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TI: So I'm gonna ask now about your father. Can you tell me your father's name and where he was from?

MO: It was Gonnojo, and sometimes they spell it with one O and usually it was two, I mean two Ns instead of one, I'm not, originally. And then he's from Shiga-ken, Japan.

TI: And when did he come to the United States?

MO: He came on the day of the big San Francisco earthquake in February 1906.

TI: Did he have any stories about that, in terms of like, like... go ahead.

MO: Well, he remembers his, the buildings falling into cavities, huge cavities, and cars falling in there and buildings, and fire everywhere. That's what he remembers.

TI: Wow. It must've been frightening for him then.

MO: Oh yes, the day he, he's fifteen years old, comes from Japan all by himself.

TI: Do you know what, in Japan, what his family did?

MO: They had a farm. He didn't have any mother or father at six years old. His sister brought him up, a little older sister. She brought up three young brothers when she was twelve years old is what I understand.

TI: And what happened to his parents?

MO: They had a big epidemic apparently in Japan, something like a flu or some kind of big epidemic.

TI: Okay. So your father, San Francisco earthquake, 1906, he's fifteen years old, so how does he get to Seattle?

MO: He went on a ship with some, I don't know who or how, I don't really recall that early part of it. All I remember is what he said when he landed in San Francisco and the day of the earthquake.

TI: But did he come to Seattle right away, or did he kind of go other places before Seattle?

MO: I know, I'm not sure if they stopped one place first, at Frisco first or something. He mentioned Frisco. I'm not sure how that worked.

TI: Okay. So he gets to Seattle, what does he do in Seattle?

MO: He must've found odd jobs before he, and then he put himself through accounting school and then he opened up his own business in the dry cleaning business.

TI: So he's a pretty, what's the right word, entrepreneurial business kind of thinking.

MO: He worked a short while at Furuya, I think, and that, in, somewhere in between.

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