<Begin Segment 36>

TK: Well, certainly your mother was worried about you all the time.

MT: Uh-huh, uh-huh.

TK: And we'll get back to the, your family's wartime days, but, her concern for you was perhaps expressed in one way by this Japanese cultural artifact that she had made. Could you perhaps talk about that?

MT: [Ed. note: narrator holds up cloth belt] Yeah, this is what they... Mother sent me before, just before I was shipped out of Hampton Road, Virginia. And she was very concerned when she found out finally that we were going overseas, that we were going into combat. By that time, she was, my mother was interned at Tule Lake, California, with my brother and his wife and their family. And, but she was still there just prior to our shipment overseas. And she sent this senninbari for me to, to, I guess to bring me back in good health. And the story is that this is a white, I think this is actually from a rice kome-no sack. They didn't have much material there but I understand this is a kome-no sack that she washed and cleaned and then she asked each women to sew one knot in here and to make a totally of one thousand to bring me back safely. And so, but the only other person would be a lady that was born in the Year of the Tiger could make as many knots as her age, and so if she was fifty years old, she could put fifty on here, but the rest of 'em all just put one, and no males were allowed to put these knots on here. So...

TK: Could you explain the Japanese writing on it?

MT: Yeah. Being a Jodo shinshu, Mother, I'm sure, had this, the minister put "Namu Amida Butsu."

TK: That's on the right-hand side.

MT: Yes, uh-huh. And then on the other side would be my Buddhist name, Shaku Sogin. And so I very carefully carried this with me. Overseas, I knew we couldn't wash 'em so I had this all, very folded up and put into my bag and I carried it every day with me and I carried it all the way through the time that I was injured in Italy in August of 1944 and through Dachau concentration camp. I'm sure it brought me home safely. But I always loved Mother for her thoughtfulness and her...

TK: We'll go into Dachau and the injury in a minute, but isn't it sort of surprising that your mother was in Tule Lake and she was able to get a thousand of these knots put in? I think that's just astounding. Do you have any thoughts on that?

MT: Well, I really agree with you that to get a thousand people to put these knots in there, that, especially while at Tule Lake. I didn't know at that time but I understood later that there, there were groups that were gonna return to Japan or, and groups that were gonna stay over here. But for my mother, with her frail little body, to stand out in the street there and ask a person that she's never met or knew to put a knot in like that, must've been something that I just can't explain, that only, because out of love that she was able to do this and I just love her for that and admire her for that. And so I carried it all the way through the European theater of operation and...

<End Segment 36> - Copyright © 2003 Densho. All Rights Reserved.