<Begin Segment 9>

VY: Has that ever gotten you into trouble?

JT: Oh, yes, yes. I've gotten in trouble, I've gotten scoldings and I got a real big scolding once from my dad when he told me not to do, to slam the door and leave with people there. And I said, "Oh, yeah?" and I did it again. So he chased me and I got it.

VY: Talk more about that story, though, talk about why you did that. Because this was back when...

JT: Oh, I think I must have been about twelve or thirteen, and I think, I told you that people were always at our house, it was Grand Central. So the gardeners would come from gardening, and they were Issei and older Nisei. They'd come after work every day in greasy clothes, and then they'd be drinking tea or coffee and pastries. And every day there'd be, like, four or five, sometimes six people, and not just men, but women also would come and they'd chew the fat and commiserate and all that. I got... well, I got tired of it.

VY: How old were you?

JT: I'm embarrassed to say, when that happened, I think I was twelve. I should have known better, but it just got to me. Come home and you want to... first of all there were six kids in a home, and Nana and Papa, six kids with... Papa was gone by then. He passed in 1955, but come home, nowhere to sit, and they're eating our snacks, sitting around the table having a good... and pipes and cigarettes and all that. And I just got fed up with it and I just decided that I didn't like that. So the little devil in me kicked up and I just stomped out and slammed the door. And Daddy came after me and he said, "Don't you ever do that again." So I said -- I didn't say it out loud -- but I said to myself, "Oh, yeah?" and I went and did it again right then, and he came after me. And he told me a lot of times after that it was harder on him. You know that story, it's harder to punish a child, it hurts the parent more than the child. But I'll never forget that. He chased me all the way down two flights of stairs to the backyard, and I don't think he had to do that to the others.

VY: Is that the only time that happened?

JT: Yes.

VY: And he talked about it later, so it really stuck with him.

JT: Oh, yeah. Well, we spent a lot of time together. I had been a teacher but I quit. I was the first teacher to drop out, I think, in all of history. But I spent a lot of time with them. And as he grew older, I would take him to the doctor because I had, I was not working. And we spent a lot of time in the car, and you know, doctor's offices waiting. And he didn't say much except that he'd sit there and he'd go, "Yep." You know, a lot of Nisei men wouldn't say much, but they'd go, "Yep." And he'd say, "Yeah, remember that time I had to chase you down the stairs? And I'm sorry, but you went against me." I didn't need to be reminded anymore. But I didn't stop being... I don't want to say I was defiant, but I always felt sorry for the underdog for some reason. I guess I'm still trying to figure out why, but I've always wanted to help people. And it's probably in my DNA from my mom and daddy, too. They were both very, Mom mostly, community-oriented and Daddy, God bless him, he had to work so hard, he helped as much as he could, but he was working all the time.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 10>

VY: Yeah. So your dad worked a lot. You all, when you came out of camp, you were living in the, kind of the basement of the church?

JT: It would have been under the chapel, yeah.

VY: And then how long were you living there?

JT: We lived there 'til, from '46 to '52, around '53 and then there as a house for sale down the street, and of course, they wouldn't sell to Japanese. So my mom knew a lot of people. So she had this one family buy it by proxy. They bought it and then they sold it to Mom and Dad in 1952. And that house is, it's still in our family. Mom and Dad don't live there, but my nephew, one of our nephews lives there. And as I said, if that wall, those walls could talk, you could write books, volumes, because a lot of stories were told in that house.

VY: Because that's the house where all the people came?

JT: Oh, yeah.

VY: So during that time, as you were growing up in that house, it sounds like it was like the hub, everybody came there and...

JT: Not just the gardeners and the ladies doing after day work, but some of the families, a couple of families had only sons, and they, I have two brothers a year under me and a year beyond that. And they came, the only children came, sons came and they slept at our house, too. So here we are with six kids and other people, other boys, and we all slept in one room. Judy and me in one bed, Kent and David in another bed, and then the other two on the floor, at the foot. It was like an open house, it was like, there's always room for more. And we got... I used to get mad because, golly, one bathroom? It was not easy.

VY: It doesn't sound easy.

JT: And then, you know, when you buy pork chops, there's only so many pork chops, but you don't know how many people are going to be there. That's why I thought we were poor, and poor has different meanings, I think. We were so rich in other things that we weren't poor. People were always coming and bringing things to us, you know, the Japanese tradition. And Daddy worked in produce, and so he'd get broken crates of things, vegetables and fruits, and he'd bring them home. And the story about that, though, is that they never made it into the house because my mother, in her kindness and generosity, would call people up and have bags, and they'd come and she'd give it all away. And I'd get so mad, because the little devil in me, I said, "How can you give food away when we could use it?" But my mother was, had this faith. To me, it's a supernatural power, that, don't worry, everything's going to be fine. There's enough for everybody. And that helped mold and make me, too, because I feel that way, too. Her generosity of spirit, she passed that on to us. So I can't emphasize that enough, although the two of us clashed a lot. Maybe, I don't want to say I'm like her, because that would be complimenting myself. But in some ways, we clashed because she took such great pride in us that she wanted to show us off. Like she would say... it was never, it was common for her to call at ten o'clock in the morning, and I'm just talking not even twenty years ago. She'd say, "I'm having the girls over, could you make me a pie?" And I'd say, "When?" and she goes, "I need it by one o'clock," and I'd say, "Oh, my." And dutifully I did it, and I practically flung it at her when I got there, I was so mad, and cried all the way home because I was such a, you know. But later on, I found out, and she told me, actually she told me this quite soon before she passed. She said, "You know, I had so much pride when you girls would bring cookies and cakes and things, and I felt so much pride," because she didn't bake. But that was her tanoshimi, you know, in Japanese that was her happiness, I think, so say, "My girls made this."

