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VY: Okay, so it sounds like your parents, they kind of knew each other growing up and saw each other occasionally. When did they decide to get married?

DC: I think it was right before my father was leaving Japan, and obviously he didn't want to be there alone, and he and his father had made inquiries about him marrying the eldest Sakakiyama sister, (Asae) who was, according to my father, the most beautiful. But evidently -- and I think Betty has a different spin on it, Betty Shibayama. My spin on it is that she -- and this is what I was told by my mother -- that she  (Asae) had been offered a life of so-called "leisure" by marrying a banker. So she decided she was not going to go to America and be a pioneer, she was going to marry a banker and live a life of comfort in Tokyo. So she chose to marry this banker, and I guess (my father) he kind of went down the list, and he finally got to my mother, who, I think, was a very dutiful person. And I think she secretly liked him. And even though she had been warned by her favorite aunt (Tsuu Obasan), "Don't to go America. You go to America, you're going to suffer, stay here with me." And this was a maiden aunt who had been divorced, and she had actually, my mother had lived with her for a while. And I guess they moved to a different town in order for my mother to go to a special school. And my mother was educated in all the arts that a proper, middle-class Japanese woman would receive. She knew how to do flower arranging and do tea ceremony, and play instruments, I would assume, but I never saw her play. So she was quite refined, I think, and probably had no clue what she was getting herself into, poor thing. And she agreed, because my (paternal) grandfather (Kashichi) was very persistent. And although her father probably wanted to keep my mother there to comfort his sister, (Tsuu), the persistence of this man (Kashichi) who kept coming to the house, they felt that they couldn't... sometimes the Japanese often think about the other person and how they might feel, so, "This poor man, he keeps coming and asking," and so he (my maternal grandfather Sakakiyama) felt sort of obligated to my (paternal Morita) grandfather because they were all vaguely related in some way, they felt maybe they should accede to his request. And so that's how my mother came to America.

VY: Oh, so did your parents come together or separately?

DC: Separately. My father had come eight years before my mother, so I believe that was 1911. My (paternal) grandfather (Kashichi) had come a year before (my father). My mother came when she was nineteen and they were married in a proxy ceremony, which, I think, was common at that time. So I think what she had to do was go to some city and sign her name in a registry, and we have this beautiful photograph of her on her wedding day, but she's alone. And in this gorgeous kimono, and just looking absolutely beautiful. But there she was in Japan, and he (my father) was in America waiting for her. And the interesting thing is that his grandfather on the Morita side, so that would have been his (my great grandfather)... it gets kind of confused in there, and I'll explain why it's confused. But he came (before my father), the (my father's) grandfather Morita came in the 1800s and was a houseboy in Watsonville. And so he (my great paternal grandfather) went back to Japan with stories of America. So when my grandfather (Kashichi Morita) decided to immigrate from Japan, he boarded a ship that was headed to Mexico. But during the passage, he learned that the contracts had dried up in Mexico, and so when the boat docked in Seattle, he jumped ship. And so I tell everyone that had it not been for my grandfather (Kashichi) jumping ship, I would be speaking Spanish today instead of English.

And he was quite the maverick (Kashichi), my grandfather. He was a middle child, and he married my grandmother Seki Morita, who was the only daughter of this family. And so there was no one to carry on the Morita name. So he became a mukoyoshi, and it was easier for a middle son to take on that role, because he did not have the status of a firstborn male in the family. And so the firstborn male would have had to be loyal and carry on the family name that he was born into, but my grandfather discarded it and became a Morita. So he was born a Terada, Kashichi Terada, but that was discarded and he became Kashichi Morita, and that was the person I knew. And he married my grandmother, and then my father was born. So my father was born like a year after they were married, and then he had a sister as well, so there were two children, but he was the eldest son.

VY: Your father had a sister?

DC: Yes, and she died in Japan. And it's unfortunate that that relationship was long distance, but my father was very dutiful and always sent money home for the family, and so he was very well-regarded in Japan for his humanity, I guess. So yeah, and my poor mother, she goes to America in 1919 not knowing what to expect except that everyone's telling her that she's going to have a very hard life. And my father takes her to a log cabin outside of the city of Hood River, where there was kerosene lamps and a dirt floor.

VY: Do you think she was prepared for that kind of a life?

DC: I can't imagine that she would have been, no. And if you see her hands in the wedding picture, they're soft and round and fat. But, however, when she was on the journey to America, there was a fortune teller on board, and she sat next to my mother and looked at her hands and said, "You will have many children, but you will never be able to hang on to your money." And so, but I don't know what that means to a young woman, and I certainly don't know, I don't believe my mother really understood the extent of the suffering she would undergo. But she was a very, very dutiful woman, and she was also a very strong woman, very silent, very quiet, but very deeply persevering, I think. And surprising, really surprising in her strength, I think. And certainly she had a great deal of difficulty with Seki, because Seki and my grandfather had come over a year earlier than my father.

VY: That was her mother-in-law?

DC: Yes, Seki Morita. And she was a very, very strong-willed woman. My mother said that she never measured up to Seki's idea of what was adequate in a daughter-in-law. Of course, my mother didn't know how to cook, she did not know how to iron, all these things my mother had to learn, and evidently, Seki was good at everything, and she did everything very, very quickly, which is highly admired in the Japanese culture, I think. And so when my mother didn't do things very well, (Seki) she was not helpful to my mother, she would not speak to her. So my mother would come into the room and she wouldn't speak to her. And I think this was sort of heartbreaking for my mother because here she is alone in America, and there's another woman in the household but that woman doesn't like you. Evidently there was a lack of women, a dearth of women of that age coming over, so my father said that all the men in the neighborhood would come over and stand and sigh and look at my mother and say, "Kirei na," because she was so beautiful. So there weren't a lot of people for my mother to commiserate with, so it was a difficult time. And I write about it, and I found that so difficult as a child, to hear these stories, because you're naturally, as a child, feeling compassion for your mother. And to hear this, I just wanted to tell my grandmother off, but my grandmother had already passed away and she was in Japan when she did so. And I never knew Seki, I only knew my grandfather who was my main caregiver when I grew up in Chicago. So things were difficult, but she (my mother) persevered, the poor woman. And she kept giving birth to these babies, one after the other, and evidently she was criticized by Seki for having three girls.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.