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NW: So your father was already in Seattle, and your mother was just sort of...

MW: And I don't know the history of how long he was in Hawaii or how he happened to come, but you know, many people were coming to the States for a better life. And I think he worked in a bank and in a clothing store, and he knew the, later they were very close friends with the Kubotas, who were the Kubota Garden, and I remember Mom talking about the streets that I see now, and I said, yeah, I remember Mom talking about this street. They had a special place in their heart for Seattle.

NW: So you have some family history in Seattle. Is that where your parents ended up?

MW: Well, then they came to California.

NW: So where in California did they move to?

MW: They came to Chico, which is a small town. And I think they knew a family there who were farmers, and so they lived there temporarily. I remember, I think they picked strawberries. But my father always wanted to have a business of his own, and so he and a friend opened a produce store. And once again, this man kind of was not a good partner, so they parted ways, and Dad on his own had this produce store. Chico was a very small country community, and there were not many Japanese there. My daughter laughs because I said, "I can count the people, I know the names." So there were very few... they were doing varied things, like my father had a produce store. There was a man who had a fish market, oh, he said his family was a samurai family, very proud of that. And then there was a laundry, a barber, farmers, and there was a little rooming house this couple had. In those days, there were many single men who came over and worked, and so this is where they could stay. And so the numbers were few, the community was not like the larger ones in California where communities of Japanese, Marysville, Sacramento, of course, Los Angeles. But so we didn't have a Japanese school, some places where they went to school every day after school. And some of them had strong Buddhist communities, and so I feel that the community was different from many other Japanese and Japanese Americans that lived in California, which I think made kind of a difference because we were more immersed in the white community, so to speak. And maybe in the beginning, of course, my father and my mother experienced prejudice, of course. And I always tell the story about, I guess my mother must have told me they had fifty cents in the cash register when they started, and people would come by and see that they were not white and walk by. But in time, they developed a very good relationship and people trusted my father to be an honest and good man. And so there were prominent people, doctors and lawyers, the wives would just call him and say, "Tom, I want this and that," and he would have the groceries ready, the produce ready for them.

My father was invited to join the Rotary Club, and my mother was invited to join the Presbyterian church ladies' group. The ladies there, particularly one person who was a doctor's wife who was very concerned about the Japanese and Chinese, there were some Chinese in the community. And had the Sunday school, and my mother said... of course, her Buddhist background, but she said having some kind of religion or faith is important, and she sent us to Sunday school. And this woman would, at Thanksgiving, invite the whole Asian community for Thanksgiving dinner, and at Christmastime we'd have plays and we'd have shepherds and kings and, you know, the whole picture of nativity. She was such a devoted person, to be accepting and loving. So, later, the community, the few Japanese that were concerned about the children learning Japanese, even though we didn't have regular teachers there. So they built a one-room schoolhouse, and on Sundays, they hired a couple, both the husband and wife came to teach every Sunday, and we'd have Sunday school from nine in the morning until... oh, and then eleven o'clock, the Sunday school teacher came out to the farm, this little house, and we'd have Sunday school, sing our songs and hear our stories, and then we had more Japanese lessons, and we learned to sing Japanese songs and do Japanese dancing and put on a play. So this was the way that parents tried to continue to teach their children about Japanese culture.

NW: Sort of combined it with some of the other things, experiences.

MW: Right. And so it was very loving of them, I think. So that was my background.

NW: No, I think that's really... it sounds like your parents were special people. So I want to ask a little bit about you now. So you kind of told me a little bit about growing up in Chico, it was kind of a small community, not a large Japanese American community, but it sounds like a pretty close community. I'm curious about, a little bit more, I guess, about the bigger community in Chico. So you mentioned that there were not many Japanese Americans, because who was in Chico? What did the town look like?

MW: It was kind of like you see in a movie, one big main street. I remember a department store, and there was an ice cream place, I remember. Not Japanese, but I think they were Greek. And there was a barber shop, a beauty shop, a bakery, wonderful whole wheat doughnuts. I've never found any again like that. [Laughs]

NW: These are very important places. [Laughs]

MW: The funny things that stick in your mind.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2018 Densho. All Rights Reserved.