Densho Digital Archive - Marion Tsutakawa Kanemoto Interview (denshovh-kmarion-01-0012)

<Begin Segment 12>

AI: Now, when you were in junior high school, your brother James had already been left in Japan. And I'm wondering, did you have any sense that someday your mother and father would take the rest of you and you would all move back to Japan permanently? Or did you have any idea?

MK: No, I never did have that concern.

AI: Because I'm wondering, you mentioned that his older brothers, some of his older brothers had done that, that they had made their fortune --

MK: Right.

AI: -- in Seattle --

MK: And they took the kids home. Right, with the --

AI: -- and then they moved permanently back to Japan.

MK: Uh-huh, right.

AI: So, but at that time you didn't have any indication that, that --

MK: No, I didn't.

AI: So, they may or may not have been planning that?

MK: Well, Uncle Jin kept his younger two children with him in Seattle. And so, we were pretty close because Uncle Jin had the stroke so early in his life, and I think he really didn't have the funds, either, to send them back and keep supporting them. But, but...

AI: So, at that time it really didn't seem, it wasn't --

MK: No, it wasn't a concern.

AI: Right. And you mentioned the funds that it would take to support the child back in Japan.

MK: Two families, yes, on both sides of the Pacific, right.

AI: So, in other words, your father must have been doing quite well in business?

MK: I think he was. He was such a happy person, so giving, generous. I mean, not monetarily, but gave himself, that, it's something, other Isseis were more inhibited, more enryo. But, I didn't see my father do the, practice the enryo too much. He was very assertive. [Laughs] Inquiring.

AI: Well, it sounds like he was very entrepreneurial, also.

MK: Yes.

AI: And I wonder if you could tell a little bit more about the business development that he, that he was working with.

MK: Okay. What I didn't know when we went back to Japan in 1938, was, he had a lot of things on his mind, which I didn't know he had. When we came back in 1939, was it? Or late '38 or '39. He had moved the wholesale store to Jackson Street. (...) He (started) the wholesale store, and then bought the Pacific Market, right next door, which (had) a very wide front... and for the convenience, this is what it was, that you had the Pacific Market with the open front, and then the export/import was just as large, to the right, (...). It was all glass enclosed. It was not a glamorous inside because it was a wholesale. But, and then, he had bought the home in Seattle, the next door, when an elderly couple where... we were living in, on Twenty-Fourth Avenue and apparently the next-door couple decided to move to another place for retirement, so my father quickly -- I mean, opportunist that he was -- he bought the home next door. And so when we came back from Japan, all this change had taken place during the fifteen months. Of course, he didn't have to consult with me, but anyway, all this had taken place. So he was very busy. And so, this was a change when I, when we came back from our trip, from Japan.