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BN: Okay, all right. So we're here in Pasadena, California, it's March 28, 2022, and we're here to interview Frank T. Sata. My name is Brian Niiya and I'll be interviewing Frank with Bryan Takeda, so there's two Brians here, the videographer is Yuka Murakami. And we're going to get started with Bryan Takeda, starting with the early life of Frank. So take it away.

BT: Thank you.

[Interruption]

BT: So, Frank, let us know a little bit about yourself by first telling us when were you born, where, and a little bit about your parents.

FS: Born March 20, 1933. My father was from Kagoshima, Japan. My mother was born in Oakland, and stayed here until she returned to Japan for going to school in Japan. I believe she was being groomed to marry my father in Japan because she studied the fine arts of Japan, koto and things like that. My father, being from Kagoshima, had a very strong personality, and I think influenced my mother in how I should be raised. So it made a clear impact on my life in that I think he's responsible for naming me Franklin, and it's the same year that Roosevelt was inaugurated. And then my middle name is Tadakuni because, as I learned in time, only four or five years ago, that our family traces back to the Shimazu clan, and we were given the name Sata. So that's a result of maybe quality of persistence that perhaps I learned from my father. And I made an effort to discover my roots, which I did. The Sata name comes from the southernmost tip of Kagoshima island, and that's an area called Cape Sata. So that gives us the, only a few years ago, I was fortunate to find my roots.

BT: Where were you born? What city were you born in?

FS: Okay, I was born in Los Angeles, and I believe on the west side somewhere, I'm not sure.

BT: And then you mentioned that your mom was kind of groomed to join the Sata family. Did they know each other, did those families know each other prior? Was it an arrangement marriage?

FS: Well, my grandfather on my mother's side was an educator. He had a school, he was the principal of a school, I believe, a women's school. And he married this student, my grandmother, and I don't know exactly the timing of that, but apparently, that was a no-no. So he had to come over here, and so that's one of the reasons my mother was born here. And we believe that the family, my grandfather on my mother's side, needed to borrow money. Because my father's side grandmother and family were better established, you might say, because they were descendants of the Shimazu clan. And it's my understanding that they might have loaned some money to my mother's family, so that she could have been a dowry to my father.

BT: I see.

FS: Because (my mother) was fifteen years younger, and she was born in Kumamoto, Japan, but still the same island of Kyushu, of course. [Narr. note: She was called back to Japan for high school.]

<End Segment 1> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.