<Begin Segment 2>

MA: So what about your mother? Where was she from in Japan?

SE: Fukushima. And it would be strange to say that she was from, her father was a wealthy man, but he dealt in junk, you know, discarded, I suppose, things, and being able to salvage and sell it. He was very well-to-do. So he sent her to school, she, unusual for her time, because he sent her to Tokyo, and she was a graduate of Aoyama School over in Tokyo. So she was a college graduate.

MA: And then how did she end up in the United States?

SE: In the United States? I don't know how they heard about this minister that was gonna go, go to Seattle, and interesting enough, his name was Miyagawa, too. I think it was Reverend Miyagawa, and I don't know his first name or anything, but it's a Reverend Miyagawa that brought her.

MA: So was your mother Christian, was she raised Christian?

SE: No, no. Most likely Shinto or whatever they...

MA: So she met up with this, with this reverend somehow, and then they went over together?

SE: Uh-huh. Well, I think through the... I don't know whether they have mission school or something, and then they would help them, I think. I don't know whether, but through, I think, writing to Japan and having people write for them, yeah. So this reverend brought Mother over.

MA: And how did she meet your father?

SE: I really don't know that part of it, except that it's interesting because my, my father was supposed to marry one of three girls. The oldest married Father's older brother, and then he was supposed to marry the middle girl, and the younger one, youngest one married his younger brother. But Dad opted not to marry her. [Laughs] So he was a, sort of an outcast, and so was Mother, because partly, too, she came from a wealthy family, so she brought from Japan trunkloads of beautiful things from Japan. But they were useless here. She brought lots of kimonos, and she was dressing herself in Japanese kimonos, and her sister-in-laws looked at her and pooh-poohed her, you know, wearing Japanese kimono.

MA: They wanted her to wear Western-style?

SE: Uh-huh. So... but I don't know where Dad got this. He had quite a knack of buying clothes for kids. He did all right with all of us when we were growing up, he bought all our clothes, stylish for the time, and the right type of shoes, so we never were embarrassed with our clothes that we wore to school.

MA: So he was a very stylish man.

SE: Uh-huh.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.