<Begin Segment 1>

MN: Okay. Today is July 19, 2011. We are at the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center in Little Tokyo. We will be interviewing Robert Mitsuru Wada, and Tani Ikeda is on the video camera, and I will be doing the interview. My name is Martha Nakagawa. So, Bob, I wanted to start with your father's name.

RW: My father's name is Tamakichi.

MN: And what about your mother's name?

RW: It was Waki, she went by Waki Akiyo. Her maiden name was Nishida.

MN: Akiyo sounds like a very masculine name.

RW: It's spelled A-K-I-Y-O, so I think the Akiyo, usually a male is spelled A-K-I-O.

MN: Did your parents ever pick up an Anglican name?

RW: No, they didn't. Although, my father had a nickname in camp. This guy named Boner Nakashima nicknamed him Manila because he kind of looked more like a Filipino.

MN: He was dark.

RW: Dark, and because he was a gardener and took care of orchards, orange orchards were big in our hometown, so he was out in the sun quite a bit.

MN: And what prefecture did your parents come from?

RW: They were from the village of Etajima, right out of Hiroshima, the island of Etajima. The only thing I know about it is that the Japan Navy Officers, Naval Academy was there.

MN: Do you know if your family lived near the academy? I know that at Etajima they have mountains there, so there's different small villages.

RW: From what I understand, I believe they did live fairly close. Closer to the academy rather than in the mountains.

MN: Now, when your parents arrived in the United States, do you know where they first went to?

RW: Well, as far as I know, the first place they went to was Redlands and they raised nine children there in Redlands. In talking to my older sister, she was born in Redlands and she's now ninety-six, so they were pretty much there in Redlands, and according to my sister there were a lot of Japanese that came to that little town of Redlands near San Bernardino. It was kind of where the Isseis congregated, because they had about three or four Japanese-owned pool halls in that little town. And then just around World War I time, the Japanese all moved out and started moving towards Los Angeles, when they did that, then the town pretty much was left with only three or four Japanese families.

MN: Now, when the people were all going to Redlands, the Japanese people, do you know if they were mostly from Hiroshima ken?

RW: I believe so, because a lot of times they were friends. But then, according to my sister, they were just people that came to the United States and apparently they knew that was where there was work, orange orchards, picking oranges, the railroad, and then when they left, the Chinese came in and took over what the Japanese left in the railroad. In fact, they had a small area that they had made housing and we referred to it as Chinatown. It was kind of a threat to kids, Chinatown is where my mother said they're gonna throw us in Chinatown if we do anything bad, that type of thing. Most of the Japanese, by the time I started going to elementary school were gone, the Chinese too.

MN: Yeah, I thought it was really interesting because in your biography, or autobiography, you have a picture of the certificate from 1915 where the two hundred cherry trees were donated to Redlands.

RW: Yeah, it was a big group of Japanese, and of course my dad's name's on there and my next door neighbor and our friends are all on there. When I ran across that I was surprised as well. And then when I looked into what happened to those cherry trees, they said that there was a blight, but I'm not so sure that that's what really happened to them.

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