Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Ken Yoshida Interview
Narrator: Ken Yoshida
Interviewer: Tom Ikeda
Location: San Francisco, California
Date: October 17, 2007
Densho ID: denshovh-yken-01-0001

<Begin Segment 1>

TI: Ken, today is Thursday, October 17, 2007. We're on the campus of Cal State San Bernardino. My name is Tom Ikeda, and I'm the interviewer, and in the room we have Cherstin Lyon, and Cliff, your last name?

Off camera: Schaeffer.

TI: Schaeffer. So I'm going to just start from the very beginning, Ken. So can you just tell me where and when you were born?

KY: I was born in Tacoma, Washington, July 31, 1923. And I think I was born at home.

TI: Okay, and what was the name given to you at your birth?

KY: Oh, Kenichiro Yoshida.

TI: Now, Kenichiro, was that named after anyone, or do you know why they named you Kenichiro?

KY: Well, my parents kind of... well, my mother picked the name from different people in Japan, and for each children she picked the name from different people, from different families with a Japanese name. So we had all Japanese name.

TI: Okay, good. So let's talk a little bit about your parents. Can you tell me your father's name and where he grew up in Japan?

KY: Gee, I don't know where my father was raised. But my mother was from Tokyo. And I think my father went to college in Tokyo, and that's probably where he more or less met my mother.

TI: Okay, so let's go back to your father. So what was your father's name?

KY: Oh, his name was... I don't remember.

TI: That's okay.

KY: Because the thing is, I just know him as my father, and Yoshida, that's all I can...

TI: How about your mother? Do you know what her first name was?

KY: No, I think it was Saki or something like that. But my wife would know all those things because of detail, and I'm not much on details.

TI: And so growing up, you just called them...

KY: My mother, yeah.

TI: What about in terms of when they were in Japan, do you have a sense of, like, you father, what your father's family did in Japan?

KY: No, I don't know nothing about either family. All I know is anything that started in Washington before I was born. Anything beyond that, I know absolutely nothing.

TI: Well, what about this... in terms of your father, do you have a sense of why he left Japan to come to the United States?

KY: No, I don't know. I don't know why. But I understand, I think he came here by himself to Washington, and he went back and got married and came back with my mother. And that's how they got together, raised a family in Washington, Tacoma, Washington.

TI: So Tacoma, Washington, so that's where you were born.

KY: That's where I was born, yeah.

<End Segment 1> - Copyright © 2007 Densho. All Rights Reserved.