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PW: Today is Saturday, October 29, 2022. We are at the home of Dr. Kay Yatabe in El Cerrito, California. My name is Patricia Wakida for Densho, and on camera we have Brad Shirakawa. Thank you so much for agreeing to do this interview. Let's start with your immediate family and parents' background. First, to start, tell me where and when were you born?

KY: I was born in April of 1948 at Alta Bates hospital in Berkeley.

PW: And what was the full name given to you when you were born?

KY: That's it, Kay Yatabe.

PW: And tell me what your father's name was.

KY: His name is Motoki Yatabe. He was born in San Francisco and grew up in Berkeley.

PW: Did he have siblings?

KY: Yes. He was the youngest of seven children, but two of his older sisters were sent to Japan as infants, so there were only five here.

PW: Do you remember all of their names?

KY: Yeah. The first one is Tamotsu, that was Uncle Tom. He was one of the founders of the JACL. Then there was Moyo and Aya. Moyo and Aya, I think. And then there was Chiyo, and then Tak. Tak was the manager of the California, the San Francisco Flower Market for a long time. And then my auntie Toshi and then my father was the baby, and he was born in 1917. Do you want to know the dates? Because Tom was born in 1898, so there was a twenty year span.

PW: Sure, tell me the dates.

KY: So Uncle Tom was born in 1898, Chiyo in 1905, Tak in 1907, Toshi 1913, and Dad in 1917. Grandma was approximately, looks like she might have been fifteen when she came here and seventeen when the first son was born.

PW: Tell me your dad's parents' names?

KY: Father's name was Kozo Yatabe and he came to San Francisco in 1892. And my grandmother Rui was born in 1896, and she came in 1881. Apparently they were in the same area, and they were apparently betrothed before she actually came. He came as a, Kozo came as a shoemaker, shoe repairman, with his brother and his uncle. They'd been trained in shoemaking and shoe repair by a Dutch, some Dutchman that the lord had hired because that samurai period had ended.

PW: What prefecture was this?

KY: This is all in Chiba.

PW: Your grandmother, it sounds like she was also from Chiba?

KY: Right, in a smaller town. Yeah, the Yatabes were from, I guess it was Sakura, and then Grandma was a Kato family that was a few miles away.

PW: And when your grandparents came to California, they came to the San Francisco area or did they move around a lot?

KY: San Francisco. They moved around within San Francisco and never in a JA community. They seemed to like being on, apart from the JA community. So my father was actually born on Union Street, Union and Laguna.

PW: And he grew up there?

KY: No. When he was about eight, the family moved to Berkeley, University and Sixth Street.

PW: And what was your father's profession?

KY: My father was a gardener.

<End Segment 1> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.