<Begin Segment 7>

TI: And how many years did your mother spend in Japan?

NA: They, she brought her back when my mom was fourteen, fifteen years old, so about, almost, whether it was almost ten years, about ten years. And...

TI: And during this time your grandmother stayed in, in Oakland or the Bay Area?

NA: Right. And she ends up becoming a personal nurse to the T.H. Williams family, and the T.H. Williams family ends up being one of the early businesspeople to go to Japan and also T.H. Williams is one of the investors to build Tanforan.

TI: Interesting.

NA: And T.H. Williams and other relatives are in the San Francisco society and politics. They were mayors, supervisors and all of that in San Francisco history, but my grandmother enters this household as a personal nurse to Mrs. Williams. And then came the Depression, and she would send monies for upkeep of her three kids. Ultimately, before I go on, she ends up supporting her son to go through Imperial University. He graduates with pharmacy degree, like her, and then she wanted to bring him back so he gets into UC Berkeley, fulfilling her dream, but so as a graduation gift of graduating from the university and a farewell tour of Japan, she gives that as a present. And so while on that, he ends up coming down with pneumonia and dies.

TI: On this trip? Wow, must've been devastating for your, your grandmother.

NA: Yeah, so now it's the next kid, 'cause she's determined to bring all three back again, so now she concentrates on bringing back my mom. Yeah. So it's, my mom's story's something else, but anyway, so my grandmother then works and then the Depression happens. Stocks fall and obviously the T.H. Williams is fully much into all of that. Mr. Williams commits suicide, leaving them, his wife, two kids, and so Mrs. Williams and Miss Beatrice and Mr. Tom. That's how I know these people. And Mrs. Williams decided she's gonna now convert -- and by this time they were, they were living in Berkeley, Berkeley area, Oakland Berkeley area -- and she decides to convert her mansion into a fashionable young ladies' dormitory, and so my grandmother is asked to stay on. I don't know if she's, I don't know how that went, but my, my grandmother stays on and I think her... anyway, that's part of the story, and into that environment my mother is brought back. And so my mother, who was immersed now in Japan, (whether), if she knew any English by the age of five I don't know, but then she is immersed in Japan in a kind of... I could get into that, too, but she then comes back and she's into this environment of a fashionable women's, young women's dormitory. She promptly becomes the pet of everybody and so she picks up English really fast. In her album you'll see Cal games, Cal Stanford games, you see her going with these young women on, canoeing down Russian River, all that, and she's also enrolled in a high school so she could finish up. She ends up then graduating from high school and then goes into a design, garment design school, fashion design school, and graduating from that she finds employment at Madame Clara, who was, I guess, a fashion house in San Francisco, worked with Madame Clara. And that's kind of like a time then, the mother by this time is living not in the dormitory but she's living in San Francisco and, my mom, that's the kind of environment, and then this man, Yamaguchi-san we end up calling Ojichan, is part of that family. My father ends up calling, "Ah, that's your grandmother's boyfriend." I go, well, nobody ever called him that, but it was always Ojichan. So that's how they met.

TI: Okay, so at this point, this is when your grandmother, or your, I guess your uncle introduces your father and your mother together.

NA: Yeah, my uncle was very good in goh and my father was also a good goh player, all the strategy and loving that and all that --

TI: But what, what's interesting to me, though, is based on your mother's background that she would be interested in marrying a farmer.

NA: Well, that's, that's a story on its own. [Laughs] I mean, I don't know, maybe she succumbed to his charm. I mean, 'cause he could be a very charming man, very entertaining, very...

TI: But she seemed very kind of urban and, and your father was a pea farmer.

NA: Yeah.

TI: Who liked to fish.

NA: But he was also very dapper. He's a tennis player. Some of the exchange of photographs shows her with her tennis racket, him with his tennis racket with all the whites, nice white outfit with his tennis racket, and so I don't know, maybe they found love over at the courts. But he, again, being a realist, saying if he really wants to make sure that she knows what she's getting into and so he has it so that (Sata), Masa and her mother (Sata) come up to really witness what it is to be at a pea ranch through the season, and if she feels that she understands and could accept this as her life with him, then, then, "Let's get married, but this is only fair."

TI: And so she does that and apparently it was okay for her.

NA: I guess so, because right after the, the crop that year, then he builds a house, which we call the main homestead house and that house still kind of stands out in a field up in Mendocino. If you go down Highway 1 and it's now, I think, my brother who just was up there, he says, yeah, it's kind of starting to fall down, but the three rose, climbing rose bushes that, which was planted after each one of us, the first three kids were born before the war, which was planted when we were born, is climbed all over the house and is still there. Just...

TI: Well thank you. That was, boy, that was a really interesting connection, how your, on your father's side and mother's side, the histories and then how they, they got together.

NA: Kind of different.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.