<Begin Segment 5>

DG: So then at the time that you were born in Tono city, then your father was...

MH: Minister of Tono.

DG: Okay. And he built the church, you said.

MH: Yes. So many people comes to the church that time, morning and night. So Father wants to build that Christian church and then bought the place. And then also, American lady started a nursery school, kindergarten, nursery school, same place.

DG: And he had a hard time building the church because he was boycotted?

MH: Yes, because my father's idea church is Western-style, and the Morioka, big town, started the Marunouchi church that build the Western-style. So he wanted the Western-style church and then the whole town boycotts him, and then they don't want to sell anything to him.

DG: Supplies.

MH: Uh-huh. And then father got a carpenter from Morioka city who built the Morioka church. So a carpenter came, but nothing they could buy. So one day he was -- because the carpenter wanted to go back, ten days they stayed at Tono, they couldn't help. So he was praying that one of a, old man came and said, "I heard that you're going to build a church, so I came to see here." and then my father tells about all the trouble. He said that, "You know, nowadays we use cement," called cement to bottom, not a wood.

DG: The foundation.

MH: So those material isn't, what they call uranai?

DG: Uh-huh.

MH: No one bother so they don't know that material. So you can buy it so you do it. So my father bought the material and then told him how to make it and then build a foundation with cement.

DG: So this was kind of like the first Western influence in Japan.

MH: Yes, because no one knows. And then he couldn't buy the wood material so again a carpenter wanted to go back to Morioka so he was praying at the place. And then a young man came. The man came over and said, "Not church yet?" My father told us all that trouble, and then he said about a mile and a half away there is a Buddhist temple building, a new one, and then all the material all throw outside of gate and then those are more than a hundred years old, and beautiful material. It doesn't shrink or anything. And then no -- what they call, knots? Anything. You can't buy those things anymore. So my father went there and then, "I want those." And then temple people so happy about it. "Oh, please take it." My father -- according list of, church list, my father gave them 75 cents and then took all the material. And then make the build and so when Japan is half build, wood build, and then they celebrate.

[Interruption]

DG: So this was before you were born or after you were born? That he built the...

MH: Just after the, about the same time.

DG: So you grew up in Tono city.

MH: No, just a baby. See, everybody laugh at church, look at the church, because of all the black wood, not the new one. So they laugh, but that's the way happen. But I was, besides, my mother played -- my mother graduate of high school, Catholic high school, and then went to Sendai Shokei Jogakko, that mission school. And then those time they didn't have graduate student class so she is one of their student and then took Bible lesson, piano lesson, and then English. Three things majored. So she played the piano, organ, the church. I was sitting beside her, that's what I heard.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.