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KN: Your father was a handsome guy. He looks so, he took a picture before he left Japan, and my god, he looks so young.

EK: Oh, yeah.

KN: Eighteen, wow.

EK: Oh, I know. I think when he went to Peru he was twenty-one, 'cause he had graduated, but people of the Meiji era are so mature. They're so mature. And even though their required education was to sixth grade, it's like past our high school, what they learn. I said, "Oh my gosh, how did they do this?"

KN: Well, your father was, it was really impressive. He said, "I also do not want to be a farmer, and the hardship that I saw" --

EK: Yes, he saw.

KN: -- "every single day in Hokkaido."

EK: Yeah, and there was no improvement.

KN: No. So he said, "I moved in with my sister in Tokyo." And he said, "I was working for my brother-in-law while going to night school at the same time, while trying to work."

EK: Yes.

KN: And he said, "Sometimes I wouldn't even have dinner. I'd go straight from work to..."

EK: Night school.

KN: "...to night school." And he was trying to be an architect, and he was he was doing designing of buildings. And this was all before he was about eighteen to twenty-five.

EK: Oh, yeah. And, you know, later I learned why he knew so much about wood. He knew the different woods, lumber. And when I went to Japan and saw the Kiba, a place where they used to roll the logs? He used to carry those heavy things on his shoulder, and it's wet. So I said, "How did he do it?" and he's skinny. He wasn't chunky, he was skinny.

KN: How tall was your dad?

EK: About five feet three or four maybe at the most. Probably more like three probably.

KN: Because he said he was working on these jobs and carrying this stuff and going to night school and trying to draft and become an architect.

EK: And people wouldn't pay him.

KN: Right. And I'm thinking I don't know any eighteen year olds... but it was just a different generation, I guess.

EK: It was a different generation, and he was always a hard worker. That's what made him succeed, I think, because he was, as he said, whatever came, he was able to overcome it because of the background that he had. So many people would go to -- especially young boys -- to go to Tokyo thinking, "Oh, I'm going to succeed," but they fall into the wayside because it's so hard. It's much easier to lead the other life, but they don't succeed in life. So, but he wanted this education and he wanted to really, really truly go to San Francisco, but the doors were closed. Remember that immigration law? 1920?

KN: 1920 immigration...

EK: '20. So that did not allow him to enter the U.S. That's why his eyes went to South America. He said, yeah, I said, "Well, couldn't you have gone someplace else?" And he said, "Yes, I could have gone to Siberia, was one, Manchuria was other. But," he said, "they seemed too close. I wanted to go someplace" --

KN: Someplace far.

EK: Yeah, someplace more exotic, things that he didn't know, he wanted to learn. And so that's how he got to Peru. And he did have a letter of introduction to this company, and he waited at the dock and nobody came. Because in the meantime, it took how long? Two, three months to get to Peru? So the company had gone bankrupt, so there was nobody to greet him. So here's this young boy all by himself with hardly any money, I think, five soles in his pocket.

KN: Very rudimentary Spanish.

EK: Yes.

KN: He took Spanish before he left, though?

EK: Yes. He studied, but his thick accent, I don't know if anybody would understand. But luckily there were some Japanese who befriended him, those that had gone before him, and so that's how he was able to stay in someone's home, what they call isoro, which means you stay but they don't pay you, but you do a lot of the work. And he was very grateful, but he said, "But I need to make money." And so that's how he got out of those kind of things. And when they asked him to be a teacher, of course, he made a little money and then he also did janitorial work, he did everything. Bartending, he was not a drinker, but he learned how to do that. He did all kinds of things.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.