<Begin Segment 1>

TI: Okay, so I always start with the date and where we are, so today's Friday, June 17, 2011. We're in the Chicago area, in a Residence Inn in Skokie. And on camera is Dana Hoshide, and I'm the interviewer, Tom Ikeda, and we're here with Frances Chikahisa. And so, Frances, let me just start at the beginning, and tell me when and where you were born.

FC: I have to say when? [Laughs]

TI: Yeah. [Laughs] I know it's 1929.

FC: Yes, I was born in January 1929 in Los Angeles, and actually I was physically born with a, my mother had a midwife, and so the house that we lived in was where I was actually born.

TI: Oh, very good.

FC: And we stayed there, that was the only home I ever knew until the war.

TI: By any chance, do you know the name of the midwife?

FC: Her name was Mrs. Harada, but I don't know what her first name was. She was like a great aunt to my mother.

TI: Okay. And when you were born, what was the name given to you?

FC: Michiko. And the character is actually Michi, "road," "street," and ko.

TI: And then your maiden name was Miyake?

FC: Miyake, yes.

TI: Okay, so Michiko Miyake. Let's start with your father. Can you tell me your father's name and where he was from?

FC: My father's name was Yosaku Miyake. And he was from a tiny country village in Fukuoka, Japan, and he came to, he immigrated to the U.S. when he was, I believe, sixteen years old.

TI: And do you know why he came?

FC: Well he, apparently he was the youngest of a family of four, and by the time he was thirteen he had lost both parents, and so they were very poor and his older brother obviously was gonna get whatever farm the family had, so he could look ahead and find that there was not much future for him. And so he signed up to actually go to Hawaii. I don't know if you know the history of the Isseis, that most of them were contracted by the king of Hawaii to work in the plantations. So that was what my father signed up to do. Soon as he got to Oahu he looked around and he says, "I'm not gonna improve my life here." [Laughs] And there were labor contractors from the States who were wandering around Honolulu at that point enticing people to break their contract and move to the U.S., so that's what he did. He never went to the job that he was signed up for, and he came aboard the ship and headed to San Francisco. And the ship landed in April 1906.

TI: Right around the earthquake.

FC: Yeah, so they, it was, the port was in flames so they were not able to dock at the pier. There was no pier, so all the men were put on rowboats and just told, "Head in that direction," towards the, towards land. And so he said he had never been in that large a body of water and they didn't know how to maneuver this rowboat, but somehow they managed and they ended up in Alameda. And they had, the immigration officials were all up and down the coast because they knew the ship had arrived, and so they gathered up these guys, and I don't know how they processed them because the paperwork was all destroyed too. I guess the paperwork on the ship is what got them going.

TI: Wow. What an interesting story. I mean, it's so colorful thinking he goes to Hawaii, he sees this busy dock and then be enticed to go on another ship, coming to San Francisco, city in flames, and then going out in this boat and then a rowboat to Alameda. What a, what a story. What an introduction to the United States.

FC: Yes, yes. And they, he said they didn't know where they were, how they were gonna ever get anyplace. And then his first assignment was dynamiting the, for railroad tracks up on the Sierra Nevadas, and so he left the city and went up to the mountains. And he said that he got sick. He had typhoid fever because of drinking the water and it didn't agree, and so he was a lot of times, I don't know how long, but he was unable to work because he's running this high temperature. And he kept thinking that his brother was calling him. He thought he was someplace in Japan, and he was wandering around and they said that he almost fell off the mountainside in his daze.

TI: So he's just delirious.

FC: Yes. But he somehow survived, and I don't know how long he was up there, but he ended up in southern California not too much longer.

TI: And this was after he had fulfilled his contract work?

FC: I guess, or maybe because he was sick they released him, and then he was working as a casual laborer on the farms down, and then wound up in southern California.

TI: Okay.

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