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SP: So I'd like to know if you could tell me anything about the community where you grew up, Selleck, Washington. What was that town like?

KA: Oh, it was a real small Japanese camp. It was built by the sawmill company for the Japanese to live in a community. And so it was a very close-knit community. To this day, those friends are lifetime friends. And according to history, I think, at one time there were about, I don't know, nine hundred people working. It was the largest sawmill in, this side of the state. And we lived there, my parents, I think, moved there in 1924 when my mother immigrated from Japan. And the house was already built by the company, and we lived there for sixteen years until the sawmill went bankrupt in 1939, and we were all forced to move out then.

SP: So I just want to back up a little bit and ask, which of your relatives was it that first came to the United States? Was it your father?

KA: Which of my relatives?

SP: Uh-huh.

KA: My father came with his father and my mother's father, according to the records. And I think, 1905 when they first came, he was only fifteen.

SP: Your father?

KA: Uh-huh.

SP: Okay. And where did they come from in Japan?

KA: Yes, they came from Japan in Hiroshima, but it was on an island, Mukaishima, Onomichi. The town was Onomichi. It's a beautiful place, we've been there and visited relatives.

SP: So when your grandfather, father, and mother's father came over, what kind of work were they doing? What kind of jobs?

KA: Well, my father, according to Takeshi's booklet, he worked as a houseboy. But I don't know what the grandparents did. I really don't know what they did.

SP: And after he worked as a houseboy, he went on to work in the sawmills, is that right?

KA: Uh-huh.

SP: Okay. So how did your father come to meet your mother, and how did they get married?

KA: Oh, well, the two fathers were buddy-buddy, you know. And it was my mother's father who had, who was a baishakunin, go-between for my father's first wife. However, unfortunately, she took off and left him shortly after she arrived. I guess she had someone here. And so my father's father would complain to his buddy, my mother's father, saying, "Look what you did to my son." [Laughs] And he said he got sick and tired of listening to his complaint, so he says, one day, he says, "I'll give you my daughter, she's only seventeen." And my mother had no inkling, didn't know him at all. But anyway, the arrangement was made and my father was called to Japan to... I think they were married February the 14th.

SP: Valentine's Day.

KA: Yeah. Isn't that something? It was 1924.

SP: So after they were married, they settled in Selleck where you were born.

KA: Yes, uh-huh.

SP: I'm curious to know what their daily lives were like. So at that point, your father was working in the sawmills.

KA: Yes, sawmill.

SP: And was your mother also working, or what was your family life like?

KA: No, no. She was a housewife. And my brother Bob was born the following year, in July.

SP: 1925.

KA: Uh-huh. So she was a busy housewife, one after the other. Then I came along, my sister came along. [Laughs]

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.