Densho Digital Repository - Amy Iwasaki Mass Interview (Densho ID: ddr-densho-1000-470-1)

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BN: Okay, we are here in Emeryville and we're interviewing today Amy Iwasaki Mass, so thank you very much for joining us today for this interview. Dana Hoshide will be shooting the video, my name is Brian Niiya, and I'm the interviewer. And today we're going to start, as I mentioned, and I want to ask you about your parents, if you could tell me what you know about, what you know about their lives in Japan and decisions to come to the U.S. to start with.

AM: Well, my father was born in a neighborhood called Ganyudo in Numazu in Shizuoka Prefecture, and his family was in the fishing business. And I think when he was maybe sixteen, he came to America because of relatives, a distant uncle was here, and they were good friends, and so it was kind of, I think, like an adventure for him. But I guess he liked it here because he stayed for ten years and then went back and married my mother. It was, as usual, an arranged marriage, and her father wanted her to marry him, and so he went back to Japan and got married and brought her to the United States. She, I think, wanted to be a literature teacher, so she wasn't too crazy about coming here, but being a dutiful daughter, she came and they settled in Seattle. When my father first came, he went to the state of Washington and worked on the railroads and continued that for a while, but by the time my mother came, he had gotten into the produce business and had some booths at... my senior moment thing... Pike...

BN: Oh, Pike Place? Pike Place Market.

AM: Yes. And so he was in the produce business by then.

BN: And then can you tell us their names?

AM: Yes. Genichiro Iwasaki and Misa Iwasaki. And my mother came from Mishima, which is a town very close to Numazu.

BN: And then, roughly, do you know what year your father first came?

AM: Oh, gee, I was going to write that all down and I didn't. Let's see. No, I'm sorry, I can't think of it now. I'd be glad to look it up for you.

BN: Okay, yeah. Did you mention then that, were there family members of your dad's already here?

AM: He had, like I said, an uncle, and so I think several, not just my father, but other people came here because the uncle was here. That uncle went back to Japan, later on, the uncle's son came and stayed with my dad and went into business with him. So our uncle Yoshio...

BN: This would be his cousin?

AM: Yeah, was part of a business of my father's youngest brother and Yoshio. So although they were not direct brothers, father-son kind of thing, it was like family.

BN: Do you know much about the... this is all, I think, long before you were born, right? Do you know what kinds of produce they dealt with, or the name of the business?

AM: Well, they were in the produce business later on when they moved to Los Angeles. And yeah, it was like fruits and vegetables, and the part that I knew was, they had the produce section in the Thrifty markets in Los Angeles, I don't know if there's still a Thrifty Mart. But they had a series, I think of, Thrifty Mart had, like, ten grocery stores, and the produce part was done by my father and his brothers.

BN: Do you know when they came down to L.A.?

AM: It came, they went back to Japan with my siblings, and I think they spent a school year there. And then I was born after they came back to Seattle and then moved to Los Angeles. And I really appreciate my mother, she must have thought ahead, but she said that the reason they had me ten years after my brother, she did not say it was not a mistake, but she meant it when she said that in Japan, they said that, the relatives said, "You should have more children," so they had me. [Laughs]