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TI: Going back to your parents, so how did they meet?

JT: Baishakunin. I asked my mother once, I was a young teenager, I said, "Did you marry Dad for love or for money?" And she said, "Well, we're not rich." [Laughs] And then I found out it was baishakunin. A lot of it had to do with their family backgrounds, why they were matched up. And those are the kinds of things, in my family anyway, we didn't ask a lot of questions. I mean, I think the Sansei generation has one huge collective regret, is not talking to the parents more about their history. Because there's such a void in what we understand about the legacy we each carry because of that silence. But for us, for me, my family, it wasn't about camp. We talked about camp at home, my father talked about it. And as kids, we talked about camp in school with our friends. And like a new kid comes in the neighborhood, first thing you ask them is, "What camp were you in?" and if they say, "oh, I wasn't, I was in Minnesota," it's like, "Get out of here, you're not one of us."

TI: Oh, did some of them try to hide the fact that they were in camp? I would think that, to another Japanese American, it would just be kind of a way to connect.

JT: Yeah, it was the way kids, when they meet, like high school kids, they always ask, "What school do you go to?" Adults, "What kind of work do you do?" There's that kind of introductory question that breaks, or either bonds you.

TI: Well, I see this amongst the Niseis all the time, they're always kind of saying, "So, what camp?" A lot times, before the war, where'd you live, and then the camp and all that.

JT: Yeah. But that, you know, for us, in my family after camp, we talked a lot about it. My father talked about it.

TI: So let's get into that more, because I want to explore that. So your mom and dad get married, what kind of work did they do?

JT: They had a farm. They had, as it turns out a fairly large farm in Lawndale. Well, it was agricultural. And they used to also own a produce store, and they sold what they grew in that store.

TI: And you said earlier that, back then, the family owned the land in your father's name?

JT: Yeah.

TI: So you guys were pretty well-off.

JT: You know, if we were, I never knew it, it sure didn't feel like it. But my memories start with camp. I have this vague memory of before camp...

TI: But just thinking before the war, fairly large farm and a produce store, probably had people working for him, and just thinking about your family background, and just knowing how to do that.

JT: Yeah, I mean, I think the fact that they both came from families that were landowners, it was a natural thing for them to do. I don't know if my mother's parents ever expected her to be out in the field working, but Nisei women get out in the field and they work, and they never monku about it.

TI: Even while they're pregnant?

JT: Yeah, life was different here. But I guess they had a pretty good life. I mean, my mother said, before the war, life was good. And for whatever reason, I don't know the reason, for whatever reason they sold the farm and moved to West L.A. I think they got tired of farming, I think my father got tired of it, and he became a gardener. In those days, Japanese gardeners were premium. They were the ones the really wealthy people hired. I don't know how it is up in the Northwest, But in Los Angeles, you look at all the biggest states, back in the '40s and '50s or before, the gardeners at every one of those places was Japanese. So they made pretty good money. I think my father just got tired of, kind of the life of being a farmer.

TI: So this is before the war?

JT: Yeah, we moved to, my family moved to West Los Angeles when I think I was about one years old. So I lived in that house for about a year and a half before the war started.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.