My father got home from work and walked in on us. I sobbed and apologized to him in English and ran into my bedroom and hid in a cardboard box in my closet. Everyone was horrified and my father had to coax me out of the closet promising the whole time that I would not be punished and assuring me that he was not angry I was speaking Japanese. Until then no one had known that I had been punished every time I spoke Japanese by my foster family in Tokyo in an effort to ensure I would assimilate and learn English before going to Hawaii. As a result, my Hawaii family decided not to traumatize me by trying to send me to Japanese language school, a decision that I regret to this day.
Posted on: Tue, 28 Jan 2014 03:20:14 +0000
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