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TF: My father had two brothers and a sister, Tsuchiye, a brother, I think, Raymond, one of 'em. But his father, Ikutaro, served in the Japanese army in the artillery with a horse drawn cannon. He went to war twice. Once against the Russians in 1904, and then the invasion of China in 1933. And my father's father, Ikutaro, immigrated to the United States in 1912. In 1916 he returned back to Japan to get the two sons, my father, Chukuro, and Raymond, the younger brother. The father and the two sons set sail for the United States. It took eighteen days, it said, sailing on the Chicago Maru, sound right? It sounds funny to me.

SY: Oh, yeah, it's true, Chicago.

TF: Chicago Maru to sail from Kobe, Japan, to Tacoma, Washington, including a stop in Hawaii. And it mentions where my father worked in a sawmill for two years before moving to California. My father was in farming, raising walnuts, grapes, apricots and berries. He raised cotton one year when the business was bad, and returned to Japan in 1922 to marry my mother, and they returned February 1923 on the Taiyo Maru. And it seems that Raymond, the brother, and Ikutaro returned to Japan in 1933 so that Raymond could find a woman to marry. And when the younger brother returned to Japan, he was drafted into the army medical unit and he made many trips between China and Japan. Evidently he married and he had children, but Raymond died of disease before the end of World War II. His wife and one boy died in the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima. And somehow Ikutaro must have returned to the United States before the outbreak of World War II. He died in Portland in 1952. He apparently was part of the group of internees who would not disavow allegiance to Japan, and he was interned at Heart Mountain relocation center in Wyoming. He was sent to Formosa after his discharge. When or how he returned to the United States is unknown.

Now, see, I never knew I had a grandfather in the United States. When I was growing up, I never knew I had any relatives. I didn't know what a grandmother or grandfather or cousin or aunt or any of that was. And then I'm reading this and discovering I had a grandfather, but my father, I think, had a falling out with both his father and grandfather because I think in those days, he had probably an older brother. They worked and then they sent money back home, and everything always went to the oldest son, so I think somewhere along the way they came to a parting of the ways. And so my father never talked about any of the relatives.

SY: And he never talked about it.

TF: So I never knew that I had a grandfather who lived in the United States.

SY: And his younger brother was Raymond?

TF: Raymond. I had heard of Raymond, but I didn't hear about the older brother. I think probably there was discord there.

SY: And so how did you get all this information?

TF: This was from my sister. I don't know where she got some of this information. And then my oldest sister's son is interested in, son-in-law is interested in genealogy. So he collected some things but I noticed he had some of the information wrong and he was trying to get some things from tapes where they had taped my mother talking, and of course she didn't want to say something. And he said he didn't always understand, so there were always little question marks. But once I knew I was gonna talk to you I thought, "Let me see whatever information I can find out about the family."

SY: Right.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.