VY: That's sweet.

JT: It is sweet, but not when you have to make a pie in three hours and deliver it. [Laughs]

VY: Right. [Laughs]

JT: But I know, Mom passed away almost ten years ago, and she still has a presence with us because she was such a... I can't even put it into words, she was just so present and kind and generous. But exhausted, but she never told us she was exhausted. Daddy, too. I think that's true of a lot of that generation, they did everything... well, that's a Japanese value, "for the sake of their children," kodomo no tame ni, and they did that. I think the opposite of that in the Japanese value, I loved the culture. The opposite is, kodomo no tame ni is, "we do for our children," and the opposite is oyako ko, "we lift up our parents." If the characters were oyako, is the parents, the kanji, and underneath it is a child. And the imagery is that the child is holding up the parent. It's so beautiful, Japanese kanji is really expressive that way, it tells a story. And that means a lot to me, that value of respecting your ancestors and the elderly.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 11>

VY: Okay, so let's talk a little bit more about growing up in the community and the different family dynamics that were going on, like the personalities of your parents and how everybody got along with each other. And within the family and in the community, different kinds of activities that people did together.

JT: Yeah, that's a whole lifetime, but I know that to start, Daddy was always working, but he had time to help people to, he was always willing to pitch in, but working three jobs and supporting six kids was difficult. And I think it was hard on him because he also coached baseball and did the things for the boys. And my mother, she was active in our school, PTA president for seven years, because there was one every year for six years. And so she had her activities, but she also, they also had a social life where they had what they called tanomoshi group. You know what that is, a tanomoshi group was a group... in their case, in the old days, tanomoshi were people from the same area who got together and helped each other out in time of need. I think that's kind of how koden started. Because when someone passed, they gave money to help defray cost of the funerals. But in my mom and dad's tanomoshi, they were husbands and wives, but they met separately. Mostly the wives, it was a women's group, and they invested money. And it sounds like a big deal, but they invested, I think, twenty-five dollars a month. But that was a lot of money in those days. And so that, if they needed, anyone needed something, they could ask and get money for whatever they needed. And so they were sort of an investment group, you might say, because they did a little dabbling in investment, but they were also more connected socially. And that's why we got to know people, the ins and outs, they met every month on a Friday and they'd rotate homes. And I used to laugh and kid Mom, because it was like, can you top this in terms of who made the food, what they served, and what dessert and everything, it was so funny. But that's how it was, in fact, we'd still kind of see who could make the best potato salad or whatever, you know what I mean. But the tanomoshi group was a great social outlet in Alameda for my mother's friends, her peers. And then, in terms of our family, Judy was the first, and she was... how should I say? Judy was an ideal youngster, a young woman and adult, and it was difficult for me because I was the renegade of the family. [Laughs] But it's okay because I've learned you are who you are, and so I would say we didn't have time for sibling rivalry because there was no time, place or energy for that except for who has on my slip or whatever, who took my this, or where's my book? And in our home, we had three bedrooms, one bathroom, one and a half baths, and ten people. And then all those people coming over every day, so it was, wasn't even orchestrated chaos, it was just like you fend for yourself. But we'd always have dinner together. We'd sit around a big oak table and eat together. And not just us, because there was usually another kid who didn't have a brother or a sister, someone my mother would bring home. There was never just our family, it was always other people, and that's how we got used to growing up that way, we thought everyone lived that way. In terms of being close, I think we all had our own, I would call it our own gifts and graces. My brother, one of my brothers was more athletic. Actually, they were both athletic, but because they were just a year apart, there's a rivalry, right? And I won't go into all of the details, but it was not just baseball or kick the can, but it was yo yo contests and all this. So there was always competition. And that's how I think we all tried to do our best, because we had to. We don't want to be the low man on the totem pole.

