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TI: So let's go back to the chronology. So we talked about your father, he was in the United States, how did he meet your mother?

ST: Well, now, you know, he was at this age -- when he reached his, it would be, he would be in his mid-forties or late-forties, and he hadn't married. And he was adventuring, and he was trying to invest in things and become, he wanted to make his fortune like all of the young men did. And he got the letter from Japan saying, "You know, you've come to an age now, it's time for you to settle down. And come home and let's see what we can do." That's the general tenor of what he said to us. There may have been something more specific in the actual letters that he received. But we discovered that the reason why they brought him home was because my mother was a widow, and she was a young widow, she was nineteen years younger than him. So she was still in her early twenties, and he, so he met her, and she was staying with her family. She had a boy, and we never knew this. She had a little boy, and she was staying with her family, had been sent back to her family. And my father met her and decided that I guess he was going to get married, she was okay. And according to the relatives who we met later, she was considered, she was the oldest daughter in that family, and she was considered the beauty of the family. And so he said to her one day -- this is what we found out when we went to visit, Kaz and I went to visit the families in the '80s. And one of the women told me, I said, "Do you know what happened, how they met, and when did he ask her to marry him?" She said, well, he didn't exactly ask her. He said to her something like this: "I'm going to be leaving for the United States on Thursday. If you want to go along, be packed." It was essentially that. And, of course, he did not want the son because it wasn't his. We didn't find this out until many, many years later, and it was after he had died. So the family, his family kept the secret from us, but, of course, we had no contact with our relatives, so we wouldn't know. But nobody else who had been from that part of the country of Japan ever told us either. And that's kind of interesting, we felt that nobody, they all respected him for that and never told us.

TI: And did you ever make contact -- I guess this would have been your stepbrother?

ST: Stepbrother. Well, this is kind of... this is where it gets kind of cloudy. We... let's see, this would be after I was married and my sister was married, my son was in, oldest son was in the second grade, so that would be about 1967, '68, my aunt and her husband decided to go down to Brazil to visit their oldest (son) who had been in this group of farmers that had purchased this large section of land in Brazil near Sao Paolo, there's that large Japanese community outside of Sao Paolo. Well, in Sao Paolo, actually, but he had the farm several hours from Sao Paolo. And they had heard stories that everybody wasn't doing well. And, of course, nobody would reveal this in letters home, they would all say, "We're doing well." Several had died from illness and stuff, and she, they wanted to know because their son was a very proud person. And since he was the oldest son and had left everything, they wanted to see for themselves whether his letters were accurate. So they took the trip down there on a Japanese ship, and one of the... and coming back to Japan, there were stops at Los Angeles and San Francisco. So they sent us letters, and at that time it would be... what did they call that? Well, you know, you used to get the telegram, only it wasn't called a telegram. But anyway, to tell us when they would be at different ports, and they asked whether we could come and visit. So my sister and I flew down to San Francisco because that was the closest port for us. And we met them for the first time, and that would be my aunt and uncle. So when we met them at the -- and we had to get a pass to go on, and then they couldn't come off. Oh, they could get a pass if they were accompanied by us, citizens, they could come off the ship. So we met them at the ship and took them out for dinner to a sukiyaki place, very nice sukiyaki house in San Francisco, and tried to show them around. Of course, San Francisco wasn't our town, so we didn't know a whole lot about it, but at least we could show them around a little bit, and we talked. And they said, "Would you like to see our cabin and the ship?" And we said, "Oh, that would be nice." So we walked to their cabin, and as soon as she opened the door and she closed the door behind us, and she reached for this envelope, and she pulled out this picture, and she said, "This is your brother." And it was just, you know, such a surprise.

TI: Oh, so at that point, that's how you found out about him?

ST: That was when we found out. And, see, he was a good ten years older than us, I'm sure. And he was a very nice-looking man. We asked the circumstances, she told us the circumstances. My sister's Japanese is much better than mine, so, you know, we did this back and forth thing, and she said that he was adopted by a family, a couple who had no children. And they were just so happy to have him, and that he was well-raised and cared for, and he kept in contact with her, the sister. And so she always knew how he was, and he had a good life and he had a good job. But he, I don't think he had married. He more or less felt, he was so attached to his parents that he just, his new parents, that he stayed with them. And he had sent a letter and asked for us to contact him if we wanted to. He didn't want to contact if we didn't want to. And I can't write Japanese, but somehow or another, I think either the address was misplaced or something. But somehow the contact was never made, and I really, that's something I really regret.

TI: And has he passed away?

ST: Yes, he has. When we went back in, when Kaz and I went back in '87, '88, and when I, first thing I asked my aunt when we entered her house was, "Is my brother, is my brother still alive?" And she said, "No," she said, "he died last year." So we just missed him by a year.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.