My parents didn’t share the language of their parents and grand parents respectively. Mom and Dad were born during World War 2, in the American concentration camps: Gila River in Arizona and Topaz in Utah. Adding to the shame around forced incarceration for being Japanese, my grandparents were discouraged from being Japanese after they left Arizona and Utah. The American government discouraged my grandparents from passing their Japanese language to my parents. So, what is my mother tongue? English? I don’t know.