Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Frances Midori Tashiro Kaji Interview
Narrator: Frances Midori Tashiro Kaji
Interviewers: Tom Ikeda (primary); Martha Nakagawa (secondary)
Location: Torrance, California
Date: September 21, 2009
Densho ID: denshovh-kfrances-01-0013

<Begin Segment 13>

TI: What would your father do to relax? Would he have any hobbies?

FK: No, his hobby was work and smoking. He'd tell his patients, "You got to quit smoking, it's bad for you," but he could never quit. So that's what probably eventually killed him at the end.

TI: And how about the time he spent with the family? Was there enough time for his three daughters?

FK: Four. I left out my younger sister.

TI: Oh, okay, four daughters. And her name is...

FK: Oh, Kaoru.

TI: Kaoru. And so she is how many years younger than...

FK: Seven years younger.

TI: Than you?

FK: Uh-huh, Kaoru Arbutis.

TI: Good, I'm glad we got that. So four daughters. I mean, did he have much time for the four of you?

FK: Well, now and then, out of the blue, he would tell us we're taking a trip. So I remember back in 1930-something or another, we all got into the car and went to Boulder, Nevada, to see the Boulder Dam. And when you think about it now, there were no safety belts, nothing, we just got in the car and went. And we would stop here and there and eat lunch, obento, we'd continue on, no air conditioning. But we ended up in Boulder City, and I don't know how we did it, but we had reservations for a hotel there. We got several rooms... oh, and we always took along a young man who would do all the driving for us. And it was either one of the doctors or some farmer's son who had time to drive us. And we went to Boulder and then stayed in Las Vegas back in the year one. And then another time, we went to, he said, "Oh, we're going up to San Francesco to see the Golden Gate," and I didn't know where that was, but we piled in the car and went up the Coast Highway to... first we stopped in Mountain View because a Gardena girl was getting married there. And so we went to... we stayed in San Jose and we visited with this Dr. Watanabe who was, who used to work for Dad. And he was married and had three daughters. But we were there maybe a couple of nights and then we went to San Francesco and stayed a couple of nights and saw the Golden Gate bridge. And then, for the first time in my life, we stayed at wherever it was in San Francesco and we saw Judy Garland in Over the Rainbow when it just came out. I still remember that, that was special.

TI: So it was a movie theater in San Francesco you saw this?

FK: Yeah. So last week when it was in the Times, I thought, "Oh, I was there."

TI: That's right, it's like the seventieth anniversary or something like that?

FK: Oh, yeah. That was a treat. So he did try to take us on trips. He didn't do the driving, 'cause, oh, when it came to cars, I would always get carsick, so I'd always upchuck on the backseat. And my sister would hate me. [Laughs] But never miss, after thirty-five minutes, oh, it's time to upchuck.

TI: [Laughs] Oh, no. So you kind of looked at these trips with some kind of apprehension, I guess.

FK: [Laughs] Totally.

TI: Okay.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.