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TI: Well, actually, let's pivot a little bit, because I actually wanted to talk a little bit about your parents, so let's do this, and let's start with your father. So tell me a little bit -- and actually, maybe with your father's family, let's talk about your grandparents on your father's side. And just tell me a little bit about them in terms of where they came from in Japan and why they came to the United States.

JT: My paternal grandfather came from Shimane-ken. He was the second son, and he was yoshi, handing over a name or perpetuating a family name. My family is Arashidani, but he took the name Tateishi because of the custom. And being a second son, he knew he was not going to end up with all this land. They had money; they were landowners, so he was also a pretty adventurous guy, and this was in the late 1800s, 19th century, when Japan opened up to the West. And when immigration started and he came in, I think it was about 1890, he was sort of among the earlier ones, came to see what America was like and went back once and then came back to stay. My mother's family comes from Yamaguchi-ken, they also came from money, I mean, she came from money. I didn't realize just how much until one of my cousins who stayed in Japan, her family stayed in Japan through the war and after. She told me once, she came to the U.S. when she was fifteen years old, this is when I was in high school, we're the same age. She told me that when she came to -- this is years later -- that when she came to America, it was the first time she dressed herself. She had maids that did this, it floored me. But what struck me was, she said to me at one point, "You know your mother speaks a very different kind of Japanese, she's not a typical Nisei, and she's not Kibei, but her language, her Japanese is very different." You know, I'm a Sansei, what do I know about Japanese? And I started putting some of this together in my head about what Cindy had told me her family, her experience, about my mother's language. And then my father and my grandfather... and my grandfather, I grew up with my grandfather. He used to tell me stories about, "When I lived, when I was a kid in Japan..."

TI: This is your paternal grandfather?

JT: Yeah. He was my ojiichan. So I was really close to him, I always shared the room with him, he lived with us. So I was the one who always shared the room with him, so at night we'd be laying in bed, and he would tell these stories. And years later, I thought about it and I thought, "He had a lot of money," because he would talk about some of their properties, and where he would go to do something or another or a village they owned.

TI: But he left all that, right?

JT: Yeah.

TI: And so was he just, the adventure of it, or why did he leave?

JT: Well, one is he knew he wasn't going to inherit that, his older brother would. Plus, the allure of America. From both borders, the countries that are on the other side of those oceans, America has always been this land of, it's almost like magic. And he saw this as a place, in his mind, of real opportunity. He came to San Francisco first, and migrated down to Los Angeles, simply because of the population down there. And he bought land when my father was born, I mean, it's kind of like an old family habit.

TI: Well, did he buy land before the alien land law? So he was here kind of early, I was wondering if he got the land before the alien land laws, or did he have to navigate that?

JT: He had to navigate. Well, the alien land law wasn't enacted when he was first here. But if you were Issei, you couldn't buy land, people just wouldn't sell it to you. So he bought some property, some land, and saw that as the family's security. We lost all of that during the war, of course. So I grew up with him, and my father was very much his father's son, very philosophical, very reflective. My grandfather, as a little kid, he would meditate. And I'm sitting there with him, thinking, "How long is this going to go on?"

TI: Interesting, like the chanting kind of meditation or just quiet meditation?

JT: It was quiet. Every now and then he would make... we grew up Christian, but he was sort of a paradox. He was more a follower of Eastern philosophy in terms of the way he lived his life than he was a Christian. And he lived in the moment always, and was very centered, very calm. He found a way to find harmony in his life. And so when we went to Manzanar, he went with us. I got separated from my family.

TI: Okay, before we go there, I just want to stay with the earlier... so when you communicated with your grandfather, was it in Japanese?

JT: It had to be, because he didn't speak very much English at home.

TI: Okay, so as a kid, you spoke Japanese.

JT: Yeah. And then I remember, at one point, after the war, writing a letter to my mother's mother, my grandmother, my maternal grandmother, who was in Japan and writing it in Japanese.

TI: That's amazing.

JT: I couldn't tell you one character in Japanese. I'm classic Sansei, and I can understand some, I can speak some, but it's not a comfort level for me. But my parents were both Kibei, so they spoke Japanese at home, my grandfather spoke Japanese at home.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.