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RS: So anyway, his brother Seibi was working in the silk factory where my grandmother was working. And he decided that a good marriage should be proposed here between my grandmother and his brother, Yoshitomi, and so he proposed this to both families. And the families, upon doing their investigation of each member decided that it would be an appropriate match. And photographs were exchanged between my grandmother and my grandfather. And they both approved. And it was at that point that my grandmother got on a train to say goodbye to all of her friends that lived in the Tokyo area, where she lived. And she kept a notebook that said what she was exchanging as gifts with all these people. And she was telling them all that she would be back in, probably within ten years, hopefully a wealthy woman. And, but those notes that she started then constituted the beginnings of her diary that was to be maintained for the next fifty-six years of her life, in this country.

So, the diary continued where she wrote for, wrote every day about her -- I think it was thirteen-day trip across the ocean. [Interruption] She wrote in great detail about the trip on the boat, and how everyone got seasick but her. And she talked about how, the quality of the food and so on and so forth. And she came with my grandfather's brother. And then, I believe on the thirteenth day, as they were landing in Seattle, there were sixty other photo brides on this boat. She described how they all ran to the front of the boat and they all had the photographs of their future husbands, that, of course they had never met, and how they were pointing to each other, trying to identify their husbands down below. And the husbands had their photographs of the, of the wives, and they were doing the same things from down below. And then, interestingly enough, for the next two weeks, in her diaries, she never mentioned my grandfather again. But she wrote profusely about Seattle and what it felt like to be there and what an interesting place it was and so on. And the stories, or the rumors of the family were that she felt somewhat disappointed, and felt that Seibi had somewhat misrepresented his brother. And if my memory serves me correctly, she did admit that she was somewhat disappointed, but was, also said very quickly that within a very short time period she changed her opinion of him and he turned out to be the most wonderful person that she could ever have imagined. And my grandfather certainly was in complete reverence of my grandmother. I mean, if there was ever a matriarchal family at that level, it was their family, because I had never heard him say anything disparaging about her. And he became almost like her servant in many ways, which was rather unusual for a Nisei family.

So anyway, so my grandmother, shortly after arriving in this country, applied for her midwife license and began the practice of delivering babies. And from 1912 or 1913 when she began, all the way to 1938, I believe, she either delivered or assisted in the delivery of over a thousand babies.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2003 Densho. All Rights Reserved.