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TI: And then on your, your father, so talk about sort of how he came to the United States, a little about his family and his schooling and then how he came to the United States.

TA: All right. My father came from a relatively well-to-do family. There's an old term, "farmer warrior," and the, he, his father ran a sake brewery. He manufactured sake, which entailed having a lot of land. So he had a lot of land, rice land. And he was the fourth... one, two, three, the third son. And, of course, being the third son, you don't inherit the land or anything else. But he went to Saga high school, which was a very prestigious high school, and he attended, he took the naval test because most of the students from Saga, usually went into the military or into the government. And he didn't want to go into the military, he was more of a pacifist, he studied American history, Constitution, and he, he got enamored with... he started to show a lot of interest in, in America. So I guess my parent -- his parents, they were against it, his friends were against it. They said, "No, why don't you just stay here?" And everybody says, "Hey, you're going to the military academy," and that's quite a, quite an honor. Everybody was excited about it. But he says, "No." Pretty stubborn.

TI: So this is interesting. So in high school he studied U.S. history...

TA: U.S. history, Constitution, government.

TI: Constitution, democracy.

TA: Also the parliamentary government (of) England.

TI: And in addition, he took this, this test to go into the naval school, did really well, was accepted to this, this prestigious naval academy.

TA: Academy, yes. In fact, his friend, several of his friend, they, they went to the naval academy, and they were successful. They ended up as being admiral, and later on, well, what happened is that one of the admirals, Matsunaga, he came on the, what they call the... where the naval ship was, sailed around the world, this was before the war. And they, he came over, I met him, and he was an admiral, and my father was just a schoolteacher.

TI: That's impressive. So he was like at a prestigious school, did really well. It's almost like the elite class, in some ways. It's like the best and brightest that would go to...

TA: Best and brightest, but, of course, Saga Prefecture as a prefecture is not a, not like Tokyo or Osaka, whatnot. It's, it's in the country. But yes, from a standpoint of producing more military officers, general officers, having people in position in the government, Saga, Saga produces its share. A large share.

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