A Practical Matter

But I've never been sure why we, for the most part, only used English in our house when I was growing up. Parents usually set the rules and principles of a household. Were mine embarrassed by the Japanese culture they had left behind? Not likely. Perhaps they wanted to blend into the society of their new country. Or had they heard stories of wartime discrimination against the nikkei, and purposely used English in the house so that their children wouldn't learn something that might subject them to similar discrimination? Probably not: Before immigrating, my father did some post-graduate studies in America, and my mother went to Australia on a homestay trip; they would have seen that incidents of discrimination were gradually becoming less frequent in the post-war world. So what could they have been thinking?

Many of my friends have become parents of late, and as I watch them raising their children, a more practical explanation emerges: Like young parents anywhere, mine were probably overworked and pressed for time, and in order to get things done in the easiest and most efficient way, they used English to communicate with the "little gaijin (foreigner)" who shared their house. My parents didn't realize just how assimilation can strike so swiftly and completely.