<Begin Segment 2>
BF: So he was a Christian in Japan?
GH: Yes. I'll get to that when we get to, what preparations did he have in coming. There was a teacher, who had a private school. And I guess there were enough that he could survive. He quit public school teaching because he wanted to teach other things that wasn't in the curriculum. In other words his religious -- he was like a minister. And in fact I found out in talking to this historian that one of the important situations in this leader's career was when he ran into Dad's teacher and converted him to being a committed disciple. That, that's how important this teacher was. He was a leading disciple of this leader called -- his name will come to me -- the teacher's name was, that'll come to me too...
BF: He's a Christian leader is what you're...
GH: Yeah, yeah.
BF: ...that is so rare in Japan.
GH: And, that's minority. This was, and this leader taught one -- he was in the Protestant movement. So it wasn't a question of Catholicism versus Protestantism. But among the Protestants, like when he went abroad, Uchimura, Uchimura Kanzo...
BF: Is he the teacher, your father's teacher or...
GH: He's the leader...
BF: ...or the leader?
GH: He's the leader, and his chief disciple, in retrospect turned out to be the teacher of Dad...
BF: Yeah.
GH: ...in his group. And he also taught my mother. So...
TI: And your dad's teacher, is that Iguchi...?
GH: Iguchi Sensei, yeah, Iguchi. And he, he only lived 'til about his own fiftieth year. So relatively, he died early.
BF: Yes.
GH: But I visited his, I mean because of the letters that came in and support that came in, there's a little museum in his honor. Iguchi, I don't know what they call the museum, but it's a museum of Iguchi and his papers, pictures, Dad's groups and so on, they're spread out over there in this museum.
BF: So he had a great influence on many people?
GH: Yeah, quite a few. Particularly until the close of open immigration, which is 19 -- well see, 1923, my mother came in, in 1914, so World War I interfered with the flow of immigration, too. And then before they could really recover from that, the anti-Asian immigration restriction came in, 1923.
<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 1999 Densho. All Rights Reserved.