<Begin Segment 17>

MN: Before we get to Chicago, let's stay in Santa Anita. And this visit with your father, did you discuss this situation with anybody?

MY: Yeah, I went to talk to Reverend Yamazaki, John Yamazaki. I knew him real well because for him to become a minister, he had to do one year of social service work and he did his in Shonien so I knew him real well. So after my dad came and wanted to get together, I really didn't want to so I went to see this Father John. And I was talking to him and he knew my situation and he knew how I felt so he says, "You know, Mits, I know how you feel and things, but don't forget he is your father and one of these days he's going to really need you." I said, "Yeah, okay, I'll keep that in my mind." But he says, "In the meantime," he says, "he can go, but keep in contact." Well, he never kept in contact so I thought, "Oh well, that's alright. We can go our own way."

Well, I left Rohwer, went to Chicago, he left Poston and went to Chicago and we ended up in the same hotel. He was going to work one day, he was a maitre d' in one of the hotels. He spoke real good English and he was going there. So I got off the elevator, I was going east, he was going west. So I got off the elevator, went to the other side, says, "Dad where you staying?" He said, "I'm staying at the Congress Hotel." I said, "Well, I'm staying there too." I said, "But I have to go to work now and I come home about..." we were working swing shift so I told him, "I'll go to work, I get home about midnight or so, eat, take a shower and stuff, I go to bed about one, one-thirty, and then I get up about nine o'clock or so." I said, "When I get up I'll come down and see you." So I went to work, came back, got up in the morning, went to see him and he wasn't there, he had checked out. He didn't go to work, he got off the El, went back to the hotel, checked out of the hotel and took off and went to New York. I thought, "Well, okay." I mean, you know, he doesn't want to face the fact that... didn't want to see us anymore. So I thought well, that's okay. I mean I'm old enough to take care of myself.

But eventually one of the Fujikawa boys was in New York and saw my father and so he says, "Hey, your dad's here in New York." I said, "Well, so what?" but he sent me his address and things and we sort of lost contact for a while. But after I went to the service and came back and eventually I got married to this girl. Well, she found out that my dad was in New York, so she would send him Christmas presents and talk to him on the phone and things, send him Father's Day gift. And after we had two sons, she said, "You know, you got two grandsons. Why don't you come out and visit?" Well, this was in 1957, so then after she kept calling him and things, he finally came out. I went to pick him up at the airport and the first thing he says was, "I'm really sorry for the way I acted all these years and things," he says, "I'm sorry." I says, "Dad, you know, it's all history now." I says... "we can still go on." Well, you figure he was only fifty-seven years old then. And I says, "That's alright." I says, "You're not that old," 'cause he was born in 1900. And I guess he appreciated the fact that my wife really took good care of him, I mean, she really catered to him. So then she'd tell him, "Why don't you come out and visit us every once in a while?"

Well, we moved to Gardena and for the last fifteen years of his life or so, I guess we sort of reconciled and he would come out every year for about a week or ten days. He'd stay with us and the wife really catered to him so he really liked that. But you know, he'd come out and I always wanted to know about family, and I kept asking him about different things but he was pretty closemouthed. He wouldn't say too much about family. And I guess I found out that he had a younger sister and I says, "Gee, I never knew we had any relatives." And she says when she found out that my mother had passed away, she looked all over for us, she wanted to take us in. She couldn't contact my dad, she didn't know where we were, and eventually, I still don't know how we got in contact with her but she would go to Japan to go visit my grandmother and her mother and my grandmother, my mother's mother. They were living together in Japan before they passed away, so she would go visit. But in the meantime, when my younger brother came out of the service, he was working in a nursery and one of the fellows that was working there turned out to be his cousin or one of our cousins. And so he says, "What's your name?" And he told him Isao and that he had two brothers. And this guy says, "Wow, I think you're my cousin." So he went to his mother and his mother says, "Yeah, that's your cousin." And so when my aunt would come out she would... you know, it's her brother-in-law or sister-in-law, she'd stay with them. And she found out where we were and that's how we got in contact with my aunt. So in the later years, my father was living in New York with a Caucasian lady, well, eventually she passed away so then after she passed away, my aunt told my dad, "Why don't you come live with me in Chicago?" So my dad went to Chicago and he was living with her 'til eventually he passed away, but he was living with her. So I would have never known I had an aunt, but it just happened that my younger brother was working with this guy that happened to be his cousin... we would have never known.

MN: How did you feel when you found out that you had an aunt and how did that first meeting go?

MY: It was really nice because she had come from Chicago and I guess my uncle and aunt, they were living in Long Beach. So when my aunt came, they called us and we went down to see her and I thought, "Wow, here we got a nice rich aunt and uncle and we didn't have nothing." And she was looking all over for us but I was really thankful that we got to meet her. She was a real nice lady.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.