<Begin Segment 6>

AH: How would you describe your parents' relationship? Because we always hear these things about arranged marriages or non-arranged marriages, and some people draw distinctions between the one as the other. Now, your parents' marriage was not an arranged marriage, it was a love match. Would you say that it was a happy relationship between your mother and your father? Was it a happy marriage?

JA: Yes, it was happy up to the time when he got knocked down a couple of times, then she wasn't as happy. No, she was trying to get that back. He couldn't go back, therefore, she went back to get the money from this Washington Shoe group.

AH: And, do you think that you and your brother were children that they planned for, were you accidents?

JA: No, no accident.

AH: You were planned for?

JA: Right.

AH: Okay. And you've talked a little bit about the way in which your dad nurtured your sort of character by introducing you to people, and taking you to events, and really acting as a cultural mentor as well as just a father. How about your mother's role, vis-a-vis...

JA: She was same, she was same. She was active in PTA and she was active with whoever Caucasian friends that I make and when they invite me to a lunch, then she will turn and invite them. So pretty soon, they were exchanging formulas, recipes, things like that. Whereas the Japanese, Issei as a whole, they never did that. Many of them were living in one little rooming house and they didn't want them to come to their place. So there was hardly any communication between the white Seattle people and the Japanese or Issei. But I think we were one of very few.

AH: Okay, so, in a sense, then, I am starting to see -- and you correct me on this because I don't want to impose a pattern that's not there -- but I'm starting to see that are some differences between your situation and between the Japanese American community. And the differences that I see, is first of all, both of your parents come from an area of Japan where there weren't too many other people from that same area in Seattle.

JA: Yes.

AH: Although a lot of Japanese Americans became Christians here, your father actually comes from a long-standing Christian background.

JA: Yeah, right.

AH: You lived on the outskirts of the community, although there was a relationship with the community of not only economic but social and the like, but you had friends freely with Caucasians, etcetera. So in a way, I don't want to say your family was deviant but in a social sense, it deviated from the norm.

JA: Yes.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.