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TI: So today's April 8, 2011, we're in San Francisco at the Hotel Kabuki. We're interviewing Ruth Okimoto and on camera is Dana Hoshide and interviewing is me, Tom Ikeda. And so, Ruth, I'm just going to start from the beginning. Can you tell me when you were born?

RO: April 15, 1936, in Tokyo, Japan.

TI: And what was the name given to you at birth?

RO: Yoshiko. Yoshiko Okimoto.

TI: So where does Ruth come from?

RO: We arrived in the United States and when I started kindergarten the teacher could not say Yoshiko. So all of us had Japanese names and so my father, my parents had to give us American, quote, "American names" so since my parents were Christian ministers all of us our Paul, Joseph, Daniel. And that's where I got Ruth.

TI: Oh, interesting. So biblical names?

RO: All biblical names, right.

TI: So you mentioned your parents. Let's start with your father. Can you tell me his name and where he was from?

RO: Okay, his name is Tamaichi and he's from Yamaguchi prefecture and I don't know the exact town where he's from, I just know that it was Yamaguchi. And he had a very sad childhood, if you want me to --

TI: Yeah, please.

RO: His mother was kicked out, you know, this back in the days when the mother-in-law had a lot of say and she didn't like my father's mother apparently, she was beautiful maybe that's why she was threatened.

TI: So a conflict between the mother-in-law and the wife.

RO: Yes, and this is... no mother-in-law and yes, my father's mother. And typical, I did some research on that and that happened often apparently during those years. If a mother of the son didn't like the daughter, the married, the daughter-in-law she'd just kick 'em out of the house, send them home.

TI: So your father's mother was just kicked out?

RO: Kicked out, just sent home to her original family I guess. So my poor father was raised by a mean stepmother. She wasn't very nice from what I gathered and they had... so he had three I think half siblings and so at age sixteen he just because his stepmother just did not like him, appreciate him, he left home and struggled on his own from age sixteen. And what he did apparently was he became a cook because he didn't have any education. Of course in those days I guess you had to be pretty wealthy to have your kids go to school. So he was a cook in some I think it was a bakery or something like that. Anyway, he became a very good cook. My mother being a professional woman and the youngest of six children, didn't know how to cook when they got married. So it was fortunate that my father knew how to cook. And he was basically the cook in our family.

TI: How interesting. So sixteen he's a cook and at what age did he meet your mother?

RO: Well it was one of those baishakunin. He was converted to Christianity when he was about in his late twenties or mid-twenties he was drafted into the Army. And he contracted TB so the Army kicked him out and he had no place to go and he ended up in this Christian missionary place and the kindness I suppose... I mean, he was then converted to Christianity. And in both cases it's kind of sad how they became Christians. I mean sad because it was events in their lives that turned them into Christians.

<End Segment 1> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.