<Begin Segment 39>

AI: Well, let's see. I wanted to ask you a bit also about this interesting incident about what happened to your old family home that had been on Beacon Hill.

TY: Oh.

AI: Which you had sold to Mrs. Motoda. She had turned it into a church, and then many, many years later, what happened?

TY: Well, about 1980, I think it was Shigeko Uno who called me and said, "Guess what?" I said, "What?" and she said, "Well, your house on Beacon Hill is gonna go to Japan." And I couldn't believe it. I didn't know what she was talking about and I said, "Oh, how come?" And then she explained to me what happened. And what had happened was that in Japan, the architects decided that all the houses that were being, that were built during Meiji period were being torn down about that time and they felt that they wanted to preserve it. One reason was because during the Meiji period was when they had the "open door policy" in Japan and all the diplomats started going all over the world. Lot of immigrants immigrated to all the different foreign countries. And then when they all started coming back, when they started having the house built, apparently a lot of the Western influence got onto designing the homes and the houses, houses were very, somewhat atypical from the Japanese homes. And houses that were built after the war, I mean after the, after, well in the early 1900s, many of them that survived the war were being torn down for new buildings in the mid-'70s and late-'70s and so they decided they'd like to preserve it. And they finally got the seed money from a railroad company in Japan for a museum and that's why they called the museum Meijimura. It's up, way up in the mountains, not too far from... oh boy, what's that town between Osaka and -- Nagoya. No, not Nagoya, the town between Tokyo and Osaka. No, it guess it is Nagoya and it's just about an hour and a half ride up the mountain north of the city, way up in the mountains and they, the railroad donated about hundred acres of, hundred fifty acres of land and they started building, any time they heard of house being dismantled or torn down, that was built during Meiji period, they asked them to donate it. Anything from prefecture office buildings, jails, schoolhouses, name it, even the Imperial Hotel, the main lobby section of the Imperial Hotel is being reconstructed there, also.

Well, and then they decided that since many of the immigrants immigrated to South America and Hawaii and North America, so they thought that they would like to have one house representing each of the areas that some prominent Japanese individual had owned, had bought, so they first got a house from Brazil from a businessman that he had built and they took that to Japan and put it in the Meijimura and they got a building from Hawaii, Hilo, Hawaii, and that was the assembly center, a community assembly center and they built it there. Well, they wanted to come to North America because a lot of -- and they went to California because that's one of the places where lot of Nihonjin went to. And they looked and looked and they found several homes but, and buildings, but nobody wanted to donate it. And then Meijimura is a non-profit organization. They couldn't afford to pay a lot of money for it, so they asked for people to donate it but they just couldn't find anyone to donate it so in desperation they came up to Seattle and as luck would have it, our house, Mrs. Motoda bought, it was a church but the church had dismantled and they weren't in operation anymore and Mrs. Motoda was the one deciding what to do with the house. And so they prevailed on her to donate it. And at first she refused because they won't, she was a very hard business lady and she didn't want to donate it, and but they told her, "Well gee, if you donate it it'll be a fifty thousand dollar tax write-off." And she says, "Well, in that case, okay." And she donated it then. And that's when it all started. And then Shigeko Uno got hold of me and said, "Oh, guess what, they bought the house, and they would like, the Meijimura people would like to talk to you." So that's where it was all started. And then they asked about Dad's history and when Dad came over here and all this other thing.

And another thing, that house was built in the very last, I wanna say Meiji, Emperor Meiji was until when? The early 1900s, I think, is late 1800s to early 1900s and the house was built just about that time. So that's why they wanted that, the one, they'd be interested in have that house. So they, then I finally wrote up, actually May wrote up a history, biography about Dad and wrote up for them and gave them a lot of Dad's pictures and stuff and we got all the family pictures that was taken in the house and then once they start building, tearing it down, I went there every Saturday and took pictures and was keeping track of it being torn down. One interesting aspect of this is that much of the furniture that my folks bought had been stored downstairs when they converted it into a church. And it was downstairs actually during the war and people didn't use it too much. I guess they must've had their own furniture because they were stored downstairs and they weren't worn at all when it got back. And so the house went lock stock and barrel, the whole thing, all the furniture and everything went to Japan. And one Saturday when I was there, I noticed that there was an end table that I had made in the wood shop class in the eighth grade when I was in Beacon Hill school, had a magazine, I don't know whether you've seen those old magazine, old end table, coffee table that had a magazine rack and two sides and had inlaid -- it looked pretty good actually for someone who was in eighth grade, I thought. And they were still being used and they, and it was there and I said, I told the architect, the head architect, I said, "My God, that table," said, "I made that. Can I, I'd like to have it. I have a real sentimental attachment to it." I said, "Do you mind if I take it home?" And she, he said, "You built it?" And I said -- "You made, you constructed the thing?" And I said, "Yes." And he says, "Well, in that case we'll have to take it back with us." So he made me sign the bottom of it. John Henry on the bottom and date it and it's in Japan now in the museum, now. But he wouldn't let me have it. [Laughs]

<End Segment 39> - Copyright © 2002 Densho. All Rights Reserved.