<Begin Segment 2>

TI: Let's talk a little bit first about your father. Can you tell me your father's name and where he was from?

TU: My father's name was Hango Uratsu. He was from Kumamoto, Tamana-gun, Yokoshima-mura, that's the town.

TI: What kind of work did your father's family do?

TU: As far as I know, from what my brother Gene tells me, he wasn't doing too much. They might have owned a farm, I'm not sure about that.

TI: And so do you know why he came to the United States?

TU: That's something that always puzzled me, why he came and just what happened and what he did. Yeah, that's something that even my brother Gene didn't know.

TI: So it's kind of a family mystery.

[Interruption]

TU: You know, when I think about it, we should have talked to him some more. But in those days, you realize at a later age that you should have done this, you should have done that. But there was nothing excepting my brother found out that he was married to a person before and they got divorced and then married my mother, nineteen year old girl, that was a second marriage in 1916.

TI: And the first marriage, was that in the United States or in Japan?

TU: Japan.

TI: Okay, so he had this marriage, he got divorced in Japan and then he came to the United States?

TU: Yeah, and then he went back to get my mother. It was 1916, or 1915 or '16, somewhere around there. Because my brother Gene was born in 1917.

TI: And what was the age difference between your mother and father?

TU: Eighteen years.

TI: Oh, so he was about thirty-seven and she was nineteen?

TU: Exactly. And so they had some difficulty. It wasn't a smooth marriage, but I'd like to say at the end that things worked out pretty well. When I say at the end, when they retired in Berkeley, they were getting along okay and we were happy to see that. [Laughs] But it was a rocky marriage when they were younger.

TI: And when you say "rocky," was it kind of arguing back and forth, or what do you mean by "rocky"? Or just tense?

TU: Well, they didn't see eye to eye on some things. I don't know, beyond that I can't say. I know they used to have hard arguments. But being a young kid, I didn't know why he was arguing. I know he got teed off every now and then, what my mother did or said and the arguments would start.

TI: And would it ever get to the point where it would get physical or just arguing?

TU: No, no. But like my brother said, it was a rocky marriage. There was a big age difference, made a generational difference there. She was pretty well-educated. He was pretty well-educated for that time, too, but she had more education and she was educated to be a teacher, schoolteacher.

TI: And what was your mother's name?

TU: Mashi, M-A-S-H-I, Mashikawa. Mashi was her first name, Mashikawa was her last name.

TI: So here she's nineteen years old, she's well-educated to be a teacher, why did she come to the United States to marry someone who was almost twice her age?

TU: That's a puzzle. But I think it's that dream of America, land of opportunity, and she was impressed with my father at first, I guess. But then she learned later that he was just a farm laborer. [Laughs] And so here she is, sort of a city girl trained to be a teacher, came to the States without knowing anything really, and then having to spend a farmer's wife's life with her callused hands and so on. So it was quite a dramatic change or traumatic expectation, high expectation was real low in the actual or practical side.

TI: Did you ever hear or did she ever talk about her family in Japan and what they did and what they thought about her coming to America?

TU: Well, that, I don't know. But I know she used to tell me anyway that she used to get homesick. She wanted to go back to Japan, but her family was a bunch of teachers in the educational field.

TI: So when they were in California, where did they live and what did they do?

TU: See, as far as I remember, 1931 was when my grandfather died and therefore we got sent back.

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