<Begin Segment 19>

Jeni Y: Talk about the name, his name.

MY: Oh, yeah. That's right. When, so when he was born, we -- Teru Uno -- Teruko. Her name is Teruko. And we, my dad, we would -- talked about names, and we decided to call him Teri.

JY: Teruo.

TY: Teruo?

MY: Teruo Teri -- or -- Teruo and something. So we were calling him Teri for a long time. And, and Teru was so thrilled --

TY: Flattered, huh?

MY: -- thrilled.

TY: Yeah.

MY: She was so flattered that the name was named after her. And, and then, I think a -- I don't know. It was sometime about a month later --

JY: Apparently, yeah.

MY: Yeah. My dad got a, our dad got this whole big box of -- from Japan. It was a crate. You know the way they used to ship things.

TY: Japanese, no, it was in that Japanese box, that real light wood that --

MY: Yeah, the crate, that --

TY: Yeah.

MY: -- wooden crate?

TY: Yeah.

MY: Yeah. And we opened it up, and there were just little boxes -- little packages of, of the -- you still have those dishes?

TY: Uh-huh.

MY: -- of dishes.

TY: Lacq-, lacquered dish.

MY: Lacquered, beautiful lacquered dishes of, stack of, stacks of eight -- well, not eight because they usually have them like -- five or something in each package. And they had "Yasutake Yoshiyuki" on the back.

TY: Yeah.

MY: And then my dad, our dad opened it up, and he said, oh, and then -- there was a, each dish was engraved, engraved in gold with "Yasutake Yoshiyuki" on it. And then he suddenly remembered that months ago when our mom got pregnant that he had written to his friend to ask him, "Can you suggest a good Japanese name for, for this child if he's a boy?" And so then the guy wrote back and said, I think you should call him such and such and said -- so then when he heard that, that we had a boy, he just went immediately out and --

TY: Had that inscription made on the --

MY: -- made and sent it.

TY: So that given to the people instead of cigars, and that was what -- it was commemorative.

MY: And so, and then I guess he -- well, it was a gift, that was a gift --

TY: Gift, yeah.

MY: -- to the parents to our, his gift to Mom and Dad, you know, for the birth of the son. And so he just assumed, since Dad asked him, you know, what -- and he suggested this name and because -- I forgot, he told me of, of the meaning of your word, the "Yoshi" means something and "Yuki" means such and such. And had, it supposed to, Yoshiyuki is supposed to be a very historical samurai name or something.

JY: Yeah, I knew it one time, but I don't know anymore. [Laughs]

MY: And so, anyway, so it -- these dishes are there, right? About a hundred of them. Hundred packets of them.

TY: No, I do remember that when -- when Dad said, "His name's going to be Yoshiyuki." I said, "How do you spell that?" And she spelled the name -- it looked long. The name looked so long, I thought, oh, my goodness. [Laughs]

MY: It's longer than Teri. And then, so then Dad decided that he had, we had to change his name to Yoshiyuki.

TY: Yeah.

MY: And then at, while he was at it, I guess in the meantime, Joe Spangler, his colleague --

TY: Dad's, Dad's, no that --

MY: -- co-worker at the --

TY: -- his supervisor, immediate supervisor, I think.

MY: He was the inspector, wasn't he?

TY: Yeah.

MY: He was an inspector?

TY: He, the inspector in charge.

MY: Yeah, he said -- he told Dad, "Well, you told me that if you had a son, you were going to call him, call him Joseph."

TY: Joseph. [Laughs]

MY: And so Dad said, "Well, as long as we're changing his Japanese name, we're going to change the, the whole thing." So they changed it to Joseph Yoshiyuki Yasutake. And that was when he, he was already about two or three months by that time.

JY: Easily. Because I have two gifts -- birth certificates --

MY: You do?

JY: -- one that says Teruo --

MY: Uh-huh.

JY: -- and the other one that says Joseph Yoshiyuki.

MY: Oh, he did, he did officially go to the change the names.

JY: He must have.

TY: Oh, is that right?

JY: Uh-huh.

TY: You have two birth certificate?

JY: Yeah, I do.

TY: I'll be darned.

JY: Well, I -- I guess I have one, but I mean, it was an amendment or something.

MY: Yeah. And so anyway, that's the story of Joe's --

TY: How he's got his name.

MY: How Joe got his name, yeah. But -- and so Teri, for the, Teri for the longest time kept calling him Teri because he --

TY: Oh.

MY: -- because he, she said --

TY: Well, I, yeah, that part --

MY: "I can't get used to changing it."

TY: -- that part I don't remember at all. I don't remember that part.

MY: She was saying, "I, I'm not going to," she couldn't get used to the -- changing your name, and so she was kind of upset, I think, but she didn't say anything, you know, but of course, it was a --

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 2002 Densho. All Rights Reserved.