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TI: So let's talk, so your grandfather came to Seattle about fifteen, working with his business, helping other immigrants, and then you mentioned your grandmother. So tell me, you said "picture bride," so she came from Japan. (Narr. note: Nami Ota came from Ochima Gun, an island, in Yamaguchi prefecture.)

SY: Japan, I don't know what area.

TI: And her name was?

SY: Oh, this is embarrassing...

TI: Nami?

SY: Nami Ota. And, according to a relative in New York, said that they have a relative, I think it was either brother or sister, somebody that had several grocery stores in Brisbane, and then two in Washington area. But they, Peggy Fusan tried to find, locate them, but they were long gone, you know, so there's no connection anymore.

TI: Okay. So in my notes I have that your grandfather and grandmother married about, what, 1905?

SY: Yes, true. (November 29, 1905, in Seattle, Washington).

TI: And then shortly after that they started having children.

SY: My mother was born in October 1907, the first and the oldest, and then had two sisters, and then the youngest was a boy, Sam Horishige. (Narr. note: Hana Horishige, 1907, Sachiko Horishige, 1914, Mitsuko Horishige, 1914, and Sam Horishige, 1919.)

TI: Good, so there were four siblings.

SY: Correct.

TI: And your mother was the oldest. And her name was?

SY: Hana. Now, I see some reference to Hanako, but she went mostly with Hana, so I don't really know whether the "k-o" is significant or not, you know. It could be because her sister is Sachiko and Mitsuko, so probably Hana was Hanako. (My birth certification says Hana Yabu).

TI: And tell me a little bit about your mother's childhood growing up in Seattle. What do you know about her?

SY: Well, here's what she mentioned, as my grandfather's brother had a barber shop and a bathhouse, and as a three-year-old, they assigned her to clean the bathtub. And she was so ashamed because she has to lean over, and she was so worried about exposing her buttocks when people came in to the bathroom, you know, bathtub. And I guess a lot of people just took a bath every so often, they didn't have access to it in their home, and, which I didn't know. And then she used to sweep the hair in the barber shop, and evidently that's how she made her little extra money.

TI: Wow, so at a very young age she had to help out with, I guess, the uncle's business.

SY: That's right. And my grandmother was not what you call a healthy person, even when she came on the ship, she was detained on the ship for a month or two or whatever time until she got well before she came into Seattle, Washington.

TI: And when you say Seattle, so they lived right in sort of what we call like the Nihonmachi area of Seattle, with other Japanese?

SY: I've been to the house, it looked like it was a little bit, little bit higher, I think it was 19th Street, or something in that area. Now, I don't know Seattle at all, so I can't give you the exact location.

TI: Okay, yeah, in that whole corridor, yeah, there are a lot of Japanese, and actually other ethnic groups, Chinese would live there, African Americans, but primarily Japanese would, Japanese was the largest, the largest group, so that's good. And so I'm curious, as your mother's, in terms of language ability, what language did, was her --

SY: She was bilingual. And when... the mother died early and at that time the three sisters went to Japan to live with the grandmother, and they didn't really like it, and so eventually they came back, maybe after less than a year.

TI: Okay, but she had to navigate both the Japanese world and the American or English kind of world.

SY: That's right. But what I understand from the relatives, she was a scholar. She loved mathematics. In fact, even later on life when the modern math came, she went to night school to learn the modern math.

TI: That's interesting because in my notes I have that she attended the University of Washington as a premed student.

SY: Correct. Yeah, for two years, and then she met my father, who was also from Japan, my real father, Frank Teruo Yabu, and according to Peggy, that name may have been changed, Yabu may have been a longer name, but in those days they shortened names. And, as a student, they both met, and there's no history, but my belief is that, when they got married, the father really objected, you know, because he wanted her to finish school, especially as, had a potential of becoming a medical doctor. So, because of that, the two of them moved down to San Francisco, and my belief is to get away from, from their father.

TI: That's interesting. How much do you know about your biological father, Frank?

SY: Absolutely nothing. And, in fact, my mother and my father and I went (to Osaka, Japan), when I was six months old, the three of us went to either Osaka or Kyoto, and six months later just my mother and I came back, alone. And we got detained at Angel Island in San Francisco Bay because my mother did not take her birth certificate with her, and so I could honestly say I was in Angel Island for a couple days. And then, now my mother said she either had sixty dollars or seventy-five dollars in her purse and that was it, so she worked as a maid in a mansion in Pacific Heights in San Francisco, so I was farmed out to different babysitters in different locations. And for some reason or another, I was, when I, my mother met my, her new husband, I remember certain buildings, like I remember Post Street and I remember Laguna, and I can't tell you exactly what building, but I can remember the area, even as young as I was. I remember the Catholic school I attended as a pre-nursery school. My mother believed in education, so I went to school at a very early age, but... now this is hard to believe, I don't believe it myself, but according to my mother, she testified that I was not walking at six months old, I was running at six months, so I could see why I had to change babysitter constantly, so I was in different areas, different homes.

TI: And so you showed at a very early age this athletic ability.

SY: I don't know if it's athletic, it was just maybe boredom. [Laughs]

TI: Going back to your mother, did she ever talk about, I'm thinking when she came back from Japan, she decided to go back to San Francisco, but essentially as a single mother, why she didn't go back to Seattle where the family was?

SY: I think because she was ashamed of the fact that she was a divorcee. She never told me that I had a father, but I, it's in my birth certificate, so I could figure that out. She never talked about my father, all the pictures were destroyed, all the information about him was never revealed to me. And I have a feeling, whenever she got mad at me, my mother got mad at me, she talked about the possibly he may have been a gambler, he could have worked at the bookstore in San Francisco when he came from Seattle, but other than that, we have no knowledge, and my assumption is that when he went to Japan, he either had his ex-girlfriend or had a new girlfriend or whatever. And there was one rumor that, according to the relative in New York, he could have gone to Brazil, but I checked, after my mother passed away, I checked with Japan, with the Salvation Army, I checked with the ambassador at Brazil, and there's no record whatsoever. But that's okay, I mean, at least I tried.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.