<Begin Segment 14>

TI: Tell me a little bit about your wedding ceremony and what that was like.

GH: It was a standard -- I'll say, it doesn't add very much when I put it that way -- but it was a meeting that filled the congregational room of the Evangelical church in Spokane.

TI: And so how many people would that be?

GH: Well, I'd say 200. Most of 'em were there because they knew it was our wedding. I don't think --

TI: Were your parents there...?

GH: Yeah, they came.

TI: ...and friends?

GH: And my brothers and so on came in, and relatives that were there. Lillian and her brother and so on. If her parents were in town, they would have been there. We have signatures of those who signed at the time. And I was thinking the other day, I said, "I have something I might want, you might want to keep it. I don't think I need to keep it. But it's the wedding out of which you, developed. [Laughs] So you're signature's not on here, 'cause this was the wedding of ours, and you appeared a year later." We have that marriage statement. And at a certain point in the -- shortly in the, shortly I say, because this was a meeting not of a Quaker meeting, regular meeting, it's at a place authorized by the Seattle group. So the senior member gets up and explains what is the usual procedure and what goes on. And then in the process he'll say, "During the worship period, which is fundamentally like any worship period that we might have on Sunday, which usually goes for an hour." See, we've got the modern technology involved. It starts and closes right at the hour. [Laughs] But what takes place is supposed to be according to the spirit.

And when a wedding, I mean when the, at a certain part of the ceremony, worship, I got up and said that in this presence of the spirit and friends, I'd like to make my commitment publicly of my intent to marry and live constructively with Esther, and so on. And shortly she'll get up to make her statement. So we each make a commitment to, in the spirit that is existing in the worship, and to each other, and to the public that's assembled there. So it's the, that's the part of the thing that I think is intended in all these weddings, whether a preacher pronounces at the end, "I pronounce you man and wife." All of that, and the singing, and verse reading, and, you know, the procedures are different. But, and sometimes they let the people, some ministers are very liberal, and they say, "You could prepare whatever you feel and then let me see what it is." And then he'll make some suggestion, and then it's approved, and then they follow that. And it may be a twenty-minute service, or it may be one hour. Ours was an hour.

And then when it was over, well they all moved to the home of Dr. and Mrs. Paul Suzuki, who was my personal physician and the place where I lived for a while. I helped them find that house, and became their first attendant, at, in the spare bedroom. So when any of the brothers, Nobu's brothers appeared, Yanagimachi brothers, they shared the bed with me. [Laughs] Or if it got real crowded, I went down to the couch and gave them the room. She, she hosted the reception. And, and after that, when they returned to Seattle, they returned, and my parents returned to Seattle, they, Suzukis became their physicians. Before, since they lived out on the farm, they didn't have Suzuki as, as the physician.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2000 Densho. All Rights Reserved.