<Begin Segment 23>

TI: So, let's go back. You mentioned your parents were divorced in 1955?

EBA: Uh-huh.

TI: And that would be when you were in high school, at Garfield High School?

EBA: Right. I was a senior in high school at Garfield.

TI: So what was the impact on you at that point of your parents divorcing?

EBA: I... I think I, it was just something I compartmentalized and really didn't engage in at that time. I didn't, I was maybe in sort of a denial. And my father never hugged me, but I remember one night he came in, in the basement there, through an outside door. And any time there was friction or arguing between my mother and father I would always go down to the basement and play because I had this, this great model railroad set up down there. And, but one night I was down there playing and Dad came in and obviously he'd been crying. And he came over to me and told me that he and my mother were getting divorced and he hugged me, and he was crying and he said, "I'm so sorry." And it was an awkward moment for me because this is the first time my father ever hugged me to begin with, but the circumstances that surrounded that, that hug were totally opposite of what one would hope to have when one received a hug. And also, I think my father was putting me in the position of being the grief counselor at that point. And I don't recall any words I said to him. It was a very awkward moment, and then he left. So I went and continued on living with my mother in an apartment on north Capitol Hill.

TI: Did your mother ever share her feelings about (your) father or the divorce with you?

EBA: No, she didn't. She was very quiet about that. I think, I'm sure she must've, Tom, harbored a lot of anger and resentment. But being the minister's wife, those, you don't divorce, at least in those days. You didn't do that. And I think she held on as long as she could and got to the point where all of us were on our own and it was time to make that break. I, they are buried together in the same cemetery plot over on Sunset Hills, over in Bellevue. After Dad died he was buried over there, and then about four years later my mother died and she was cremated and that was her desire. And since I was the executor I remember talking at her service, funeral service, that I thought that in the last few years there was some sort of reconciliation or some sort of decent feeling between them, the two, that I said, we're just gonna put her ashes with my father's casket. So that's what we did.

TI: Well, after the divorce, you mentioned with your mother. What did your mother do in terms of employment or to support herself?

EBA: She worked in the sewing room at, as a seamstress, at Swedish Hospital. And she did that until she retired and couldn't do that anymore. And Dad continued in the Japanese community, officially retired in 1959. And then he was named Pastor Emeritus of Japanese Baptist Church at that time. Continued to work in the community, did a lot of teaching English to Japanese war brides and just continued to engage in community activities.

TI: Well, so during this period after the divorce, and your dad's still at Japanese Baptist Church, did you still attend Japanese Baptist Church or what did, where did you...

EBA: Not too long after the divorce I left Japanese Baptist Church and attended First Baptist Church. And by then I was in college and Japanese Baptist didn't have anything as far as I needed at that time for college ministry or even not many in the way of peer group were in college. And I found those things at First Baptist, so I went, I attended there.

TI: So during this period, how would you characterize your relationship with your father? So you graduated from Garfield and then went to Seattle Pacific College.

EBA: Right.

TI: You were attending First Baptist. Was there much communication with your father during this period?

EBA: There was communication but it wasn't really anything that was a deep personal relationship. But more the, it was more of a surface relationship, I mean, cordial, casual, but never engaging in even thinking about the past or even talking about the past or even talking about the divorce. It was just something we never, we never engaged in. And part of that was my fault because I was internalizing everything, so we just never talked about it.

<End Segment 23> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.