And my younger sisters, to this day, I won't say we have rivalries, but when we get together for holidays or birthdays, we haven't done it in a while, but there's always a competition of some kind, a food competition. Who makes the best spam musubi, I mean, they're organized. They make a theme, lemon, or whatever the theme is, and we all tried to outdo each other. And I think that was partly from being so close in age. We just sort of had this natural spirit of competition, but then Mom always said there's enough love to go around. And that's what keeps me going today, knowing that without Mom and Dad, I see that we were going in different directions, but there's still that tie of being brothers and sisters close in age, and we're all still here. We have just lost a sister-in-law, my brother's wife, a week ago, and it's been devastating because we've led a charmed life, I believe we've led a charmed life. I lost my husband two and a half years ago and that was difficult. But we had a good life together, so I can say it was a good life and so I don't have "woulda-shoulda-couldas" kind of things. I think I have, my "would have" or "could have" or "should have" is that I should have not made him eat the spaghetti the third night. You know, those are silly should haves, but it sounds petty, but he ate it and every night he said, "Honey, that was good," and he'd clear the table. And you know, you got to love him because it couldn't have been good on the third night, but he always said it was.

So I feel that our lives, our family life, we have led a charmed life. Our parents struggled and our grandparents certainly struggled, but... and I think we're all struggling ourselves right now in different ways for different reasons, but it's not the same struggle. But I think we all share the common bond of understanding that it wasn't easy for them, and it's this whole idea of being grateful for them and actually grateful to our aunties and uncles which we didn't have, but we call them auntie and uncle. They really were part of our community, and so have great sense of gratitude, but also respect for what they went through. I don't like to dwell on it, but it's still painful to know what they went through because we see what people are going through now, and in a lot of ways it's the same, the poverty and wondering where our next meal is coming from, and then the war, all those things, they shape us. And maybe not in ways that we recognize, but for some darn reason, I was always sensitive to stuff. And sometimes I wish I wasn't, because I reminisce and feel guilty in a way that I have had such a good life. I know that sounds... I don't know how to express it in other ways, except that I've been very blessed in my life. And I guess guilt, I use the word guilt, and now that I'm thinking about guilt, I think guilt is a form of anger turning inward. That's kind of heavy, I think, but I think I've got to unwrap that a little bit. But I think when you are so fortunate and have had a good life, there's that layer of guilt intertwined with gratitude. That's a whole bunch of, ball of wax there, I'll have to unwrap that.

VY: Well, and I think it's also a part, it's how you choose to live your life and how you, the kind of positive outlook you have, right? And it seems like you were talking before about honoring your parents, it seems to me that you are honoring and uplifting your parents by really following their example.

JT: Yes, yes. I think my regret is I didn't say it enough to them. I think we all have that. Those are the "woulda-shoulda-couldas," you know. But I think, I've thought about this a lot, but I think even though I was outspoken, it was hard for me to express that without getting all gooped up. It's hard to look your mom or dad in the eye and be so grateful because you know how much they suffered for us. It's a ball of wax, but it's a good ball of wax, but I want the younger generation to know, not just the Nikkei generation. Because there's really, it's become so, the demographics are not... there's a Nikkei, I don't know what that's defined as anymore because of intermarriage and all that. But those are good values. And other cultures have it, too, but I'm proud that I grew up that way, but I didn't tell them that. I hope I showed them, but I didn't tell them in words. And my personality, I was more cursing. Well, cursing or saying, "Golly," why this and why that? But deep down inside, I was proud and wanted them to be proud of me. But if they did say they were, or showed their pride, I didn't like it either. You don't want to...

VY: Tread carefully, right?

JT: Yes, tread carefully, right.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 12>

VY: But you brought up an interesting thing talking about what younger people, what you want younger people to know. And I know you used to be a high school teacher.

JT: Yes. I taught history and government and economics. I can't believe that I did that. I was a page ahead of the kids. [Laughs]

VY: When was that?

JT: I taught from 1966, '65 to 1971, six years at Alameda High School. I taught at the same school that I attended, which is...

VY: What was that like?

JT: Well, I had some of the same, I worked with some of the same teachers that I had that taught me. And they always call you Miss Takeda, so I was Miss Takeda until I got married, and in a few months I became Mrs. Takata. We didn't change names very much. But it was interesting, and I have one teacher who's still alive. I haven't seen her now in five years, but I think she's Mrs. Anderson. But she heard my voice in a skilled nursing facility, I was going to visit my husband. And she heard my voice and she turned around and she said, "Is that Miss Takeda?" And she remembered my voice and I thought, "Oh my gosh, it was like sixty years later." But it's funny how you connect, you stay connected to people. But I taught at Alameda High, and I taught history. And I think in those days I taught World History and U.S. History, and I was, must have been very naive because there was no page about the internment in the books. And it didn't bother me then. I think I was struggling so hard just to get through the class or whatever, but I knew the author of the book, Dr. Peeples, and so we had a long discussion about that. And in his revised edition, he added a paragraph or two about that.

VY: How old were you?

JT: When I was teaching? I was twenty-four, and I stopped when I was thirty.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 13>

VY: So at that point in your life, had you thought very much about the incarceration of Japanese Americans and what your parents went through? It doesn't sound like they really spoke of it.

