<Begin Segment 3>

BY: And when did your grandparents come to the U.S.?

TI: So they came at different times. Like many Japanese American families, my grandfathers came to the United States first, as laborers. So they came in the... I'm thinking about the dates, about 1908, 1907, both of my grandfathers, and they came as laborers. They both worked in this area, and then they both -- separately, they didn't know each other -- but they went back and married my grandmothers and then came back to the United States. So on my mom's side, Suyekichi Kinoshita, and went back to Japan and married Akino Kinoshita. What was her maiden name? I can't remember offhand her maiden name. And the interesting thing, and I mentioned the date, I'm blanking right now, but they came right before the Gentlemen's Agreement, that this was a treaty signed by the United States and Japan, so that Japan agreed not to send any more laborers to the United States. And in return, the United States wouldn't allow segregated schools in the United States. Because what was happening in California was that there were segregated schools starting to emerge that held Japanese and Chinese, that was segregated from the white students. And San Francisco was planning to do a similar thing, and the Japanese government stepped in and said that that was not something that they wanted. And out of that came a treaty where Japan agreed to stop allowing the immigration of laborers to the United States, and that was called the Gentlemen's Agreement.

BY: I didn't know about that.

TI: Yeah, so it's really fascinating. So it was, in a sense, an immigration ban. That if my grandfathers tried to come like a year later, would have actually been prevented. Then the loophole for my grandmothers was that if you are married to someone who's already a legal resident, then they could then immigrate. And so that's why my grandfathers could go back to Japan, marry there, and have their wives join them. That was also the emergence of the "picture bride" situation where the only way, at that point, a woman could come to the United States was to be married. So men who didn't have as much money would oftentimes get married by proxy in Japan and then their brides, their "picture brides" could then come over to the United States.

BY: And what attracted them to Washington state?

TI: I'm not sure exactly why Washington state. I asked my parents about... on my dad's side, because it was, in particular, as I started doing oral histories and learning about Japanese American families, oftentimes it was the second son or third son who would be the one that would emigrate from Japan to the United States. Because in Japan, if the family had any land, it would often go to the first son. And so when I started looking at my family's history, on my dad's side, his dad was the first son, and he had younger brothers. And so I was really interested. I said, "Dad, this is kind of unusual isn't it? I mean, why did" -- and I call him Jiichan -- "why did Jiichan come to the United States?" Because the family had land in, it was Kagawa-ken on the island of Shikoku, "Why did he come?" And this was a good chance to learn a little Japanese history, that during that time when he came, Japan was really building up their military. And my dad said, essentially, Jiichan came to the United States to avoid the draft, he was a draft dodger, which I thought was pretty amusing, that he did that. So he came because he didn't want to fight for the Japanese military and came to the United States where he... and as a laborer he did lots of different things. When I was young, we took a trip up to the San Juan Islands, and when we went to Friday Harbor, my dad said, "Well, Jiichan and Baachan worked here." There used to be a salmon cannery, and during the summer they would come up here with the family and they would be the cooks for the workers at the salmon cannery. And then during the other times they would manage hotels in the International District of Seattle right now. So there's all these interesting stories.

BY: What did you hear or learn about the racism that your grandparents faced at that time? Because a lot going on then. I think you know the history all too well, and 1921, the Alien Land Law and all that stuff.

TI: Yeah, so there was all these barriers. And so I know it actually more as a historian. I tried to get personal stories about this, but that first generation was a little bit hazy in terms of all the things they did. But one key thing when they were growing up was the inability to own land. And so that was probably the big thing. Because as I look at pictures of my grandparents, I think in particular -- now jumping over to my mom's side -- my grandfather on that side, Suyekichi. For a Japanese immigrant, he had an interesting job. He was the bell captain at the Rainier Club. So before the war, the bellmen were Japanese. And he was the bell captain, and so why that was a pretty good job was that he was able to get jobs for his friends and other people in the community at the Rainier Club. Because I remember seeing pictures of him, and he was very handsome, but very dapper, I mean, wearing suits. And so I'd ask, "What did he do?" and found out that he worked at the Rainier Club. And so I look at these pictures of them, and for a Japanese family, they look pretty prominent. He had six children, and they're all dressed well, they were leasing a house. And I think in that case, if the laws were such that they could own property, they probably would have had a house and things like that, which they never got around to doing.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2020 Densho. All Rights Reserved.