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VY: Okay, so we're talking about your parents, so your dad came over quite young as a kid. Where did he go when he first came?

JF: He came to Alameda. In fact, he was brought from Hiroshima with a family friend. We all, my parents both, they all lived in the same, kind of like a village in Hiroshima, in the country. And so they all knew each other, and there was this one woman, her name was Mrs. Teshima, brought my dad over when he was fourteen. Landed in Alameda, he had an older brother in Los Angeles, and after he came to Alameda, he went to meet him, and lived with him for many, many years until he was, until he came back to Alameda when he married my mother.

VY: Well, what did your dad do in the Los Angeles area, did he work?

JF: Yeah. He went to school, I don't know how far he got into the public schools, but he did. He worked with his brother in a produce company. That's what his brother, we called him Uncle Kay, we did meet him at one point. So he lived there with his brother for probably thirteen or fifteen years?

VY: Okay. And then before your dad came to Alameda, let's talk about your mom and her early days in Alameda, but what kinds of things did she do, what was her upbringing like?

JF: Okay. Well, my grandparents arrived in Alameda in 1902. And she was their only child, so she was very, very, raised very overly protective, I think. Because in those days, my grandmother was the one who went out to work and my grandfather stayed home and took care of my mother. So growing up, I recall her saying that it was her father that took her to school that was there when they came home for lunch. When she would come home with her friend for lunch, he had something prepared. He was very protective of her, but she being... she was very outgoing and a people person. So she made friends and had friends within that little community. And just, Virginia, that community was, many of them came from Hiroshima, so they knew each other, they were friends from Japan, which, to me, is amazing. And how would they settle in Alameda? But they did have that friendship from Japan which carried over here and they developed a really close community. So my mother, being an only child, had friends, lots of young people to be with.

VY: Yeah that is interesting about the community, and so many people came from Hiroshima. Were there other areas of Japan that were kind of represented in the Alameda community?

JF: No. I think, gosh, I'm not quite sure. But looking back at the history, I'm involved in another project developing some historic markers for the city. And came across some photos of the Hiroshima-ken association and there were many, many people that I could identify through the, in those photos that were always family friends. And to this day we have connections with the same families.

VY: Yeah, that's so interesting because as a kid, you just, you're around these people and you don't really necessarily know where they're from or that sort of thing. And then later on in life, you kind of look back at these things and you're finding these photographs, information, and you're learning more about the actual longtime connections everybody had even before they came.

JF: Absolutely, yeah. I really treasure that, knowing that. Because, well, we can talk about this later, but growing up with just no aunts or uncles, no direct aunts and uncles, we had lots of people from that original Hiroshima community, their children became my aunts and uncles. And so that relationship still continues, those relationships still continue.

VY: I can tell, it's a very strong community.

JF: Uh-huh, it is.

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