<Begin Segment 9>

TI: Well, so you mentioned in the big celebration, like in a wedding, that's a good segue to your father's church. Because I imagine that was a hub for lots of big events like funerals, weddings, things like that. Can you describe what a wedding was like back in the '20s when you were sort of an adolescent watching all this happen, what was it like?

JY: Well, the most vivid memories we had was there was one village in Japan from the Tottori-ken called Wada-mura. And they were a very energetic group of young men. And since we had no family ourselves here, we were sort of adopted by that group, just as kids, that we could always go into their homes. And their wedding was something that we always remember. And the people from Wada-mura, their friends, would gather for a wedding, and the festivities would, of course, start a day or two or three before. By the wedding day they were really ready for the celebration.

TI: So lots of drinking and singing?

JY: Singing, and of course, I remember of the men that always got beet red in his face, and happy and loud, enjoying themselves. They would come to the little kitchen and start throwing mochi at each other. It was just a real happy time.

TI: Were they members of the church?

JY: No, they weren't members of the church. They sent their kids to the church, but the church was the central, social center for the group, weddings, funerals.

TI: Now, were the Isseis of this group, were they Buddhist?

JY: There was no Buddhist temple in the Uptown area. We called our neighborhood Uptown.

TI: Okay, so really, your dad's church became the hub for the whole Japanese community.

JY: Right, it was the hub for the community.

TI: The Japanese community. Well, as the hub, what other organizations or groups did your dad form for the Japanese community? You mentioned the Boy Scouts.

JY: There was a Japanese school that was started about two blocks away, it was completely separate from the church.

TI: But it was started by your father?

JY: Yeah, my father was one of the organizers, about three teachers. And then eventually there was a difference of opinion, and so my father started a school right in the Japanese language school, in the church itself. So there were two language schools within one block of each other.

TI: Do you know what the disagreement was, why they --

JY: No, I have no idea. But there wasn't a complete rupture of the community over that. There was a lot of intermixture.

TI: So it really sounds like your dad was like one of the key leaders in the community. Not only the church, but he would start the language schools, the Boy Scouts. Tell me a little bit about what he did on a day to day basis. Did people always come to him for advice and things like that?

JY: He was always, seemed to be, if there were, since they couldn't buy, for example, people wanted to buy a house, then my father would be involved in that in that he would try to find Caucasian friends that might sign for them. So even though he wasn't directly involved in the purchase, he would be making arrangements of that sort. They would come over to talk about it.

TI: So as a kid, do you remember lots of people coming to your house?

JY: Yeah, lots of traffic.

TI: What about your mother? What role did she play as a minister's wife? What was she expected to do?

JY: I don't know what was expected, but she'd walk... I remember that she'd often walk and visited the homes herself, made friends with the families.

TI: Now did she help form, like, women's auxiliary type tings?

JY: I don't know if she was involved in the organization of that sort. But I think it was more a person to person basis.

TI: And how large was the congregation?

JY: Gee, all I knew is the church was a little frame house. At the beginning, the family lived there, it was almost like a boarding house, and there's one section for a chapel, and one section for a meeting. So I don't know how much family room there was there, but that's how it started.

TI: But then on Sunday during services, how many people were in the church?

JY: Gee, I can't think of the numbers. There must have been pews, about ten rows of pews maybe.

TI: And about, what, ten across or so?

JY: Something like that.

TI: Maybe like a hundred people?

JY: At most, yeah. I can't think of it overflowing. And my mother was the organist, I remember pedal footing.

TI: And were the services in English or Japanese?

JY: They had both.

TI: So your father would do one service in Japanese and then one later in English?

JY: Yes.

TI: And then how good was your dad's sermons, the ones you went to were probably in English?

JY: Yeah.

TI: How were they?

JY: Well, we would always make comments as we grew older. By the time we were teenagers, my dad would get a barrage of critiques after a Sunday sermon. I look back, I sort of wonder how we could be so merciless in commenting at a preacher making a sermon when we had no rights or background to make comments of that sort.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2005 Densho. All Rights Reserved.