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TI: Let's talk about your father and your father's family. Let's start with your grandfather. Tell me a little bit about him.

RM: My grandfather was a real rascal. He was, he's a navy doctor is about the only way I can label it. He went to the, the military academies in Japan and finally ended up at the, I can't remember the name of the college, but it was a military based medical college, and he went to school there and then after the school, of course, he went to England. It was a custom in Japanese medical, medical practice, not the custom, but the, what is it, the philosophy that the Japanese really liked as far as medical things go was the German system, I think it was. My grandfather was a little different. He went off to England and studied at London and got to learn a lot of the cultural things. In fact, if you recall a picture that I showed you guys, he's got an English suit on, obviously. Nobody else buys suits like that. And when he came back from England, why, he'd eat, he'd eat rice with raisins in it and milk and everybody in the family went crazy because Japanese don't eat rice that way.

TI: And how good was his English?

RM: His English was excellent. A little formal, but of course at home all we ever spoke was Japanese. And so if asked to and, if I get in a Japanese sort of situation my Japanese does come out, but I don't know where it goes in between because it, there's no, no academics involved at all, unfortunately. I don't read and I do speak it. That's all. I'm illiterate otherwise. [Laughs]

TI: So you mentioned earlier your grandfather was a rascal. I mean, he's a very learned man, I mean, a surgeon, studied in London, why would you call him a rascal?

RM: Well, I think during his younger days he went down to Nagasaki and met my grandmother. Of course, we weren't, we didn't know about all this stuff as I was growing up. Nobody said anything about it. Course he never talks about it. But in Nagasaki he met this young girl and, of course, before he knew it they had a baby, and being a navy man I would expect that kind of, you know, that's why I call him a rascal, I guess. And this is before he became a Mori, and that's another part of the family history which is interesting. There was an older couple named Mori, which is a very aristocratic family, Mori Motonai family, and this family had no, no heirs and so they looked, at the time my grandfather's family name was Oguri and he was the second male child. Igajiro is what his name was. That was the name he was given. In order to become the first born he managed to get himself adopted by the Moris, and that's how we became Mori, or we carry the name. Although there's nothing wrong with the Oguri name, but, but that's part of the history.

TI: But then by doing so he became the heir to the Mori family or the Mori estate.

RM: Yes. And the other thing, of course, is that his stepmother was not so much officious, but very proper and very logical, and so she happened to hear about this young girl in Nagasaki that had a, Igamori's child and insisted that he bring this child and the woman into the family, and so Yae Nagaka, her last name was, became part of the Mori family.

TI: Oh, so that's how, essentially, they got married. I mean, it was...

RM: Yes. Now, when my, when my sister-in-law, Sachi, who is married to my brother Arthur, my oldest brother, began to check family records, that would be things like the koseki, she discovered that, well she had a, she had a problem with the records and it said, listed my father as being a illegitimate child, and she couldn't quite figure that out. [Laughs] And when everybody put things together that's the story they came up with.

TI: Good.

RM: So I'd say he's definitely a rascal. There were, I think, were other incidents. The area around River Street and the old Dillham railroad terminal used to be the red light district around Honolulu. And I remember an elderly man that used to drive or chauffer the limousine for the Packard, old Packard limousine for my grandfather, and when the war started he came around to help the family because they knew that both parents were off in the, in camp, and while he was doing dishes or something like that, cleaning up here and there, he kind of chuckled to himself and go, "Heh heh heh," and my mother would go and question him when she had a, when she had a chance. This is after the war, I guess. And then he'd tell stories about my grandfather wandering into this house of ill repute. He'd look so fine and elegant and when he came out, straightening his tie out, and she thought it was very funny and she'd repeat these things to me, so I got the definite impression that he was, he was naughty in areas like that. Not completely proper.

TI: So your father was born in Japan and he was, you mentioned originally was illegitimate, so he was the, I guess the love child, the first one.

RM: That would be a better name for that, yes. Thank you.

TI: And, and tell me about your father. What, what happened to him?

RM: Very straightforward. [Laughs] See, he was brought up by the elder Mrs. Mori in Japan, so I think he was pretty, very proper. And, and of course his mother, and of course they both came from Japan eventually and settled here in Hawaii. It must've been very difficult for them because I think they were very, very secure in where they came from and all of a sudden they were in the wilderness of kind of the agricultural frontier in Hawaii. And I think the name that everybody used to use for native people was doujin, and I don't really know all the, I just know the word because I've heard it phonetically, but it means, I think like a, like a native. Native, uncultured, uneducated.

KN: People of the land.

RM: People of the land?

KN: Yeah.

RM: Oh, that's good. That's good. I'll remember that. Doujin. The jin is "people," yeah?

TI: And so why did your father and grandmother choose to come to Hawaii? Was there, did you --

RM: Well essentially, I think they were called to, to come home to Hawaii because now, by then Motokazu was already a doctor and things were stable. I don't think my grandfather ever got under control, but... [laughs].

TI: He does sound... growing up as, as a child, do you remember your grandfather and his personality and he, what was he like?

RM: By the time I started growin' up my grandfather was already, when the war started he was already in his seventies. 1941, he was already in his seventies, so by the time the war was over, which is, you know, the period of time that I really woke up and began growing up was after the war started and after, after 1941, in other words, and by 1945 I was definitely an all-American juvenile delinquent.

TI: And so he was just so old by then, he was, like, probably eighty.

RM: Yeah, I remember him walkin' around the yard -- actually in his underwear, Japanese style underwear, kind of, pretty long, long and with a top and with a button down, button down back end so you can go to the bathroom, that kind of stuff -- and he'd walk around and be going, pickin' up leaves and stuff like that. I think he had, what is that when you have, your lungs are bad. He's a smoker. And that's how I remember him, and that's how my neighbors probably remember him, too. [Laughs]

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.