Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Asano Terao Interview I
Narrator: Asano Terao
Interviewers: Tomoyo Yamada (primary), Dee Goto (secondary)
Location: Seattle, Washington
Date: May 19, 1998
Densho ID: denshovh-tasano-01-0032

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[Translated from Japanese]

AT: When we arrived in the U.S., there was no examination because we had the passports, and we even didn't have to go into iminkan. As soon as his brothers came to pick us up, on their car, we came back. "Oh, this is the United States," I thought. I thought then. That was it.

TY: Did you think it was large?

AT: I thought, "Oh, this is Amerika," but it was the wharf there today. It was a dirty place, where the ship landed. As we came over toward this way, I started seeing beautiful hotels and other buildings, so I thought that they kept things beautiful in the U.S. as I expected. Then, we stayed two nights at the Fuji Hotel. Then, the older brothers, they were running a hotel called the Union Hotel. The older brother of Terao was running it. He prepared a room for us because he heard that we were coming, but we didn't know that. We thought that the letters had crossed. We stayed at the Fuji Hotel first because we had reserved a room, so we stayed there, then the brother said it was this and that, so Terao said, "Oh, in that case, let's go to my brother's," so we went to the hotel that his brother was managing, then we could do whatever we wanted to do. It was called the Union Hotel, and that was on the Washington Street and the Fourth or somewhere, the Union Hotel is still there today. There, we stayed there, and, this was how the place became the congression. [Ed. note: Mrs. Terao actually said the word "congression" in English.] Then, from there, we thought about going to California since Terao used to live in California, and we did some things, but the brother said, "Since you have brothers here, why don't you just live here?". We thought, "That is probably the right choice," and we couldn't just play around, so my husband thought that he should look for a job somewhere, and he looked for job openings. He heard from people about a position at the Mitsui Product, so he got the position, thinking that he could just follow what people recommended. But, he didn't like going to the Japanese office. Every morning... since he was at the bottom because he entered the company most recently. He went to everybody's desks and greeted, "Good morning. Good morning!" He hated it. He said that he hated going into the office and bowed to everybody. Well, he worked for about two months. This time, he said that he didn't have to do it at the hakujin's offices, then, Ken Masuda, he was a driver of Mr. Frye. His car. He was Terao's friend since they were little, and my husband told him that he came here for such and such reasons. He described the work place and said that he didn't work at such a place, then Ken said, "Yeah, to hakujin, I will tell Mr. Frye about you, okay? Then, you can just work there." Cows, there was a place where they killed cows, I heard. They had cows killed, but they didn't kill cows. They divided this, meat and other parts to this place and that place, right? He was asked if he wanted to work since the position was available. That's how he went there. When he came not to like it, he finally quit it, too. Because our child, we had our first child soon after. We had to do something to put food on the table after all, right? Because I couldn't work. Then he tried many things, but we worked at a place, not the Frye.

TY: At an American company.

AT: He could only work at American companies. He couldn't help it because he hated bowing to people. He was called, "Master, Master," as he grew up. He came here, and he said that he hated lowering his head to anybody.

<End Segment 32> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.