<Begin Segment 2>

TI: And so you mentioned your father gave you this name, so tell me a little bit about your father. What was his name and where did he come from?

HU: His name was Ryosuke and in those days, like samurais, they used to have that "suke" name. And then he was born something like 1879 or so in Wakayama in a town called Minoshima. And the way he came to America was more of a circumstantial situation. Anyway, he was the third son of a wholesale merchant. His family used to sell implements, farming implements, seeds, supplies and things, and since he was the third son, he wasn't entitled to any of that thing, so in a way it was good because he was free to do whatever he wanted. And well, when he was about twenty-three, I believe he was about twenty-two or twenty-three, he was engaged to be married to this one girl and one night he saw her tachishoben. Tachi means to stand up and shoben is urinate, and in those days I guess that wasn't too popular. [Laughs] (...) We're talking about 1902 or something like that, today I don't give a hell how a woman take a leak, right? But in those days, I guess it bothered him, but I guess that they just were more modest those days. Well, today there are some modest girls. Like last year it was interesting. There were two girls from a university in Tokyo, a Christian university, and they were out here on SCC program, Student Conservation Corps, and when we were, when we had the archeological dig at Manzanar, they spent three or four days with us with a project, and we were working on this chicken, chicken ranch. There used to be a chicken ranch -- oh shoot, let me take that back, let's say chicken farm, because when you say "chicken ranch" people might get, might relate that to the chicken ranch in Las Vegas. You know that's a brothel?

TI: Right, right. Okay, so chicken farm, right?

HU: Right. So you know? [Laughs]

TI: Yes.

HU: Have you been there? [Laughs]

TI: No, I haven't, but I've read about it. [Laughs]

HU: So anyway, we don't want to think that there was a whorehouse in Manzanar, right? So anyway, we were working on that project and this chicken farm, they had a bunch of housing and they had this foundation, concrete foundation, and these, they were pretty huge, twenty feet by three hundred feet. There were about five of those plus several other small structures, and these were concrete foundations laid by the Issei people, and so they had these Japanese graffitis. Now, after sixty some years, we call it inscriptions and they were all Japanese inscriptions (except for one in English). It says "Frank Bakatare." (...) We don't know who Frank was, probably a foreman, or he could be a white department head or something because at Manzanar the head of a department was always White, like fire chief was White plus twenty Nisei firemen, police chief was White with eighty Niseis under him. So anyway, we don't know who he was. Rest were Japanese characters and I asked these two girls from Japan, students from Japan, to translate some of the things written on there. First couple of 'em (were) like Dai Nippon, Beikoku, or like, you know, "Great Imperial Japan" type of thing. They had no problem with that. And the third one was a chinbo, and of course, chinbo is a vulgar Japanese word for penis, equivalent to, say, a prick or something like that. Anyway, they looked at that and they started giggling. We never could have them translate it, so I guess it goes to show that even today, there's modesty in some sectors of Japanese culture.

TI: Especially amongst the women, probably.

HU: Yeah.

TI: So let's go back, so then, so you talked about, so your father, so he was supposed to marry this woman. He, he saw her urinating while standing up, and so this is about 1902, so then what happened next?

HU: Okay, so for my dad, that wasn't, that wasn't acceptable at all, so he took the easy way out and he took off to Hokkaido. And Hokkaido in those days were, was more Japan's wild frontier, and he farmed there for about a couple of years (where) he was a total failure, so then he came to America and I guess he didn't do (...) any better because he ended up as a migrant farm laborer. And then later he had a friend named Ushijima or something like that, and they went into partnership and grew celery, and celery is something that you could, when you hit it you hit it big, you got wealthy, but then if you don't, you're in the poorhouse. Well, after couple of years they ended up in the poorhouse. So he, my dad went to Sacramento while Ushijima kept on with the celery thing and eventually he hit it and he became one of the wealthiest Issei farmers. So anyway, my dad went to Sacramento.

TI: Now, the celery farming, where was that? Was that near Sacramento?

HU: Around Salinas.

TI: Okay, Salinas.

HU: Salinas, in the San Joaquin Valley, and --

TI: Did you ever know if your father was, what's the right word, kind of looked back with --

HU: Envious or something?

TI: Yeah, envious of this man?

HU: No, not, from what I heard from my mother, that this is what I heard from my mother, and I guess, I guess he just took it in stride.

TI: Okay, so he goes to Sacramento and what does he do then?

HU: He buys a, he buys twenty acres of farm with nothing on it, then he started planting grapes and developed a grape vineyard, and then it was 1931 when he passed away at the age of fifty-two. And he left five kids.

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