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TI: So how would you describe your father? Was he kind of an adventuresome type?

MT: Very quiet, hardworking man. Typically, say he loved his sake, he worked very hard at gardening for years. I think you would consider him a fairly successful person, at least in his own line of work.

TI: How about your mother? How would you describe your mother?

MT: She was the disciplinarian of the family. She was, gave us a lot of love and kindness, but she was very strict. She was the backbone of the family, raising the family.

TI: Now, you mentioned they were both from the Nagano area. Do you know how they met or how they, how it was decided they would get married?

MT: It was an arranged marriage, which, what do they call that? Oh, I forgot the word they used, but typical Japanese marriage, it was arranged.

TI: Now, how did you, as a son, find out that their marriage was arranged? Did they ever talk about that?

MT: We were fortunate that we were able to go back to Japan two or three times. Several of my cousins from Japan came over here, so we had a fairly close relationship with our cousins and aunts and uncles in Japan. We knew of them, we knew what they were doing. It's not like a lot of the immigrants who came over here, they completely lost contact with their family in Japan. But my folks were able to keep close contact with both sides of the family. So even today when we go back to Japan, go over to my dad's home, and they had adopted my cousin to carry on the family name. Or we could go to my mother's side of the family and a cousin is there, and we always had a place to stay, at least when we went to Nagano-ken. So in this sense, we were fortunate that we were able to keep fairly close contact with our family ties back in Japan.

TI: And it was through those ties that you found out that your parents, sort of, were married, or it was an arranged marriage? It was kind of through that, that connection?

MT: What was that, now?

TI: Yeah, I was wondering how you found out that your parents, it was an arranged marriage?

MT: It was just kind of understood that this was the way things happened for them. [Laughs]

TI: So it was pretty common for the Issei, for the first generation. So I'm going to now jump to Seattle around 1918, 1919. Your father and mother are now in Seattle, they have their first child, Yoshi. What, what kind of work did your parents do?

MT: Well, I think the very first, I think when he first came, probably worked in the mills, sawmills or railroad or something. But eventually started a little laundry business, and I don't know how many years he kept that up, but he did have a hand-laundry business, and then he switched over into becoming a gardener.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.