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AI: Well, let me ask you a little bit about your mother's family background also.

EH: Okay, well, my father, well, I think he never really got back to, to Japan until he went to marry my mother.

AI: Oh, and excuse me.

EH: And then he came back here.

AI: I'm sorry. I should have asked you, what was your father's name?

EH: Taneo Ishikawa. And my mother's name, maiden name, was Taka Ohira. And interestingly enough, as happens in, in Japan, my, my grandmother, maternal grandmother, was an only child, and she carried the family name because she was an only child. She was also a Minamoto, and I never knew that until my (...) mother was visiting in, in about '55 and said... and my mother asked Ralph, "What are you teaching?" He very excitedly said, "Grandma, you know (who) my favorite -- I'm teaching Asian history, and my favorite character in, in Japanese history is Hideyoshi," I think. Anyway, my mother said, "No, no, no good. He beat my clan." (...) And Ralph said, "Who's your clan?" And she said, "Minamoto." And Ralph said, "What? You're a Minamoto? What are you doing here?" Because she was of privileged class, and she could have done well. But my mother never talked about that background. And we never learned Japanese history in Japanese school. All we managed to learn is reading and writing and, and kanji. Sometimes the stories were about some historic figure, but it was never a continuity that we could pick it up as part of history. And it wasn't until that happened in 1955 when my third one was born that I heard just that little bit. And even after that, my mother never mentioned it again. But she, she did have a kind of a privileged life.

Born in 1900, and she was a bright, strong-willed person, particularly because she had three brothers under her, and in, in Japan as maybe in a lot of Asian countries, girls have (a lot) to do, from the time they're little, my mother always grumbled and we listened to it all our lives, that she had to carry buckets of water from the well from the time she was five. She had to get up at five o'clock in the morning and cook the rice, though she washed the rice the night before and (it) was soaking in water, that she had to light the little wood cook stove. (...) After school, (she) always had a little one on her back. The crisscross cloths to tie the little one was always waiting for her. And her brothers could just throw their books on the veranda and maybe eat a little snack and go off and play. And so she grew up being kind of a woman's libber because she hated that era. And, and I think she had to cope with things like her, her brothers took her dolls down to the creek and washed, gave 'em a bath and that just ruined whatever few toys she had.

But she, she was a bright person, and she took an exam at the age of fourteen, for teacher-training school, and she passed it. But she was only fourteen, and so she had to wait another year to be fifteen before she could start those classes. And in the meantime, she said, she kind of grumbled about (having) to learn shamisen and ikebana and odori, and she hated all that, she said. So when... by the time she got to teaching, and I suppose that happens. That could have happened in many countries, that fifteen-year-olds could become teachers of one kind. She said (...) they never had classes, but I can't believe that they didn't have at least one year of basic... she did talk about psychology. She (said to) a mutual friend of ours, (...) "Oh, your mother was just like her," meaning she was heavy and our friend is heavy. And, and that person said, "Oh, so you're accusing me of an Oedipus complex." And my mother knew Freud, because it was just starting in the '20s and early... (...) a master teacher moved from class... from school to school and analyzed your methods, gave you instructions, criticism, or whatever. (...) She told me -- and this is northern Japan, snow country and icy. (...) She had eighty kids in their second grade class, and she had to skate on ice sometimes to visit the children (...) who were absent. And it got way into nighttime, and the, the farmers would put lanterns on the riverbanks to help her get to them. But, and she said sometimes the droughts were terrible. She said sometimes the kids would be all yellow because all they had to eat was kabocha, the yellow pumpkin. But generally speaking, I think she enjoyed (it). (...) When my younger sisters were beginning to learn their alphabet or read, my mother would be saying, "C-A-T spells 'cat.' R-A-T spells 'rat.'" And she was teaching English even from second grade, in that simple routine that we still use in American elementary school system.

AI: So, excuse me. Was this somewhat unusual, then, for someone... for a young woman like your mother in that era to be, to get so much education and then to actually be a teacher?

EH: No, because I have... I have an aunt, my mother's brother, the next uncle, married a person who graduated from the same school. This was... I think it was, it's in Morioka, and now... in '78 when I went to Japan the first time, one of my paternal cousins drove (me) up to Morioka to show me the college that my mother went to. It was still being used. It was a dark, wooden building, but... and, and then, interestingly enough, in about '87, one of the last trips that my mother took to Japan, and, and my youngest sister had said, "I'm taking Mom to Japan. You come and get her." So in '87 I took a trip to... '86, I guess, I took a trip and, and spent time with her and relatives. Also, my youngest son was in, in Asia Daigaku that year in Japan, and so he came up to also meet my... meet his grandmother, and it was fun listening. And we would go to graveyards and she would recollect family's names and she would start telling us about the candy shop owner. On that trip, her youngest brother, my youngest uncle had died suddenly and we were supposed to stay with them, but he wasn't feeling well, so we went to another relative. And when, when he died, the mayor of the city came riding a bicycle. Snow white hair but very, (well-dressed) in a suit and very dignified-looking, and he greeted my mother, because they were in the same class. And though the dormitories were naturally separated, they had to have some classes. And so she (was) talking about, I think every Friday they had to have storytelling and public speaking and lecturing, and he was in that class with her.

I think there was an edict, probably by Meiji Tenno to open public schools, that public schools through maybe eighth grade or sixth grade was going to be mandatory. My paternal (great-grandfather), or maybe my (maternal) great-grandfather was ordered to establish a school in Anetai, where my father grew up. And so it was happening, the country probably had to educate a lot of people in a rush to meet the demands, because both of my paternal (grandfather) and (my) maternal grandfather both were teaching children in their own private home. Not so much as a class, but private class, private education system. That's almost the only way people got education in late 1800s. But the education system is fairly well-entrenched, even by the time my mother was teaching. In 1915 to 1922. She taught, and then she had to leave that and come to America. And she kind of expressed a little bit of guilt feeling that she owed the ken, the prefecture, more than the years that she (taught) because it probably, I think it took five years to graduate. When you start with no classes, it's going to take you a longer time to accomplish all that they're supposed to. She had to travel quite a, quite a bit and... but she enjoyed it. She talked about dormitory life. They would (enjoy) the sweet potato seller (who) would ring a certain bell, and the chestnut vendor would ring a certain bell, and they would lower some kind of basket by string and he would (fill it), and they would have money in there and they would pull it up. Because they couldn't, they were not allowed to leave the dormitories. And so to some extent, maybe they had to live in dormitories even while they were teaching. They also had to take turns cooking, and she talked about when the rice burned, that they had to start all over and things like that.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.