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LH: Well, so then, how did he work his way up to Seattle?

FK: Well, he had some relatives up here. I think the Miyauchis are related to my father and Mr. Hibiya, I think actually, they were kind of like cousins of his. So he came up here to visit them and ended up coming to the Island one day, I guess, and to the Nishinaka farm or whatever. And saw my mother working in the field and started courting her, I guess. And as my mother put it, she got kind of tired of him being so persistent, so she finally said yes. [Laughs] So, that's kind of the story that I've heard anyway. And I've talked to my aunt, Fumiko, and she said, she said yeah, they, they... the sisters anyway liked him and that she didn't know how their, how their father and mother felt about him, but the sisters liked him.

LH: I see. Did he end up being a farmer after that?

FK: Well actually, when they got married, I think it was about 1929, they ended up in Seattle. And I, I'm not sure, I think my father actually worked at a grocery store for a while. I don't know whether it was for the Miyauchis or what. But, I know my mother had a lot of miscarriages. It seemed like my sister was finally born. Let's see, she was born in '32, so it was probably a good... what? Three or four years before she had a, she had my oldest sister Lilly. But, he's never really farmed. He's kind of -- he worked for Friedlander's Jewelry stores before the war.

LH: Oh.

FK: As a sales, salesman.

LH: I see.

FK: And he would, on the weekends, he would help on the farm. But he, most of the time he was... I don't think farming was one of his strong points or -- [laughs] -- what he really wanted to do. So, my mother pretty much ran the farm. And my father would help out on weekends and I know he worked really hard, but I don't think farming was one of the things that he liked to do.

LH: Now, was that a typical situation back then that, maybe, a wife would run a farm?

FK: I don't think so. It might have been... true in background or whatever, that they would have quite a bit of influence on the farm. But in most cases, I don't think there were very many women who were actually running farms. And that was probably unusual, as far as my mother was concerned.

LH: Well it does strike me as unusual being that it's, that it's second generation. Still, Japanese culture might have an influence.

FK: Yeah.

LH: Yeah, I'm...

FK: So it was, it was probably unusual, yeah.

LH: So, your mom ended up running the farm.

FK: Uh-huh.

LH: And whose farm was this to begin with, though?

FK: It was, it was my grandparents' farm. Actually, when my mother was born, she was the first-born child and the way she put it was, she thinks she was kind of like an accident that shouldn't have happened. Because they, she said her parents felt like they couldn't get ahead. So what they did was they sent her back to Japan when she was just an infant. She said they gave a bolt of cloth to this stranger that the family didn't really know, but they found out he was going back to Japan, and gave her to this stranger to bring back to her uncle. And her uncle actually raised her in Japan, for... shoot, I think it must have been for nine years or so.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.