<Begin Segment 16>

TI: Now, how would your mother discipline you?

HS: Oh, she was, well, mainly, it was by word of mouth. She would, she would just tell us what...

TI: Was it kind of a quiet way, or was she a little more --

HS: Oh, no, she would get quite, quite loud.

TI: So, so in contrast to your father, she was a little more verbal.

HS: Oh, yes, she was more verbal in terms of, she was more verbal, and she was more involved, so she, she knew when you were doing something bad.

TI: How about things like emotions? Did she show her emotions?

HS: Yeah, she did, a lot more than my father did. No, my mother was quite pretty. She was quite a pretty girl. In fact, I know a lot of the men that would come over would come over just to see her, and they'd come in to have, and certainly she had a number of young guys that become admirers, and they would come over just to talk to her and things like this, which was... 'cause she was, became kind of like an older sister to a lot of the young Japanese fishermen that didn't have a family or were by themselves, they would come and have... like when they used to come, pie and coffee, it was usually my mother who would do the, that was, they would have conversations. My father never got involved in conversations with these, very rarely, anyhow. He wouldn't, he would be, he wouldn't be, he was more involved in making sure that the restaurant was going on. But he wouldn't be doing that much talking.

TI: Now, did you ever, in your later years, ever have a conversation, and it sounds like, when you described, she's twenty years younger than her husband, going to a different country, at a very young age being put in a situation where you're working hard. Did you ever talk to her about that life and what it was like for her?

HS: Well, when she first came, she was, she was a little bit, she came from Osaka, and she lived, they did have a -- I forgot what her father was, but he was, I still remember her father being very dignified-looking fellow, and when she first came, she certainly said she was taken aback by how primitive Prince Rupert was compared to Osaka. She thought that, that when... she thought she would see streetcars and stuff like that that were in, streetcars and things of that nature that were in Osaka. But when she arrived in Prince Rupert, in fact, the main street in front of us, when she first arrived, was still not paved, it was sort of gravel. And it did get paved within a few (years), by the time I was born or came back, because I didn't know anything before I came back from Japan when I was four years old. My recollection, by then, the street in front of our place was paved, and we had a, we had a, first, a boardwalk, a sidewalk made out of boards. And later on it became cement, but the cement did not come in until well into the, well into the '30s. And so my mother, when she came over in 1923, after she was married, my father, when he went to Japan, he dressed well and he arrived, and he was well-dressed. And he had a, you know, there's a picture of him in Prince Rupert looking very dapper. Nice, summer suit, and little, little cap, and that's how he was when he went to Japan. And he was, I guess he impressed the family in Osaka, and he impressed my mother. And of course, she was, like I say, she was young, but she had finished her schooling and her mother said, yeah, but this is a good match. It was still, still a matchmaking type of thing, it wasn't like she found... it wasn't like the usual coupling.

TI: So it sounds like your father, because he looked dapper, he was probably financially pretty well-off.

HS: Well, in terms of, yes, in terms of a Japanese person coming back to Japan, he was, he had enough money to go to Japan, you know, and he got a first-class passage, that was the other thing. I don't know how he went there, but he certainly, on the way back, my mother remembers that they were in first class, and they sat at the captain's table, and she was very impressed with that. They came to Victoria, and it was, when she saw -- she said that when she got there, she looked over the, she looked onto the dock, I think they had to change ships there because they came to Victoria and they got onto the CNR line, which was Prince, they were called Prince Robert, Prince Rupert, she got on one of those ships. But when she came from the Orient, it was like the empress of Japan, or they, I forgot which, one of those PMO lines, those big white ships they used to have in those days. She came that way, and she said that when she got (here), she came to Victoria or, I forget whether it was Victoria or Vancouver, she was, she said she had the shock of her life. She saw these stevedores unloading, and she said they were all white. And she said it never occurred to her that white people did any actual manual labor. [Laughs] She thought they were always like the captain or somebody, doing, doing, telling other people to go do the work. Even when she was on the ship, like on the PMO line, a lot of the sailors were not white sailors, they were Chinese or Malaysian. And even when she, when she had, that was her, that's what she thought. When she came to, came to Canada, saw these people actually working with hand, as hands, she said, "I was shocked. I didn't realize that white people actually worked." [Laughs]

TI: Now, was her family pretty, pretty well-off in Osaka?

HS: They would be, they would be considered well-off, yeah.

TI: So is it safe to say it was kind of a, perhaps a rude awakening?

HS: Rude awakening coming to Prince Rupert.

TI: To Prince Rupert and actually...

HS: Actually seeing Prince Rupert, and then going to...

TI: And what she had to do.

HS: Oh, yeah, what she had to do. And she had to learn English, and she, and the average, the average person there was, was pretty uneducated as far as Japanese were concerned. A lot of the women had not had more than a grade five education or even less than that. A lot of it was self-taught.

TI: And so after she had you, and then she was pregnant with your sister and went back to Japan, do you think it was because she had enough and she was gonna stay in Japan?

HS: She may have had that idea to some degree.

TI: Because it sounded like your mother, I mean, your mother's mother, your grandmother, had to convince her to come back to Prince Rupert.

HS: Oh, yeah. She was, she said that her mother talked to her and said, "You have to go back to Canada because your father is such a good man."

TI: Now, did you, how would you describe the relationship with your, of your parents? Did you see them interact very much, and how would you describe that?

HS: Oh, they were very, they weren't a loving couple, as you might consider it now. There was very little physical contact between the two, most of it was ordinary, straight discussion about things. Mostly was, had to do with how the restaurant was running and things like that. It became a little bit more like, the internment camp changed a little bit of that type of interaction, and became a little more closer because of the whole different situation.

TI: Okay, so we'll get to that later, that's, I just wanted to, yeah, understand how things were before.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.