Densho Digital Archive - Charles Oihe Hamasaki Interview (denshovh-hcharles-01-0032)

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MN: Now during this time, when did you return to Rohwer when your mother had a stroke?

CH: I came back to Ogden. Yeah, I came back to Ogden. From Ogden, then my mother had a ischemic stroke, was a mild stroke. So I went to visit. So then I said, "Nothing's wrong," little bit, she could talk, but the arm was kind of bad, and leg. So she was all right.

MN: And at that time, your parents are already planning to go to Tule Lake?

CH: Yeah.

MN: Did they ask --

CH: No, that was early part of 1945, middle part of '45, they were planning to go to Japan 'cause my grandmother was still living.

MN: Did they ask you to go to Japan, too?

CH: Yeah, they did. When I was in Chicago later.

MN: But that was a --

CH: I turned it down. I didn't want to, no, I don't want to go to Japan. I told my mother and father, "Why you want to go Japan for? You're gonna starve over there." But they didn't starve, but they, lot of thing to eat, see. Inaka, farm.

MN: And when did they go to Japan?

CH: End of '45, I think, December of '45, around there someplace.

MN: Did they ever return to the United States?

CH: Nah. They wanted, my father wanted to go to Japan before the war, and they got the house and everything, so they got a place go to. I know they're not gonna starve 'cause we got a lot of property over there. So people making rice, we don't have to work, they give you the rice 'cause they're using the property. They didn't... well, I think my sister used to send 'em lot of food from here. I didn't do nothing.

MN: Did anybody else go to Japan, any of your other brothers or sisters?

CH: No, nobody went.

MN: Just your mother and father.

CH: Mother and father, that's all.

MN: And they never returned to United States.

CH: Huh?

MN: They never returned to the United States.

CH: No, never. They died over there. So my mother didn't want to stay over here. She would have probably lived a little longer maybe. She must have been about seventy-something, I think. My father died of old age, anyway.