<Begin Segment 3>

DG: Okay. We were talking earlier, now your father was born around 1890 and in where in Japan?

BU: Toyama. Toyama, Japan. You know, if you look at Japan, long down the... and then right across, right across is Korea, but the tail of Korea points to Japan. That's exactly where Toyama is.

DG: So when we were talking earlier you said that he grew up interested in medicine.

BU: Well, because he was interested in science.

DG: But was he on a farm?

BU: He was on a farm until, until he went to high school. They didn't have high school in the (inaka) place so, therefore, he had to come in, come in to Toyama, which is the city. So in order to go to Toyama, he had to live with my mother's family. He, they made arrangements for him to stay there while he was going to high school.

DG: That was still called Toyama.

BU: Yeah, Toyama, yeah.

DG: But it was the city instead of the farm.

BU: The city, yeah. So that's how, that's how he got to know Mother. Because they lived... and then he came back, he came to America after four or five years when he made some money, he started a business.

DG: So let's go back now. He came to America, then, when he was about twenty, you said?

BU: I would say twenty, twenty-one, less.

DG: So that was around 1910.

BU: Yeah, yeah.

DG: And then he came to work on the railroad first.

BU: No, he went -- because that's the easiest place to work so he started ask for work and got a job at the railroad gang. And these four people I talked about, all was in the same gang. And they kept up the friendship all the time and in Yakima, which is, which is little ways from the railroad gang. My dad didn't like working in a railroad gang so he started a business. He started a laundry. And then his place was, as far as I understand, a place for all the lost, lost Japanese. And they used to have, every weekend they used to have udon and all kinds of stuff. I'm pretty sure some sake, but they had a good time.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.