JT: No. In fact, the first time I really dwelled on it or thought about it a lot was at Cal, you know, you make friends from all over. And this one girl, we became friends and we'd say, "Where were you born?" and all that. And I told her, she couldn't believe it. She was from Missouri, and she says, "That can't be. That could not have happened. You couldn't have been born in a camp." And that's when I realized that there wasn't enough... and this is before the, this was in '61, early '60s when the Asian history programs weren't, hadn't even begun at Cal or in the universities. And so it wasn't taught. And it didn't occur to me until I started teaching that it hadn't been even mentioned until kids at Cal that I'd become friends with were so shocked. They couldn't believe it, they could not believe it.

VY: So do you think, is that when you started thinking about it more? I'm wondering when you actually started, kind of, processing what had happened.

JT: Well, then, of course, I became involved in... well, it was in the '60s, and, of course, it was right at that time where Mario Savio and the hippies. And I have to tell you that I never, I crossed the picket line. I was taking government and political science and philosophy classes, but in those days, it was 1961 and '2 and '3. Tuition was $71.50 a semester. And I know we go, gosh, I can't even buy a book for that now. But I worked my way through college. I took the bus from Alameda to Berkeley every day, and I got off on the way to work at a dime store for, like, fifty cents an hour. And on the way home I worked at a cleaner's for the same. And I had to work, and I said, "I'll be darned if I'm going to not go to my classes." So I crossed the picket line. Well, I wasn't the only one. And I never regretted that because I did it because of, for my reasons. I was working hard, and it meant a lot to me.

VY: What kind of picket line was it?

JT: Oh, Mario Savio and that day. I mean, I literally had to sharpen my elbows and get my way though there, but I did it. Even though my sympathies may lie with them, I couldn't... I just couldn't because I had to work so hard. And I think that part of that was this issue of working hard for money like I know my parents did. Mom was a house, did domestic work, too, she dusted people's homes. And our mom and grandmother did that, too, but Mommy did that, too. And we'd go with her sometimes into these homes with teacups and their little crystal this and that. Which is fine, I didn't have a chip on my shoulder, and I didn't want that stuff. But I knew that Mom, they worked hard for us, and I worked hard to get an education. And so I just decided then that I would put myself first. And I wasn't the only one, there were others, but that was in college. And then I became, I wanted to become a librarian, but I didn't get into that librarian school, graduate school. So I became a teacher, history teacher. And you know, they say, "Those who can't do..." no, "Those who can't do and those who can't teach," or something like that, Bernard Shaw, he said that. And I used to get so angry because I think teachers have to be honored for, if they want to truly help kids. Because you're imparting your values and knowledge onto the young people, and that's for future. I'm sort of a romantic thinking about young people and knowing that if we don't cultivate good young people, I don't know how to explain it. It sounds trite to say that it will happen again, but you have to know what happened so that... and I'm not just talking about the internment, but history.

I taught history, World History and United States History, and there's a lot of common themes throughout history, even today what's going on with the war. They have certain themes that you can say, yeah, that's kind of an equation almost. In fact, one time, for an assignment, we were studying the revolutionary, revolutions of the world, you know, World History, the French Revolution, follow the Roman Empire and all this stuff. And as an assignment, I asked my students to write a recipe for a revolution. This was in the '70s or late '60s, late '60s. And boy oh boy, the next day I got called down into the principal's office. I was the teacher and asking them to write a recipe for revolution. I got called in and I got, really got in trouble. But I just felt that it was a method of teaching where you have to think about, compare and think. And I thought it was a pretty good assignment, but I had to cancel it because they thought I was fomenting problems, stirring things up, but I was really trying to teach.

VY: That's too bad you had to cancel. It would have been interesting to see what the students came up with.

JT: Yeah, because there were certain things that have happened in all those events, you know. And looking back on it, maybe it was too much of a flip kind of assignment, but that's the way I taught. I taught... it was in the first person when we taught, studied history, I made them write like they were editors of newspapers and they had to write stories about what was happening just to make it a little more interesting than so-and-so happened and this and that. I needed to keep myself interested, too.

VY: Yeah. And you said that the Japanese American incarceration did not show up in the books at all, so did you try to teach it?

JT: Yes, yes, I did.

VY: And how did your student react? Were they surprised?

JT: Well, I think disbelief is exaggerating because they were, I taught ninth grade and eleventh grade. So the juniors knew more about it but the ninth graders, they were still adjusting to their hormones. So nothing I taught... it was more like just get through the day and teach them basically, some of them, just how to write their names, really. And so I did have units in that. In fact, I still have them, I looked at them. I have all my lesson plans from sixty years ago, only because I worked so hard on them, I can't part with them. But I'm going to have to.

VY: It would be kind of interesting just to look at them again and see if they're still relevant.

