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MN: You know, let me ask about your mother's side now.

Mo N: Okay.

MN: Now, which prefecture did your mother's family come from?

Mo N: My mom's family supposedly is from the Fukuoka, so that's, they're both Kyushu people, Kyushu area, the island, and it's right next to each other. But yeah, she comes from Fukuoka city, my grandmother on my mom's side. And her father comes from Kumamoto. In fact, the village that he comes from, there's maybe twenty, thirty miles, not very far from where my dad comes from. My dad, the major town near where my dad comes from is Yamada, it's an onsen place. And my grandfather on my mother's side is in Kikuchi which is just up the road a little bit, actually. And, yeah, so the story, their story is real interesting, 'cause my grandfather on my mother's side, he's the oldest son, he's got two brothers and a sister. So he leaves, and apparently they're a minor samurai family. Why we say that with some confidence is that their old man had this flat forehead that comes from years and years of training in kendo. It's all shined up with that kabuto, that hat that they have, right, and stuff. And when he was younger, he used to, they used to have tournaments in the family and stuff like that, and he'd kick everybody's ass. And he was a pretty tough guy on the street, too. My uncles talk about the police knew who he was, right? Nobody would mess with him. I guess they tried early on, and he held him off.

But anyhow, history is is that he's supposed to, supposedly went from Kyushu, went to Tokyo, and learned a trade in ironworks, learning how to build battleships and stuff like that, or ships, iron ships and things like that. And I guess he decides that he wants to come to the U.S. to see what's going on here and tried to further his understanding of the trade. Comes over here, and we don't know if he goes to, again, to Hawaii, or comes directly to San Francisco, but he ends up in San Francisco. And they don't hire "Japs" at that time, and all the "Yellow Peril" bullshit.

So, and then from San Francisco, apparently, he comes to L.A. and he meets these people from Fukuoka, my grandmother's folks. Her brother and father -- so that would be my great grandfather -- and I guess they whispered in his ear, "Come on back, we'll fix you up with this foxy lady." So they take him back to Japan and get him married. And then they stay in Japan long enough to have one child, my mother. And then they cross the Pacific and end up in San Francisco. And that's only for a short stay, and I don't know why they came down to L.A. from there. Of course, he may have been originally, started out from L.A. going back to Japan. But it might have been that earthquake, too, a lot of people came down after that earthquake. So he comes down here and they have, she has nine sisters and brothers, good old fashioned peasant family, and they move all over the place. He does all kind of different things. He learned a trade that always puzzled me, cobbling, like working with leather. In Japan, the only people that worked with leather were burakumin, right? And so that's always kind of confused and intrigued me on why he went into that. But he did the green grocery work, he did peddling vegetables and stuff like that. But the story about him is that he was such an honest man that he could never take advantage to be a good businessman. So they used to talk about, we used to, he'd go out and buy vegetables early in the morning, right, so he'd get a good deal on vegetables. Well, when he went out on his route, he sold it cheaper 'cause he got a good deal on it. So he passed it right on down to his customers and stuff like that. So he didn't last very long in that business.

Yeah, apparently he did some farming, too, around where I grew up, around, areas around Dorsey on the west side. Well, they used to do sugar beet farming there before the war, a long time ago. And so he did sugar beet farming, and the family used to gather to talk about horse and buggy, taking the stuff down to the Central Market. If you're familiar with that time, when Japanese people or people of color went to market, went to town, they went to the Japanese market. The white market, the once on Central Avenue, just right up the street from here, that was white. That was called the American market. Just like the flower market's the same thing, you got the Japanese market and the American market, it was the same thing, the American market. So, but it'd be an all-day trip from out there around Dorsey by horse and buggy to bring stuff in, so they'd have to leave the night before and go out there to bring their stuff into town. So there's those stories.

The story I like to tell about here was after the war, when we come back, he sets up his shoe shop on Normandie and Jefferson, that was the center of the Japanese community right after the war. This is when suedes first came out, and this black lady came in and asked him to fix up her shoes. I think she just needed a heel or something replaced on it. So my grandfather didn't know how to deal with -- well, he fixed up the shoe, but then he decided he's going to shine it up for her. So he put it on the goddamn machine, and it took that suede and just [makes whirring sound] so it came out shiny, right? So when she comes after her shoe, she looks and she says, "Can I have my shoes?" He said, "Sure," he's very proud, right? Comes out, takes it out, and she shit a brick. "What did you do to my brand new suede shoes?" [Laughs] My grandpa looks at it. When I was a kid, I used to go to grammar school at Thirty-sixth Street School, so I used to come and hang out at my grandpa's place until my dad came home from gardening. So we were all sitting in the back, and Grandpa said, "Are you unhappy?" [Laughs] "You're goddamn right I am. Look what you did to my shoes." Said, "What do you mean? I fixed it up good for you," in his broken English, and he's arguing with her, "I did a good job." She said, "No, you didn't." Finally, he decided she's unhappy. He said, "All right, I take it back. I buy you a new shoe." And that lady said, "No, just give me my shoe." "No." They sat there arguing about that. And yeah, that's where I learned the true meaning of bakashojiki. [Laughs] You're so honest you're doomed. So my uncles had to come out from the back, talk to the lady, calm her down, calm him down, and I think they gave her money. But yeah, my grandfather was hot. Oh, man.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright &copy; 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.