<Begin Segment 6>

TI: I want to go back a little bit in terms of, do you know why your father was assigned to Seattle versus going back to Fresno or another city? How was that decided?

SI: I think that at that particular time, the reverend who was here was about to leave, and they had to find a replacement for him. And my dad happened to be available in Japan. They knew that he had been over this, over here in this country earlier, and so I guess he was one of the prime candidates to come over. I don't know exactly everything that transpired in his being chosen, but that's the reason why he came over to Seattle. He was appointed to come over by the Hongwanji.

TI: Do you know if your father had always thought he would come back to the United States? When you went back to Japan after his mother's death, did he think he would come back to the United States or do you think he...

SI: I don't know that.

TI: And do you think when he was assigned Seattle, did he ever talk about at some point returning to Japan to continue his work there?

SI: I think that his idea was to come here to stay once he's over here. Because the temple back in Japan was already taken care of by his older brother. So he had a mission to stay here in this country and to spread the religion here.

TI: Good. Describe what it means to be a minister. I mean, when you observed your father, what were some of the duties he had during these, the prewar years?

SI: Well, aside from the usual job as conducting the usual Sunday service, weddings, funerals, memorial services, he had to still be a kind of liaison between the temple and the community. So he would go to different community activities representing the temple. For example, when the Japanese government would hold their annual New Year's party at the consul general's, my dad would have to go represent the temple along with the president of the temple. If he had some assignments community-wise, he'd be one of those representing the temple. Like the kenjinkais or different types of parties that was going on, he would still be there.

TI: Did he ever have to represent the temple to the outside non-Japanese community?

SI: Like for example what?

TI: Oh, maybe, I don't know, if there were ever a meeting of other, maybe ministers, different churches, or maybe with a city representative or anything like that?

SI: By meeting of ministers, are you talking about ministers of other faiths?

TI: Yeah, maybe other faiths.

SI: I don't really know if he had or not.

TI: Well, let me ask this question. Did he ever, did he have to learn how to speak English, or was he pretty much doing everything in Japanese?

SI: No, he was able to speak some conversational English. And he was very adept at writing in English, too. He's written a lot of letters to us in English. Some of my friends were surprised that he was able to write that well.

TI: And to whom, or this writing English, for what purpose was it? Who did he write to in English?

SI: Okay, here again, some correspondence may have taken place between his friends because of church business. Or if he did write English letters to us -- this is during the war years again -- because he knew that kids could understand English a lot better than trying to understand Japanese.

TI: Well, probably also, we'll get into this later, but probably in terms of the censors, too, if he wrote in Japanese, it would take longer for letters to get to you also, rather than English, I believe.

SI: Could have been. I can't really answer that.

TI: Okay. So during this time, as your dad is the minister, are there certain duties that you had as a son of a minister around the church? Were there any things that you had to do?

SI: Nothing of any consequence other than to be there on Sunday mornings, you know, attending the Sunday children's service in my earlier years. But you know, as you grew up into manhood, well, then my duties, of course, have changed. There's other things that I've done.

TI: So I'm curious, as a child going to Sunday service, was there expectations or more pressure for you to behave than others? Or how did that...

SI: There might have been some pressure, but not very much. Like he would say, "Well, be sure to be good now, because you're Ichikawa-sensei's child, you know. So you be good now." But no real big pressure on their part.

TI: Now, when you were growing up, as now, the minister of the Buddhist church is viewed as a leader of the community. Was that pretty much the way it was before the war, too, that that was a pretty prominent position?

SI: I think that the minister was considered one of the leaders of the community, yes. So that's the reason that later on, they were, of course, the ones that were yanked out. [Laughs]

TI: Right. Okay, so we'll get to that later.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.