JT: Well, yeah, I know. I think a lot them are, but it's just that I worked so hard on them. That's why I have a clutter of papers and articles and things that meant so much to me, but I remember most of them. And having the problem that I think a lot of Sansei my age have of what to do with all this stuff. I know you asked me about my teaching, but I stopped teaching because... well, first of all, to start a family, but that was the one curveball we had, we didn't get to have our own children, or children. But what was I going to say? Oh. I stopped teaching because I was so young, the students were just like four or five years older than me and they'd come and want to tell me their problems and things, and I would get... not involved, but certain things that I felt, once I knew, I had to relate to their parents. And then the parents would tell me, "Get lost," or, "It's none of your business." And I would end up crying, and George said, "Honey, we don't need this." And so I quote/unquote "retired," but I stayed... I liked young people, so I did volunteer work after that for Girl's Club in Alameda and had a long time there, mostly teaching crafts and things, which is fun. I can't believe I did that, I don't do that anymore.

And then I became a docent at the Oakland Museum for twenty-eight years, and so that kind of kept me in the teaching and history and all that. And the American Indians, the Native Americans -- we used to call them Indian -- now it's Native Americans or there's another name, indigenous peoples, they didn't call it that when I started in '83. But there's such a rich history in California of that, and I enjoyed that for almost twenty-eight years of working with kids.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 14>

VY: You mentioned George, that's your husband, right? How did the two of you meet?

JT: Oh. Well, it was in the, gosh, it had to be in the late '50s. He was at Cal and I was in high school. But my girlfriends and I, on Sundays, we would kind of, sometimes we'd even dress alike, that's silly when I think about it. And we'd go to basketball games because that's where you met guys, or that's where you... well, you know how that goes. You scam, I think I said that word. In those days, scam... well, it's wasn't scam then, but kids say that's where you go and look for cute guys, and the guys are looking at the girls and all that. But George was a basketball player, and he was a -- I'm bragging now -- but he was one of these all-star, he was all-star, most valuable player, and he was a good player. Because he was five-foot-ten, and that was tall in those days. Not anymore. My nephew's six-four, grand-nephew is six-four. So one day we were at a game in the bleachers at a high school and he's sitting on the bench. And he said, "Who's that girl?" So the guys next to him said, "Oh, that's so-and-so." And so he got her number and he called her, which I can't believe because I can't believe he would have done that, he seemed like kind of a shy guy. But he called her and asked her out and he went to pick her up. But it wasn't me, it was some other girl. [Laughs]

VY: He was trying to get your number?

JT: My number, but they gave him some other girl's number, of course. Who'd want her number? [Laughs] So I said, "So what did you do?" He said, "Well, I took her out." I said, "Well, good thing you're a gentleman," you know. You don't go there and say, "Oh," he wouldn't have done that. So he took her out and then he got the right number and then we went out, and that's how we met. And it's so interesting because my family, the way I grew up, we were just all, there was no place to put anything and it was all this organized people coming and going. But his house was more traditional Japanese, his father was a gardener, his mother was a housekeeper, and they didn't hug, it was more typical. And so then I went and I met them and pretty soon they were all hugging. [Laughs] You know, it's just... and we went around for seven years, almost seven years, six and a half years and I finally, I said, "I'm getting old." I was, like, twenty-three, and I said, "What's it going to be?" That's how I was. I said, "Play me or trade me," those were my words. Isn't that awful? [Laughs] But I said that, I said, "I'm getting old already." Because my friends were getting married and my sister had been married, and so we got engaged and got married.

VY: When did you get married?

JT: We got married on December 17, 1967. And one story I love to tell is when we got engaged, we were all family-oriented, so we went out to dinner at a restaurant. Nana, my mom's mom, stayed home because she was getting up in age. But when we came home to the house after our engagement dinner, there was Nana. She was ninety... oh gosh, she was in her nineties, but she had gotten in the closet, gone through trunks, and she had put on a beautiful kimono. And she's sitting there in the middle of the living room waiting for us, I'll never forget that. It was so touching because here we were all celebrating. We didn't bring Nana because she's too old and couldn't go out at night. God bless her, she put on a kimono and sat there so happy because she liked him. She said, "He's a good man." [Laughs] She said, "He has a nice face," and so we got her approval.

Since I'm talking about George, he was a good person, and no one, to this day, I've never heard anyone say anything not good about him. Which is, I think it's a tribute, really. He was that kind of guy. And even in our marriage, I tell people now, the meanest thing he ever said to me was, he said, "You know what the trouble with you is?" And you know, sassy that I was, I shouldn't have said it, but I said, "What?" You know, I never should have said, "What?" And he said, "You always have to have the last word," but he was right, so we laughed about that. But he was kind to everybody, just that kind of guy. And so he passed away a little over two years ago, but he got Alzheimer's, had Alzheimer's. And I call it dying by the inch, you know. It's a slow but irreversible, but he had the kind where he never lashed out or got angry. I mean, he got frustrated, but we had caregivers come and help because he was a big man, so I couldn't do it. I talk about death, I've given talks about death and things like that, but a good death is when you've had a good life. And we had a good life, he had a good life, and didn't suffer. It sounds corny, but I say that especially now since I just lost my, or we lost our sister-in-law. But you measure that sadness and that void with a good life and that stays with you. So that void is there, but it's full of, not just him, but our friends and people that he has touched.

VY: Right, the void wouldn't be there if you hadn't had all the positive experiences.

