<Begin Segment 2>

TI: So I'm going to actually take a step way back, and start with -- we're going to do a life history -- and so I'm going to start with the basic question: where and when were you born?

YN: I was born in the month of December, the 27th, Nineteen hundred and thirty-two, in Seattle, Washington.

TI: And what was the full name given to you when you were born?

YN: My full name was Yoshitada Nakagawa. But, of course, in time, it'd be just shortened, Anglicized to say "Yosh." And that is, I don't even have a middle name that is American in the sense of people thinking it.

TI: Okay, good. When you were born, what was your mother and father doing in terms of just making a living in Seattle?

YN: That's very interesting. Exactly when I was born -- I was born into, my father was at best a blue-collar worker. At best, my mother was young, very young, and she was a domestic. And then, yet I know she worked in the community. But to say their job, I do not remember.

TI: When you said your mother was very long, was there -- or very young -- was there a significant age difference between your father and mother?

YN: My mother is typically one that very little is known of. She is a picture bride, she was just at the age of turning fifteen when she came to America, and the marriage to my father who was some eight, nine years her senior. So my mother was a mere child when she came to America in the realms of today's understanding.

TI: So being so young -- fifteen sounds young to me to come from Japan to the United States based on a picture of a man that she probably had not met.

YN: That's right.

TI: Do you know why she came?

YN: It's very interesting because much of the roots of the Issei in America is lost. And to even do research -- so I surmised that it wasn't quite uncertain because they were from the same ken, or you would say the same area or district in Japan. And both parents knew each other, basically, in Japan. So...

TI: So you're, you're talking about your grandparents? Your grandparents knew each other in Japan.

YN: Right.

TI: Okay.

YN: Okay, and I really never knew my grandparents, because they never came to America, nor did I ever go to Japan 'til well after World War II. But in essence, my father must have had enough to go over there and claim his wife and come to America. So it's a picture bride, but maybe not in the traditional sense, because there was some knowledge between the families. So maybe it's more of an arranged, but the only comment I received later on is those in the families remembered that my mother was a mere child, and how sad it was for her to come to America. So I think there was emotion and feelings in the family that my mother was a child.

TI: Do you recall or do you know if your mother had any siblings?

YN: Yes, she had brothers. I don't know -- and I had in a sense met him, but I know no stories.

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