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JA: And how did your father meet your mother?

MH: My mother and my father lived only half an hour apart in Japan so they were, in other words, over the hill. And my dad was a rice farmer down below and my mother had a peach farm, so that was up the hill. So that was only about a half-hour walk from each other's place.

JA: But did they --

MH: They probably had a baishakunin there when he got home, yes.

JA: When he got home. So then, did he return to Japan?

MH: Yes, he returned to Japan. In 1913 he went back to Japan, after working all that time at the railroad. Uh-huh.

JA: Do you know what his intentions were to go back to Japan? Was it a permanent return to Japan?

MH: No, that wasn't his plans, I don't think. But he decided to go back and get married and settle there. But when his brother talked him into it and decided they both should come, so they both had their wives -- he had a younger brother named Rihachi -- and they both, four of them, came back in 1915 to Bellevue.

JA: So your father was back in Japan for a few years then.

MH: Yes, he was there for a few years, uh-huh, and that's (when) he had two daughters. So they left the two daughters with the grandparents, and the grandparents decided to raise them. And then he came over, over in 1915, and settled in Bellevue.

JA: Was extended families a common occurrence within the Japanese community at that time?

MH: Yes; at that time it was, yes. I know many families in Bellevue, in Seattle, too, that had... children left over in Japan. And they were called over here eventually and some of them just as soon stayed there is what it was.

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