JT: Right. And I say that to people because I've known people who haven't, they say, "Well, golly, I don't miss... well, they don't miss someone as much." And I go, well, we miss someone to the degree that you had something together. So if you had a rich life, you miss them. So for that reason I'm really grateful. I mean, it wasn't all... we had our ups and downs and struggles. But not having children was the biggest curveball for us. Because having had so many brothers and sisters, it was like, you get married or you go to school, college, you get a job, you get married, you buy a house, and then, of course, you're supposed to have kids. And that's kind of how it was. My friends were all, we had that pattern. And it's a funny story but it kind of relates to being Japanese. So every Sunday when I went to church, they'd say, "Jo Jo, you have a nice husband, you have a job, you bought a house. Now, when are you going to have children?" You know, when you want children and you're not getting them, it sort of gets to you after a while and you're going to baby showers and all this stuff. So every Sunday, not all the time, but I'd cry on the way home. So one day, this lady said to me, "Jo Jo, why don't you have kids, children?" And this shows my sassiness I knew I had, but it came out. She said, "Why don't you have kids, you and Georgie have kids?" And I said, "We hate kids." [Laughs] And do you know, I didn't plan to say that, it just came out. Do you know, no one asked again ever, ever, ever because I'm sure she went and said, "Jo Jo and Georgie don't want kids." And never, it never came up again ever. It's interesting, and I think that's part of the, kind of the grapevine and how things go, you know. And, of course, it wasn't true, because we love kids and we have so many, fourteen nieces and nephews. And I think that was part of the plan, that we became aunties and uncles to our friends and kids. I call it a curveball, but it gave us other opportunities to do other things like work with other people and help other people. So that's basically a plan, I think. I'm not very religious, but I think that was part of God's plan for us to nurture other people. That sounds like I'm putting myself on a pedestal. I don't mean we nurtured other people, but we had enough love for... and my mother always said there's enough love to go around. And so maybe I never thought of it that way, put those two together, but maybe that's her saying that.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 15>

VY: Yeah. I was wondering -- if I may -- I was wondering when the two of you got married, where did you live?

JT: Oh, you know, we were dutiful young children. We lived equidistant from Berkeley... George is from Berkeley, I was from Alameda, so we bought, we had an apartment in Oakland equidistant from our parents. [Laughs] And then we bought a home the next year in Oakland. But the thing about that, that was in 1969 and it's quite relevant now, because when we moved into that home, I didn't know it was an Italian Catholic neighborhood. And so the day we moved in, we had friends, family, all ages and nationalities, including our fathers who were gardeners, they were chopping down hedges and this and that, washing windows. And the phone rang and the neighbor next door called and she said, "Yep." I didn't know her, but she said, "Yep, I always said, first the Orientals, then the..." N-word. And I got down on my hands and knees and I'm bawling, crying, and George came running and he said, "What happened?" And I said she said -- and I didn't know her -- she said that. And I said, "I can't live here." Of course, we did. We had the house, but we stayed. So just like me, I decided, okay. So that next year, or that Christmas, we moved in April, but that Christmas I invited all the neighbors over for a Christmas party. And I found out that they had never, they didn't know each other hardly, and they had never been in each other's homes. So it was, you know, it was just the kind of neighborhood you move into, they didn't interact or anything. So I think they came just to say, well, golly, what kind of life did they, you know, who were they? But after that we started becoming more friendly. And then the next year, I met a girl up the street and we started a block party. And that was in 1971, I think, '71. And we started a block party and invited people from two blocks, and it's still going. From '71 to now, I don't know how many years, that's almost fifty years. And they still have a block party, and I feel good about that. I think that's... one of the things I'd like to do is to make people feel valued. Having felt, having not felt valued sometimes, I think that's the most important thing, to make people feel valued in one way or another.

VY: What's interesting to me, too, about that story is you moved into that neighborhood that was so different than the neighborhood you grew up in, but you kind of brought a little bit of that, your neighborhood into this neighborhood in a small way and kind of planted that seed and it's still there.

JT: Yes. In fact, we still have that house. I'm having it prepped to sell. I decided to sell that house, but the neighbors come out, and we don't know, we know some of them, but there are no longer anybody there who lived there when we, in 1971. But they still have the block party and I haven't gone. I should try to go, but I don't know anybody. But that might be fun, I should come there and say hey. But life is full of twists and turns, but there are a lot of u-turns, too, so maybe I'll make a u-turn and go this year or next year.

VY: That would be fun.

