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SF: Okay, I want to ask you about the other community institutions like the churches which probably played a very important role in the community. Can you describe the, how the churches got started and the different kinds and what role they played in the community?

FM: Yeah. In the Seattle area, curiously, the Christian churches got their start first. I think the Baptist church for example had a minister here as early as 1898 or so. And dating back to then, the Methodist church and a couple of others got started. The reason why the Christian churches thrived was that the single male immigrants coming over found themselves in the United States lacking the kind of support network that they had been accustomed to in Japan. The support network in Japan of course has, has to do not only with the family, but the relatives and community groups. In Japan, as you know, especially in the villages and so on, there were all kinds of village groups that, like the neighborhood group and the larger five man group headed. Well, groups of people who would support individual families, individual entities and the immigrant, male immigrants were totally missing that kind of background. The ken of course was here, but they came, their organization got established somewhat later than the period that I'm referring to. So the Christian church which was always evangelical in the sense of trying to do missionary work among those who needed it, move in on the Japanese ethnic community and immediately they create. They do the kinds of things which the Japanese immigrants really needed immediately. Namely, they not only save souls, but they save people physically. They would do things for them so that they would be cared for if they got sick. They created Sunday organizations where groups of people could gather and feel a sense of friendship and intimacy and social support which they were otherwise lacking and particularly, they would create employment opportunities. They had (a) name for some of these young men who were sent out to do housework, (they) were called "mission boys," and they got started from the missions, or churches and (were) sent for housework from there and therefore, they were the mission boys who got started working in that fashion. They also taught English of course. And in the case of women, they, they would teach them sewing and American customs and cooking and whatnot. So the Japanese, or the Christian churches functioned to fill a gap, a vacuum which was created by the fact that the Japanese immigrants didn't have the kind of support group that they were so familiar with back in their own villages and native land. Now the other thing that happened was that the Christian churches of course, as was characteristic in the United States would created their church groups and have their Sunday school classes and so on. Buddhist organizations, as you know in Japan, were not typically organized in that fashion. The characteristic way in which Buddhist, Buddhism was carried on was for families to have their own little family shrine so to speak, but then they would go to the temples on occasion and, and do their obeisance and then go home and that was the nature of their religious contact with the Buddhist organization. It was not a church organization. However, given the success of the Christian churches, very soon the Buddhist churches or organizations realized that they had to create a church organization here similar to the Japanese, the Christian churches in order to win the kind of support that the Christian churches were. So very soon you had these Buddhist churches organizing in a fashion similar to the Christian churches which was not characteristic in Japan. So you'll find that in a sense. [Interruption] ...the Buddhist Sunday school. What do you know, they're singing Japanese hymn to the tune of Jesus Loves Me, This I Know in Japanese and fitted for the Buddhist church. [Laughs] And I, I think that's true.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.