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MA: I wanted to talk a little bit more about your father's, the Evergreen Baptist Church, your father's church when you were younger. And did the church sponsor, like, social activities or was it like a community center as well?

GK: I think they did have some activities. I know they had a young people's group, and then they had the Japanese school. But aside from that, I'm not sure what other meetings they had. Because I guess I was kind of young, and I just didn't notice all the things that were going on in the church.

MA: And then you were telling me your father left that church when you were younger and founded his own mission.

GK: Yes.

MA: Can you talk about that a little more?

GK: Well, my father was at the Evergreen Baptist Church for several years, but then he found that a lot of the members didn't believe the way he believed, you know, in, like the virgin birth and the miracles that Jesus performed, things like that, and (did not believe) everything in the Bible. And so that bothered my father a lot, and he just couldn't seem to get them to "think the way that they should," because he had a very fundamental, evangelistic view of religion. So then he decided, well, the best thing would be to just resign, so he did. And then he decided he wanted to found a mission called the Fundamental Baptist Mission to the Japanese. So he did everything completely on faith. He didn't have anything lined up, really. So what he did was in the summertime, he would travel to Illinois, Kentucky, Ohio, and speak to the churches, fundamental Baptist churches. And they all welcomed him as a missionary. And so then they would take up offerings to help my father's work. So back in Los Angeles, my mother and he opened up this Fundamental Baptist Mission to the Japanese, and they started with children. They figured if you bring up a child in the way he should go, he would stay with it. So they opened a kindergarten. And we had quite a few little youngsters come over. And so my mother made soup for them every day for lunch, and the children heard Bible stories and they had craft work and other things. Then other people came to help there, too, help with the work.

So it was going quite well, and then it was nearing time for the evacuation. And about that time, my father was not feeling well. He had been on one of his trips to the East, but he wasn't feeling good. So when he came back, he went to see the doctor and he was told that he had cancer. So from then, his health really did not improve at all. When the evacuation order came, he was very sick, so he could not be evacuated with us.

MA: Yeah, the authorities said he had to stay, right? They separated you, basically.

GK: Right, they did. And so the Caucasian minister friends, Baptist minister friends, appealed to the government to, "Please, can the Watanabe family stay here with their father until he got better?" But we could not get special permission to stay. So then he had to undergo three surgeries. So after his first surgery, then we just had to bid him goodbye and leave for camp.

MA: Going back a little bit to your father's mission, I imagine it was difficult for him to sort of start over again?

GK: Very, very difficult, yes. So that's where their faith really played a big role. He just trusted in God. So God took care of him, so that just shows how deep his faith was that God would take care of him and his family.

MA: And he spent a lot of time traveling, it seems, and getting support from more of a national group?

GK: Right. But mostly he was traveling during the summertime. Because during the other months, then he was working in the mission. So as usual, in the summertime, he'd visit these different churches. One of the Caucasian ministers would make out a schedule for him. "Today you go here, tomorrow you go there," like that. So it was hard because every day he was in a different city and had to talk at each place. So it was very difficult.

MA: And so he traveled outside of the West Coast, right? So these were to mainly, like, Caucasian congregations?

GK: Oh, yes, they were all Caucasians, yes.

MA: That's interesting. Did he ever talk about how he was received by them? I mean, were they interested in him, his background because he was Japanese?

GK: Yes, I think they were all interested. That's why they came out to hear him, and that's why the Caucasian ministers announced to their congregation, "Well, tomorrow Reverend Watanabe is coming to speak," like that. So yes, they welcomed him. Yes, there was no prejudice at that time.

MA: And when your father left the Evergreen Baptist Church, was it sort of a, was it a friendly departure, or was there a little tension there?

GK: Yes, there was tension. For sure there was tension. So it was not an easy thing to do. Because he could have stayed and just had a comfortable life, because the church was going very well. So it was very difficult making that decision to leave. And then, of course, he knew he had a family to support. So it took a lot of courage to do what he did.

MA: And did he have the services or the kindergarten you were saying, was that in your home?

GK: Yes, it was in our home. We had a large enough home that it would accommodate those children.

MA: And how large was, how many children, I guess, were there at its peak?

GK: Maybe about fifty.

MA: Oh, so that's quite a few.

GK: It was a big group, right. And I remember one of the children who came, later (...) he started to work for the national government, he had some kind of an office, his name was William Marumoto, and we remember him as a little boy coming to kindergarten. And he started climbing up to national prominence.

MA: I imagine your father probably influenced a lot of people through...

GK: Yes, I think so.

MA: At Evergreen and then later at his mission.

GK: (Yes), because now that you say that my father may have influenced a lot of people. (One person was Dr. Paul) Nagano, (who) was a member of the Evergreen Baptist Church, and he was, I think, in high school at the time, and so my father baptized him. And at that time, I guess, Dr. Nagano didn't know which direction his life was going to go. So after his baptism, he knew that he wanted to go into the ministry, and so he did. And he became a very prominent Japanese American minister in California and also in Seattle, Washington, and he served for a time in Hawaii, too.

MA: Oh, that's great.

GK: Yes.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright ©2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.