JT: Well, there were no children in those days, and now there are twenty-three in the neighborhood, twenty-three kids. Well, it's been fifty years, so I'm sure everything's changed more than once, two generations. Let's see, you asked me one other thing, and I forget, about my family. No, I think I've talked about that. My church, I think the church, we couldn't escape church because it was just three doors down. And my mother was like, that was her second home. She would go there every day to make sure that everything was right, and she probably felt like she owned the church because she was there from close to the beginning. Well, I said she was like the welcome wagon lady, she would bring people home to our house to meet at Safeway and she'd say, "Are you Japanese?" And if they said yes, then she'd invite them home for coffee or tea and they became part of our family, almost, it happened like that. And so everybody knew my mom and dad, and, of course, the six kids for good and bad reasons. [Laughs] My brother, Kent, when he was a little boy, he was in his Boy Scout uniform. And I remember answering the door, and there was a policeman there. And Kent was standing behind the cop and he said, "What happened?" And they said he was throwing water balloons on the way home from his Cub Scout meeting and he had on a Cub Scout uniform. [Laughs] And the reason he got caught was he was so chubby, he couldn't run as fast as the other boys in their Scout uniforms. And we've teased him ever since then, he was chubby. We still laugh about that, those were good childhood memories. But the only time the police came to our house, as I recall.

VY: That's good.

JT: Yeah, that's a good record.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 16>

VY: You talked a lot about all the meals around that table, the dinner table. What ended up happening to that table?

JT: Oh, that was a big, beautiful, oak table with claws, those clawed feet. When Mom and Dad, when Mom passed, well, we wanted to donate a table, altar for the church in her name, in her memory. And Pastor Michael said, "You know, so much has happened around your kitchen table, big oak table, you know, sat like ten, sometimes twelve, with leaves. And that would be a wonderful altar. And we talked about it, we had even contracted to have a table made for the altar. But then we said, "You know, this is perfect, Mom, our table as an altar in the church." Because so many stories of both the Buddhist temple, the Christian church. So we cleaned it up, and in fact, under those oak tables, there's these little ledges. And we found petrified peas under there, because David, one of our brothers, wouldn't eat vegetables, and he stuck peas under. And those peas had to be there for sixty years, and they just came rolling out, it was so funny. I mean, we have stories that... well, anyway. So that table got cleaned up, and it's at the church as an altar table. And I wish it could talk because it knows so much. [Laughs]

VY: That's amazing.

JT: It is.

VY: Wow, that's amazing.

JT: It is, it is. But it's kind of like a metaphor, I think, for the community Alameda, or any small community. It just has so many spirits and things that connect it. And that table symbolizes a lot for us as a family, we had a lot of fights and, oh my god, that go around at the dinner table. But it's part of the community now, and I guess it will stay there, we haven't talked about that. Because the church -- I was talking about the church -- has changed quite a bit. It started as a Japanese church of bachelors, you know, these rowdy bachelors. And then it grew and grew and eventually had added on a social hall. And in those days, in 1927, they built a social hall for $6,500 dollars. And the Buddhist temple across the street had similar history. They had their social hall built the same year for about the same amount of money. So our churches have, kind of, parallels in their founding and growth. And even, not just the growth, but today, they're not what I would call Nikkei, Japanese American churches anymore, because of the demographics. Of course, they're open to all, but the traditions are going, changing. Buddhist church still has their Obon -- well, they haven't for two years -- and bazaars, we have bazaars. So those are kind of the glue that keeps the community going. But church was such a big part of our life, but as a renegade, I called myself, after I got married, I stopped going to church for twenty years. I always say it was because George was raised as a Buddhist, but it was because of the rebel in me. My mom wanted me to go to church, us to go to church. I said, "We're grown up, we'll do what we want," and I didn't go to church. But I found myself back at church around 1988, and I found, I realized later that I somehow was led there because my dad died, our daddy died two years after that. And I think there's a, I needed to be there to have that spiritual support to be able to handle his passing. I believe that because I don't think I could have handled it if I didn't have renewed faith and strength, and I'm grateful for that. I believe in those kinds of things in my life.

VY: Yeah, I can tell, it shows so much.

JT: I know that.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 17>

VY: I'm so grateful that somehow I decided to go back, but that's what got me into history because there were these old eighty year olds who wanted to compile the history of the church. And I was Jo Jo, and they bossed me around, and I helped them. And I got bitten by the bug and still have it.

VY: Because you still go, right?

JT: I went back, and in fact, actually, two years later, or that year, our dad was starting to fail, and this was in, like, 1989. And he wasn't going out, they were playing golf, he was part of the Swinging Samurai group, all those old guys, they'd go out. But he had bursitis, he lost his tendons in his arm, I think from working so hard. So he stopped playing that and he didn't, couldn't drive, garden, and he became kind of a grumpy old man, bitter, you know. And that's when I learned more about his experiences. So I said, well, you know, there are about six guys like that, so I started this group at church called, we didn't have a name. But I said, "Let's bring our brown bags and we'll get together and we'll just sit around and chit-chat. And that was the beginning of our Extending Connections seniors group. And then we moved into the church hall because more and more people came, and pretty soon we're growing to seventeen and then grew up to fifty-four people, seniors, who were all kind of needing socialization and I call it mutual support and encouragement is basically what they needed. Because at that age, you've got this... half of them was on the dresser when they went to bed, the hearing aids, teeth, glasses. That was an old joke, that half of us is on the dresser when we go to bed. That's me now, but anyway... so they got together and we'd get together, we'd exercise for forty-five minutes, tai chi and weights and things. I had someone come do that and then we sang old Japanese, the old favorites. And we've had a speaker or dancers, peer come tap dance, and things like that. And we just had our thirty-first anniversary, but we didn't meet for two years because of the pandemic.

