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TI: So he was about twenty-nine, thirty years old?

FS: Yeah, he's approaching thirty, yes.

TI: Thirty, and then your mother at this time was about how old?

FS: Eighteen or nineteen.

TI: Okay, and so they got married in, in Japan.

FS: They were married in Japan, yes.

TI: And then they come back to Spokane.

FS: Well, no, no. He came back on... he -- and I just got this from my sister, well, from a few years ago, but he came back first to establish himself, and then she followed him the next year. But in the meantime, she lived with my father's family at, near his village. And then I, from what my sister tells me, his, her mother-in-law was just a terrible woman. Like you're supposed to, you kind of beat your, beat your son's bride into shape. My mother couldn't, couldn't get out of there soon enough.

TI: Now do you know at this point whether or not it was clear that your parents were gonna make the United States or America their, their home?

FS: Yes. It was, it was obviously their intent, and that's why I think my mother was, knowing my mother, was much more adventuresome than my father. And I think maybe that was one of the reasons she married him, is that she was ready, ready to move on.

TI: So she was anxious to come to the United States, probably. [Laughs]

FS: That's my understanding, that's my understanding.

TI: Well, then, eventually, she, she joined your father.

FS: Yes, right, right. Maybe he didn't have enough money to bring her over at the time. But anyway, she finally, I think at least a year later, she did follow him over here.

TI: And then what, what kind of work did they do when she joined them?

FS: Well, they, they moved to Hillyard where the family was born, and he was partners in the laundry that I've talked, that I'll talk about later, I think, but he and some other Issei men owned and operated this laundry. And she, she helped in the laundry and gradually my father bought out the other partners, I think there were two other Japanese, Japanese guys in the business, and he bought them out. And so then my mother and father ran the laundry.

TI: Now, what was it about Hillyard that it was a good place to open a laundry?

FS: Well, Hillyard was, was the major, major working terminal for the Great Northern Railroad. They had a roundhouse and a car shop and an ice, icehouse packing plant for shipping produce. And all of those things, it was a major, major center for the Great Northern. Bigger than anything they had anywhere on the line. They made boxcars and they repaired those big steam locomotives. Oh, and there was also a tie plant where they made railroad ties. And so it was really grubby work, dirty work, and so that, that kind, it was kind of an industrial business, it was an industrial business. So that they, the workers, they weren't paid a hell of a lot, but they still needed those clothes washed, because a woman with a washboard or a hand-operated washing machine couldn't get those clothes clean. And so it was not, it was not a bad place to have a laundry. He did a lot of that kind of industrial work.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.