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TI: So tell me a little bit about your father's family. What did they do?

MT: My father was twenty-first generation Tonai. His home was named, was named Gengoro. People called it Gengoro. So when I was a GI, first time I went there I told the taxi driver, "Take me to Gengoro." He took me right to the house. And the reason for it is because they had been there so long, and the firstborn son in my father's family were all named Gengoro and goro means fifth born, but apparently one of their ancestors, or the first ancestor of his branch was named Gengoro so subsequently everyone was named Gengoro, except my father was only the fifth generation that was born to the Gengoro family. The other previous didn't have sons, so they either had youshi or a adopted son -- not adopted but married into family taking the name -- or they were adopted into the family, either way. My father was the first born of, in five generations. And his younger brother below him was named Genichiro and ichiro means first son, but the Gen was from genji, that same character.

TI: And so was the family wealthy in Japan?

MT: Well, not... well, my father's family were wholesalers of fish. They were, and they had a natural harbor in their town and so all the fishermen in the area brought the fish there. When he was a young teenager, the neighboring town built a large artificial harbor, so all the fishermen went there and they, business went way down and they were... part of that time they were shipping the fishes to Nagoya and to Osaka, Kobe, and to, over to Tokushima and places like that.

TI: Okay. So as the eldest son, how did, let's talk about his journey to America. How did he decide to go to America?

MT: My father graduated from, from upper elementary school. They have two kinds of elementary; you go through regular elementary school then you to upper elementary school, or you could go to high school. He went to upper elementary school and I don't know all the transition between that, but I know that he was going to school in Kobe when he got a letter from a friend from home saying that, "Your brother in law," my, his younger sister's husband, who was living in Bellingham and had opened a cafe there, was asking for help from people in town, and during that time Japan was in a recession or depression, having a very difficult time, and particularly my father's family. But he decided -- he was not supposed to go to America -- but he was now of age, he could get his own passport, so he quit school in, in Kobe and came to the United States, primarily because he was competing with his, his uncle the same age, his mother's youngest brother who was brilliant and he would always lose to him in tests and so forth, so he decided that he didn't want to go to school anymore. Surprisingly he was able to read English, so he must've had some education in that manner. He came by ship to San Francisco, and there, Honolulu then San Francisco, then there they got on a, I believe the ship was named Taiheiyo maru, the ship that he came to America. Then from there he -- oh, it had a sail and whenever it was becalmed they would use the engine, and I think he said that it was, they burned wood, and, but when it was, so it took a long time to get across.

TI: And do you know about what year, the date that this...

MT: Yeah, that, he left in December of 1906 and arrived in January 1906. He arrived in San Francisco, then he saw the remnants of the earthquake, San Francisco earthquake, and that's where he went through immigration. Then he got on an American ship and he went to Seattle. He came with, I think, about three others and he, because, and he was the leader of the little group of guys from his hometown, and it was a, the interesting part of it was that none of 'em could speak English, of course, and they were on steerage and suddenly they were getting hungry. "Where should we go? How can we eat?" And my father said, he told 'em, "Wait. They'll ring a bell and if we see a hakujin going by," a white person going by, "then follow him because he's probably gonna go eat." So that's what they did and they went, and they went into the dining area and they went there and they said, "What are we supposed to do?" "We'll sit here and we'll copy that man, what he's doing." So they copied him. So he picked up this brown thing, broke it, then he took and put this yellow thing on it, put it on there and started eating it. They said, my father said, "Let's try eating this thing." They tried the yellow thing, and it's greasy and terrible taste, so they said, "What are they giving us?" So they quit eating that. Then they had this brown thing on the plate, large brown thing, and the man was cutting it. He got his knife and cut it, then he put it in this mouth, so they started cutting it and they were, it was so hard. They were cutting it, finally put all kinds of strength on it and suddenly it slipped and fell on the floor. "They're giving us bad stuff. They're trying to, they're trying to torment us. So we're not gonna, we're not gonna put up with that." And they stormed out. My father stormed out and all his friends stormed out and they went to the room. 'Course they hadn't eaten anything; now they were getting hungry. They didn't know what to do and the pride prevented them from going back to the kitchen, to the dining area. And then they heard a bell ring and they looked and this man is selling bananas, bananas, oranges and apple, so they decided to eat that. They ate that all the way to Seattle.

TI: That's a good story. So they were being introduced to bread and butter, essentially, at that, that sit down...

MT: That's right. And a steak.

TI: [Laughs] That's good.

MT: [Laughs] And it was tough. And so they get there and they had heard all the rumors about the white people, the Americans picking on Japanese that come over, so when they, they found the hotel and they went in the hotel and, I guess there were two others, that's all. There was only two others.

TI: And this is now in Seattle or Bellingham?

MT: Seattle. Yeah, in Seattle. They went to this hotel, and it wasn't three, it was two others, and one double bed and they were all small. My father's only about five four and a half. They all sat, slept crosswise on the bed. My father said, "We're gonna, we're gonna have to make sure that we be prepared if somebody tries to break in," so they took the dresser, pushed it up the dresser, tied a string to the doorknob and he tied it to his toe, and that's how they went to sleep. But he knew enough about what the bathroom was and tub and so forth, so they didn't have any problems with that. Other Isseis had trouble with that when they first came over. So when he woke up nothing happened. And a friend was supposed to come after them from Bellingham to show them the way and the guy came and they were at the station and the guy said, "No, that's not the train." My father, "Isn't that the train?" "No, that's not the train." Well, they didn't, finally the guy said, "Didn't come today, so we have to walk," and they had to walk to the next station to take the train to, to transfer onto another train to Bellingham. So they walked. He said they walked over trestles, railroad trestles, through tunnels, really dangerous, they went and they, and there was snow on the ground and they finally got to this place where it was supposed to go. My father looked and says, "That's the train you said not to take," and he found out that time that the other man from the hometown couldn't read English, so he didn't know. So he teased him for the rest of his life.

TI: That's good.

MT: Anyway, he got on the train, got to, got to Bellingham.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.