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TF: Okay. Now, the other thing I wanted to tell you is after my cousin told me, he took me to... it's just walking distance where my brother was. I said I want to know where he is, and so they took me over there.

SY: So he was still alive?

TF: No, no, they took me to where he, where they have his ashes. In Japan I think they have just little places where, little small places where people keep their loved ones' ashes. So it was walking distance and I was able to visit with my brother. Always wanted an older brother.

SY: Oh, and he was the only male?

TS: And he was the only male.

SY: He would have been the only male.

TS: No, but I can imagine how difficult life must have been for him, too, for that whole family.

SY: Now when your mother told you this story, and it's written so beautifully.

TS: Well, she told it just like... she never talked about a real romance, she talked about just saying hello, just talking, you know, when he would pass by, but obviously there was more than that.

SY: Right, right. But even in the way you wrote it, it's very understated. She was very understated, she didn't want to reveal everything.

TS: No, absolutely not.

SY: Just their facts were amazing, just an amazing story. So when she... so the relationship between your mother and father, how did you perceive that? How as a young child did you, did the thought ever cross your mind that it was sort of a marriage of convenience?

TS: No, I think I always knew that it was probably arranged. And the other thing was I was shocked to discover years later, when I was an adult, they're cousins. They're related.

SY: Which was... was that a practice?

TS: I don't know. I don't know if that was a practice or not, but I can read you a piece just about my father coming to -- it's not a piece, but it's just talking about his journey in a way. My father was Chukuro, and then he used the nickname Jack, Tsubouchi, and he was born in Hiroshima, Inokuchimachi, on September 23, 1900. He landed in Seattle, Washington, June 11, 1916, and he started working at the Harding Sawmill in Tacoma, Washington, June 14, 1916. On October of 1918, he went to Lemoore, California. In October 1919 he went back to Seattle, back to California, in 1922. In October of 1922 he went to Japan to look for a wife. He told me he rode on a bicycle to look at women and then he married my mother, chose my mother. That's all I knew from my dad. They got married in December of 1922, and the children were born in different towns in California. But farming was always his main source of income. He left Jerome relocation camp to work at a sod farm in Naperville, Illinois, and when Jerome relocation camp closed, he continued to work in Naperville and would come home on weekends until he found employment as a carpenter at Stensgard, they made trailer homes. He worked there until April 1950, until June 1953 he worked for Travel Light trailer. June 1953, September 1954, with Link and Smith Manufacturers, September '54 to December '59 with Continental Trailer, and January 27, 1960, he started working at Trailsramp company and retired in June 1970 and took a trip to Japan.

And my father was a jack of all trades, he could do anything, he made many things. And when he was... my mother I think was coming back from visiting me, and he went to pick her up at the airport, and he had a heart attack on the way back to their home. And he must have sensed something because he went to the shoulder of the road, and he went over a rail guard, and fortunately, the car didn't catch on fire 'cause it had severed the gas tank. My mother had injured her vertebrae and was hospitalized and couldn't attend the funeral. Now, there was something else that talked about, you know, actually about his father who came to California early on. Let's see.

SY: He must have come very early.

TF: Yeah, he came extremely early, and I'm just wondering where I might have that.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.