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TI: Well yeah, before we go there, let's talk a little bit, you mentioned your mother. So how did he meet your mother?

HU: Oh. My father's wholesale company, they were selling implement to my mother's family, and my mother's family had this, was a sake brewer and then they also owned this large parcel of land, which they sort of leased it out to the farmers, so my mother's family was buying implements and supplies from my dad's company, so that's how they sort of had the contact. Or course, of course, my dad never met my mother. He was, shashin kekkon, she was a "picture bride."

TI: So this was, the families kind of knew each other in Japan?

HU: Yeah, the family knew each other.

TI: It sounds like your, your mother's family was, was quite wealthy then. They had a sake brewery, they had land.

HU: Yeah.

TI: And so I'm wondering why she decided to become a "picture bride"?

HU: Well, she came from a family of thirteen siblings and she was the thirteenth one, and one of her sisters was already in America and I don't know, I guess her mother said to go to America and in those days they say, "Hai hai." They, so she came, and good thing because she had tuberculosis. She didn't know at the time, but she was real skinny and everything and when she was about fifty years old she got this physical and they found a, size of a, this spot the size of a dollar that was, what do you call it, it was a scar actually, so she had tuberculosis. In Sacramento it's hot, hot and dry, summertimes it's around a hundred, hundred four, so I guess the dry weather just cured her naturally, so fortunately, if she didn't come to America she'd probably died at a very early age.

TI: That's interesting. What was the, the age difference between your father and --

HU: About twelve.

TI: Okay, so --

HU: So thirty-six, he was thirty-six when he got married. She was about twenty-four or something like that, twenty-two or twenty-four, so there was, that's quite, there was a quite an age difference there.

TI: Okay, so she came over, I'm doing the math, about 1915?

HU: Nineteen, let me see, my brother was born 1915, after three years, so 1912.

TI: Okay, around 1912. And, and what was your mother's name?

HU: Kusu. It's funny, when I was in the army I went to, I was overseas, I was sent overseas and at Camp Drake in Tokyo. We sort of got registered and then there was a Nisei girl that came from, after the war to Japan, and she was taking the information and she looked at the record and then my mother's name was spelled with a O, so she says, "Is this your mother's name? Kuso?" So kuso is, is "shit" and that's really funny. She was laughing and we all laughed. [Laughs]

TI: And so at some point someone had, had changed the U to an O.

HU: O, yeah.

TI: I see. Okay, Kusu, Kusu is the, is their family name?

HU: Her, her name, her family name was Hiramatsu.

TI: Okay, Hiramatsu. Good. Okay, so you mentioned she came 1912.

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