Densho Digital Archive - Lillian Sato Interview (denshovh-slillian-01-0001)

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MA: Okay. So today is July 6, 2008, and I'm here with Lillian Sato. And I'm Megan Asaka, the interviewer, and the cameraperson is Dana Hoshide. And we're actually in Denver, Colorado, at the Japanese American National Museum conference. So thank you so much for doing this interview.

LS: Uh-huh, you're welcome. I'm glad to be here.

MA: So I wanted to know when you were born.

LS: I was born in December of 1928.

MA: And where were you born?

LS: In Stockton, California.

MA: What was the name given to you when you were born?

LS: (...) I was named Lillian Yuriko Goto.

MA: And I wanted to know a little bit about your, your father and your mother. So what was your father's name?

LS: My father's name was, actually, his Japanese name was Kinnosuke Goto.

MA: And did he have an American name, too?

LS: Uh-huh, after he came here, he named himself Harvey.

MA: And where was he from in Japan?

LS: He was from Aichi-ken, Japan.

MA: And do you know what his family was doing in Japan?

LS: That I don't know too much. He never indulged in that too much, although he was always bragging about his sister.

MA: What was special about his sister?

LS: I don't know what her name was or anything, I don't know too much. But I do know that they're more on the religious side.

MA: And do you know what his motivations were for coming over to the U.S.?

LS: Well, he had an older brother that was already here in San Francisco, and so he called him over, and he came here when he was, oh, must have been about seventeen, fifteen, seventeen years old.

MA: Oh, okay, so young, a young man. And what was his brother doing in San Francisco? What type of work did they get into?

LS: I don't know.

MA: And then how did he meet your mother?

LS: Well, he met my mother through arrangement, I think it was. By then, he went as a schoolboy, and then he started farming in Stockton. Then he met my mother and they got married, and they've been farming there in Stockton until 1935, I think it was.