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TI: Yeah, so let's talk about your mother.

RO: Okay.

TI: And so tell me your mother's name, where she was from and then a little bit of her story.

RO: Okay, her name is Kirie, K-I-R-I-E, Kumagai was her maiden name, and she was from Yukiha in the Fukuoka prefecture and that's where the astronaut who was killed in the Challenger, his grandfather came from Yukiha. So when I went there I saw a plaque, a huge memorial plaque that had the Challenger, his name and the grandfather from Yukiha. Anyway, my mother was born and raised in Yukiha and I consider her a feminist because in those days if you research the women's history of Japan there was a group called the Blue Stocking Organization. These were women who were rebelling against the confinement of being a woman in Japan. And I'd like to think that somehow my mother caught the spirit of that because she was a feminist I believe. I don't know if she would have ever considered herself that but she defied her father and after she was converted to... well, first she defied her father and went to Hawaii for graduate school. First of all she went to a teacher's college in Fukuoka and her father was very much against her furthering her education because he told her, "No man's going to marry you, you're going to be too educated." But she insisted and became a school teacher and taught school in Yukiha and in 1999 I went to visit that school in Yukiha. It was so touching for... I mean it made me cry to see, to realize what she sacrificed to become a school teacher. And I saw her picture with all the other teachers along the hallway.

TI: And so back up... so sacrifice to become a teacher because the conditions were hard?

RO: Her father did not want her to become educated and then when she did go ahead, defied her father's wishes and became a school teacher, yes, life was pretty rough for her because in those days she lived... Yukiha is in a valley. There's two tall mountains and for her to be able to teach she had to walk three miles around the mountain and up the hill to teach every day. And so sometimes she would apparently not walk all the three miles back home but would stop at a halfway point and stay at a student's house, home. And I had a chance to meet him when I visited in 1999 and he was the tallest Japanese fellow that I've seen, he was tall, six feet I think. And anyway, he remembered my mother and the fact that some days she'd stay late and couldn't make it all the way home so she would stop and stay at his parents' place.

TI: Sounds like she was a very independent strong willed woman?

RO: She was, she was I found out. And then after she taught for about six years in Yukiha she decided that she wanted to become a school principal. And again, of course, her father was adamant, again told her, "Who's going to marry you if you become a school principal?" Anyway she defied her father, went to Hawaii to further her education so she could qualify as a principal, and while she was there her father who was already in his eighties died of a heart attack. And she was absolutely devastated and she felt that she caused his death. Of course, he was eighty-five years old but still for her psychologically she thought she caused his death. And she was staying in Hawaii with her older brother who was seventeen years older than her and he was a carpenter in Hawaii so she was staying with him while she was going to school. And after her father died and she blamed herself for it she stayed at home and just locked herself in and her brother got very worried so finally told her, "Get out of the house." And somehow she connected with Mrs. Kuroda, who's the mother of Reverend Kuroda, I think his name was Akira Kuroda who was a minister in the Oriental Missionary Society, the Holiness Church. So she went to that church and Mrs. Kuroda took her under her wing, took my mother under her wing.

TI: And this is now where, what city are we in?

RO: This is in Japan in Tokyo.

TI: Okay, so she was in Hawaii and then she returned after your father had died?

RO: Right, she returned to Yukiha and decided to go... she was converted in Hawaii, then returned to Yukiha to try to convert her family. And they told me, my cousin told me when I visited her, met her for the first time that the family was adamant, you know, they were pretty devout Buddhist. And they would have nothing to do with becoming a Christian and so my poor mother got back on the train and went back to Tokyo and went to the Tokyo Seminary to become a minister. So she finished her training, was ordained as a minister and I think she was one of the first few women, Protestant women in Japan. I will need to do research on that but she... because this was back in the 1920s when she became a minister. And she returned... she went to some town where the church sent her, the conference sent her, and she had a church for six months. And then the bishop of the Oriental Missionary Society called her in and said, "Kirie, you need to get married." So he gave her a choice, either Tamaichi Okimoto or this man who was headed for Brazil. She had a choice either to go to Brazil or go to the United States. Fortunately she chose to go to the United States, married my father, and they had a church there in Tokyo.

TI: So let's me back up a little bit, so the reason he wanted her to get married was because he wanted to send her overseas and felt that she needed to have a husband if that were the case?

RO: Yes, absolutely.

TI: Okay.

RO: A single woman, a Japanese woman in those days cannot go off traveling like that. So right, she chose my father fortunately.

TI: And how did this gentleman know about your father at this point?

RO: That's a good question. I think because these two men were also part of the conference that my mother was involved in and she was one of the few ministers, woman female ministers.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.