<Begin Segment 3>

TI: So you mentioned your mother was a "picture bride." Tell me a little bit about her. What was her name and where was she from?

PT: She was from Hiroshima. They almost pretty much married the women from the same prefecture. They knew each other a little bit in the sense that every Japanese boy has to take kendo or judo. My father took judo, and his teacher was whoever. And people who get injured went to my mother's place, (as her father was what we call sport medicine).

TI: Like a chiropractor?

PT: Something like that. And my mother was that. So (he received a letter from her sister-in-law) after the bomb was dropped -- I'm jumping quite a bit -- all of them had died. And the only person alive was his wife, and she asked for some clothing, material.

[Interruption]

TI: So Paul, we were just talking about reasons why people were leaving Japan and coming to the United States. You talked about your father, who came as a boy and was working. And then he, later on, through the "picture bride" process, met your mother and they were married. At the time they got married, what kind of work was your father doing?

PT: After the abolition of slavery, there was system that emerged called... I forgot now, help me out.

TI: Indentured?

PT: Indentured laborer.

TI: Contract work?

PT: Yes, it's a contract. One way is at the end of the season, the guy subsidized all of the expenses and they agreed to half-half or whatever. And the other system is the guy gets paid. I forgot, there's a word for it.

TI: Like sharecropping?

PT: Yes, something like sharecropping.

TI: But also the migrant workers.

PT: Yes. But it's a little bit different. That's what he did up there, working on a sharecropper kind of thing for fruit. So he ran the farm and stayed there all year. And that is where the first son was born. My mother was in the kitchen taking care of a newborn daughter, and the son was running around, he was only about two years old, and fell into the ditch. And he was supposed to be watching him, but he's working in the farm, and he died. I have a picture of him downstairs. Shortly after my sister, I was born. As soon as I was born, they moved out of there. They moved near Sacramento and started this little vegetable farm. He was afraid that he could lose me, too.

TI: Do you recall anything that they did that was, you would say, overprotective? When you say they really watched you, what were some things...

PT: Yes, very much.

TI: So is there an example of that?

PT: Always it was overprotective. "Where are you going?" And, "Don't forget to come back," at certain time. "Tell me exactly where you're going to be."

TI: In some ways, did that cause a... what's the right word? A barrier for you to play with other boys and girls? Did he keep you at home so you weren't able to...

PT: Yes, he did do that. "You don't want to play with those boys." He was very protective. In fact, I didn't make too much of it because when I started grammar school, I went to a two-room grammar school in Selden. It's near Elk Grove, California. But immediately, school was very easy for me and I became the teacher's pet. And every time I'd do something, she'd crack up with laughter. Something like I was in the fourth grade, and she would say, "How do you spell the word 'hitherto'?" And I would say, "Hit-her-to," and then she would crack up with laughter. [Laughs] It was things like that.

TI: So she really enjoyed your wit, your sense of humor?

PT: Yes. And she knew that I was a good student. And then I had to walk about a mile to the two-room school. And on the way back, there are two ways to go. My father was growing strawberries, and I would stop by one of the places there, brought some books from the library, and I would read these books.

[Interruption]

PT: These are books of people who came to California, from Central California someplace, and they're very poor. Some of the activity, the author really, really writes it in a way that's way out of line.

TI: So really exaggerated?

PT: Exaggerated, yes. This little girl was probably sexually after, now, she would be sliding on the ground with her butt crack, this kind of writing.

TI: But these were the books you grew up reading? Interesting.

PT: Then I really became a reader. If anything, it was that school was so easy.

TI: While we're on the subject of school, I've done quite a few interviews in that area, not Elk Grove, but Isleton, Walnut Grove...

PT: No, that was east of that.

TI: East of that, but what was interesting is, in many of those small towns, the schools were segregated, that they actually had a school for the Asians and schools for the whites.

PT: Mine was not.

TI: But were you aware of segregation back then?

PT: No.

TI: So describe your classroom. What was the ratio makeup?

PT: There were quite a few Japanese. But most of the Japanese were very good students, and the teachers were... I did not fit. I really didn't fit in any sense of race. I even went to a white man's family, their house, and sometimes they fed me. So, no, I never experienced it. But there was a country store there, and then there would be a leftover newspaper, and I would read that. And I knew this was going on. This was a San Francisco newspaper. And I have, not the newspaper, but I have the group that rode on the boats...

TI: Sure, the longshoremen?

PT: Something like that, yes. I have their books. I wanted to see it because that's one of the places where they pushed anti-Japanese sentiments.

TI: So as a boy you would read these newspapers. Were you able to notice the anti-Asian or anti-Japanese articles?

PT: No. I only knew it in the sense that the next town over, which was Florin, was very heavily Japanese, and they were going to separate schools. In that way, I knew already. The other is my father was a Christian, and he wanted me to go to the Christian church. And I went twice and they didn't pay attention to me, and so that was my last time I ever went to a church. [Laughs]

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