But over the years, most of them knew each other, many of them knew each other because they grew up in Alameda. But people started coming from different places, and they had this sense of ownership, which I think is really important, that concept of ownership. I think it's lacking lately this feeling of ownership in the younger generation because they moved so much and they changed jobs so much and they're so busy. They don't land on one place enough to feel this ownership, which I think really just gave me strength of knowing that no matter what I did, I could still go home and be part of something. But the seniors got to know each other, and I believed in discussion. Of course, you could tell I like to talk, so I would I would have guided discussions. And then they start talking together, feeling, I guess, a sense of trust and mutual... you know, they had mutual common experiences, and so I could throw out a question and they go, "Oh, yeah." It was kind of, for me, it was educational but it was fulfilling to see them light up sometimes or get mad sometimes. We'd talk about things like, "What's your favorite memory?" Those trite things, but also, what would you like to be, how would you like to be remembered or who would you like to speak at your funeral, which is like a no-no. But I felt that it was important to come to terms with our mortality and end of life. And I've been involved in so many of those that, if you don't have a plan when the time comes, because funeral planning -- this is an off-the-wall subject -- but funeral planning can be very difficult if you don't know the wishes of the people. So it kind of made them come to terms with, think about their mortality and actually, their legacy, really, of how they wanted to be remembered. And there's still time to do things to add to that legacy.

VY: Yeah. You know, Judy -- I'm sorry, Jo --

JT: Oh, that's funny that you say that, because I used to be "Nellie's daughter," now I'm, "Judy's sister." That bugs the heck out of me, no. [Laughs]

VY: I'm so sorry.

JT: No, it's okay. It's a joke, standing joke.

VY: But that actually, it's relative to what I'm about to say, and this is kind of my final thought. I don't think I have any more questions right now. But as I'm listening to you, Jo, talk about what you're doing now and you've spent this time with us talking about your family and your mom and dad and all the things that they did for your family and the community and how when you were younger, you always felt like, well, you were your mom's daughter, like people knew who your mom was, but they didn't necessarily recognize you as a person, right?

JT: Uh-huh.

VY: But now you were doing all these things that helps the community in a very similar way, but you've sort of taken, your mom was there helping all kinds of people, and especially immigrants and Issei people who needed, like you were talking about, just filling out forms and all kinds of things. And she spent so much time working with the community and just taking everything in.

JT: With her whole heart. That's what impressed me the most, she did it with her whole heart, and I couldn't understand that. Because we wanted her heart, too, bigger part of her heart, but her heart was with everybody.

VY: Yeah. But I feel like you do the same now, and to a large degree -- and it's interesting how we kind of take what our parents have and it evolves into something that is more us and then we put it back out in the world, and that's what you're doing now.

JT: It's not, I don't want to say recycled, but it carries on. Well, you know, there's that old saying, I just wrote it to someone, "Miles to go and promises to keep," and that reminds me of my mom because she, even though she passed at ninety-eight, she still had miles to go and promises to keep, but I think she passed it on to us. That sounds self... putting ourselves, lifting ourselves up, but I think that that's part of a gift of life, that if you tune in, you can pass it on. And that's how I feel. But I believe in, I really appreciate what you're doing, and Densho's doing, because that's my passion now, is to make sure that these things, not just my family history of me, but that these values and experiences are remembered and carried on and honored is really the word. I think "honor" is an important word because it conveys this importance. And I get carried away starting to talk about this, but if you don't pass it on, well, it's obvious that it just dies. But it's too important to let it go or not honor it, not remember it.

VY: Yeah. You know, as I was learning more about the Buena Vista United Methodist Church, I saw a quote from a church member. And the last part of their quote was, "Our past informs our present and our future," and we feel that way with the work that you do, too. And I can tell that you feel that way as well.

JT: Yeah. It's kind of part of me that, very special part that there's a song, "Pass it On," and it says, "It only takes a spark to get a fire going." And that's how it is with God's love. Once -- oh boy, I'm getting too religious -- but you want to pass it on. And that spark came for a church with two missionary wives. But I think each of us has this same spark, that if we touch it, we can pass it on. It's so... that sounds poetic, and I'm not a poet, I'm just a plain, down home girl. But I love that meaning that it conveys, that each of us has a value to pass on. So I value what you kids are doing. I call you kids because you are, but it's so important.

VY: Yeah. I think that's a wonderful place to conclude today, what do you think? Is there anything else you'd like to add?

JT: No, except to repeat what I said, that you kids, what you are doing is... well, it's like the song says. "I want the world to know, and I want to pass it on." And so I appreciate this opportunity to be here.

VY: I appreciate you joining us tonight, thank you so much.

JT: Oh, you're welcome, thank you.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.