<Begin Segment 3>
TI: So your, how did your mother and father meet?
RE: Oh, that's a pre-arranged marriage. My mother's side was the banking, in the banking side. So they were elite, their blood goes back to the Tokugawa regime. So certainly, again, my mother looked down on all the immigrants because she felt that they were all a bunch of farmers.
TI: And what was her name and where was she born?
RE: Fuji, Fuji Kobayashi.
TI: And was she also from the Tokyo area?
RE: Uh-huh.
TI: Okay, good. So her family was in banking, and...
RE: Uh-huh, money lending.
TI: So pre-arranged, sort of, marriage.
RE: Yes.
TI: And about when did they get married?
RE: Oh, I don't know. It goes back, I would say, several years before my dad came to America.
TI: Oh, so he was married before he came.
RE: Oh, yeah, my dad was about twenty-eight years old when he came to America.
TI: And so he, so he had three children, they had three children...
RE: Well, he didn't know the last one, that my mother was pregnant with my brother, Henry, Hiroshi or Henry.
TI: So then he came to the United States, got a job with the railroad, wired the wife, saying, "Come to, come to the United States."
RE: Well, you know, my father was disowned after he made that decision not to go back to Japan. So it was up to him to raise enough money for boat passage for my mother and the three kids to come to America. So it took about two and a half years before he was able to do so.
TI: And when you say "disowned," so his, your grandfather, his father, was not pleased by his decision.
RE: That's correct. After he had spent all that money.
TI: What was, what was your grandfather's hopes for your father?
RE: Probably eventually to take over the business, I would assume.
TI: And do you have a sense of how large the business in Japan was?
RE: I have no idea, really. I never thought of -- my dad never talked about it, nor did he want to go back to Japan any future years for the shame of it, I guess.
<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.