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TI: And how about your mother? Where was she born?

JO: She was born in Berkeley and she grew up there, and then when she married my father, she moved to Palo Alto. I think for a while she might have worked in Sacramento, but she spent most of her early years, in her early adulthood in the, in the Bay Area, and then we moved to Southern California in (1971).

TI: Going back to your mother, her parents, where, did they come from Japan?

JO: Both of them were immigrants. Her mother came from Kagoshima, and she was the daughter of, I think, a Methodist minister. And... Methodist or Baptist? I think Methodist. And he, her father came to this country to proselytize, and she was the youngest daughter. And all of the other daughters, I think, had married, and he wanted to keep her at home just to take care of him. And so she somehow -- I don't know what kind of visa she had, she somehow got a visa to travel with her father when he came to the States to, on his preaching tour, and she bolted. And she, she didn't want to go back because she knew that she would never marry if she went back to Japan. She would have to, she would have to stay at home and take care of her parents, so she -- and she was considered very old to be unmarried, I think she was thirty-one. She was born in 1900.

TI: So this was about 1930, 1931 when she...

JO: It must have been. I'm trying to... yeah, I think. And she really wanted to find a husband, and so she gave a talk about education at, to some, I guess it was a Japanese congregation somewhere, and her future husband, my grandfather, was in the audience, and he was about fifteen years older and I don't know much about how they met or their courtship, but I think he saw her give this talk. And I actually don't think she knew a lot about education. Maybe she just wanted to stand up there and advertise, I'm not really sure. She had, I think, two older sisters who had already come to this country, but one of them she was very estranged from for years, I'm not sure why. And the other...

TI: But she must have been a pretty remarkable woman, because it was unusual back then to have a woman, especially a Japanese woman, in front of an audience giving talks like this.

JO: Yeah, I never really thought about that. Yeah, although I think teaching was a fairly common profession in Japan for women who did choose a profession. So that it wasn't unusual that she was a teacher, and she did teach for several years in Japan as a schoolteacher, I'm not sure what grade, before she came over.

TI: And so from that talk, your grandfather and grandmother met and they then got married?

JO: Somehow they did. I don't know, I don't know more than that, though. I should find out, but it's, I think it's too late.

TI: And then your, your mother was then born shortly after, because she was...

JO: My mother was born in 1931, so my grandmother -- maybe she was a little, maybe she was in her late twenties when she came over. 'Cause she probably would have to find a mate right away for, for visa reasons, I would imagine.

TI: And so they grew up in the Berkeley area?

JO: My mother?

TI: Your mother.

JO: Yes, yes, she did.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2005 Densho. All Rights Reserved.