<Begin Segment 3>

TI: Okay, so we're in Denver, and your father meets your mother. Do you know about what year this is?

VW: Well, it had to be, let's see, probably in 1910.

TI: Okay.

VW: See... does that sound right?

TI: So he'd be --

VW: I think so, because --

TI: -- about twenty years old? He'd be about twenty, and your mother would be, actually, about fifteen. So she was quite young.

VW: Yeah, she was younger.

TI: Okay. So, so do you know how your mother and father met in Denver?

VW: Except for they may... we think they probably met in the church through the elocution process maybe. I'm not sure why my mother would go there, but maybe it was the church that she went, she attended anyway. And so she may have just decided to go there and listen to the -- and maybe that's where the, where my mother found out about Virgil the great Latin poet maybe, too, I don't know. Through elocution.

TI: So 1910 you have a Japanese immigrant meeting a Caucasian female.

VW: American.

TI: How, what was, did they ever talk to you about the reaction people had?

VW: Well, they didn't have any reaction to our knowledge, or I think my mother would have said something. But they were in the paper, you know, about them getting married, but there was no animosity in any way that we knew of, anyway. That's a good question, 'cause people have asked me, especially Stephanie has asked me about that, and to our knowledge, there was very little discussion about them getting married.

TI: Yeah, just as a note, there weren't too many interracial marriages --

VW: That's right.

TI: -- during that time with Japanese. And so this is a little unusual.

VW: Yeah. But Denver, well, I don't know, I don't know why, but he lived kind of across the street and kind of down a little bit from where my mother was, and so I think eventually they recognized each other from being in the church maybe. And then, oh, he's a neighbor, and so that's probably how it developed.

TI: When you were growing up, did your mother ever share what attracted her to your father?

VW: Not, not that I remember, but she may have talked to my older sister, who is five years older than I am. And in that, in that stage, like I may have been like six or so, I wouldn't have remembered maybe too much. But my older sister would be eleven or so, and so she would remember, yeah.

TI: Well, how about the other way? Your father, did he ever share what attracted him to your mother?

VW: Not really, no. Uh-uh, he didn't say too much. But in the letters, I could tell that he was really in love with her, yeah, through his letters. And he wrote, he had the ability to write pretty well, the flow of the English language and so on. And whether he got help or not that for that, I'm not sure. But he would jot down these things to my mother and send it to Ohio if that was where it was going (...). I know they got separated for a while. She went to Ohio, evidently, with my sister, being pregnant, and then he stayed in Denver working for a while. And then the letters flew back and forth for a while.

TI: And do you know the reason why they were, they needed to be separated? So your mother was pregnant...

VW: I think, I think he wanted to earn money, and she wanted to be taken care of somewhat with her relatives in Ohio, who was her grandfather, grandmother, and her mother, too. They were all living with my, my great grandmother and grandfather.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.