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Title: Elliot Yoshinobu Horikoshi Interview
Narrator: Elliot Yoshinobu Horikoshi
Interviewer: Patricia Wakida
Location: Emeryville, California
Date: April 6, 2022
Densho ID: ddr-densho-1000-503-15

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PW: And what about your parents then? Did they... so from Toronto they came to your wedding, but then what happened to your parents?

EH: Okay. So then they stayed in Toronto from 1968 to 1973. And I don't know why they moved, but what happened was that Canada, after the war, opened up their entry for immigrants quite a bit. And so a lot of people from Japan moved to Canada, and so they needed a Japanese-speaking minister. And I think the one that was there had retired, so they needed a new one, and that's the job that my dad took. Because that church actually happened to be larger in population than any of the churches in the Oakland, or in the California area. But then they left that, and then in 1973, my parents took the job in San Jose, at the San Jose church, the Methodist church there. And they stayed there until 1978. And actually, at that time, my dad kind of retired, but he took a job in Japan, at a Japanese church in Japan. And they stayed there from 1978 to 1981.

PW: Do you know where in Japan?

EH: It was in (Tsurukawa), Tokyo, I forgot the town. Because we went over to visit them when they were there. But I think they wanted to see what it was like in Japan. I don't know if I told you this, but my parents went back to Japan in the '60s on a visit. Because they had left in 1938, so that was what, over twenty years. And one of my uncles in Japan told my dad, "Your Japanese sounds really funny." Or maybe not funny, but different. Because it's almost prewar Japanese, it's not current. And I always remembered when, and they all thought that was funny. So they were there for, until 1981, yeah. And then '81, they decided to retire and they moved back into Berkeley. And so they lived in Berkeley for a couple years. They had an apartment '81 to '83 and then they moved from '83, they moved to a house in Oakland, '83 to '88. By then, they were getting too old to live together, I mean, to live separately, and so that's when Kathy offered them to come to her house in Richmond where she lives. And so they moved in 1988 to Richmond and stayed with my sister, because she had room in her house, and that's where they both passed away there.

PW: Did they ever become U.S. citizens? Do you remember anything about redress?

EH: Well, they did have a little problem from when they moved to Canada, getting back into the United States. And actually, Joan's father is a lawyer, and he helped them get the proper paperwork. But they had no desire to become American citizens. Although my mother said that, you know the no-no/yes-yes, not story, but they both put "yes-yes." Because at that time, they were not happy with what was happening in Japan becoming too militaristic, and they felt that it was better to stay in the U.S. at that time. Because the people that voted no, a lot of them were sent back to Japan. And the situation in Japan right after the war was terrible and there was no food, no jobs. It took a long time for Japan to recover. And especially if you're from the U.S., I think they were not welcome a lot. And they had no... my dad once said, because I asked him why he never became a U.S. citizen, he didn't want to be a second class citizen in the U.S. That's the way he felt. But when they were living in Japan, I told my parents that they should move back to the U.S. after they finish in Japan at that church because his whole family is here. All the kids are here, the grandkids are here. They said one of the reasons they did go to Japan, because his mother was still alive, and she passed away a couple years after that. And she was, I think she was in her hundreds when she passed away, so she had lived a long life. But he had a few, my mother had a few relatives in Japan, but he had none at that time, I don't think, or maybe just one, he had one sister that was living in Japan. But the rest of his immediate family was here in the United States and so it made sense. So that's what they did when they came back.

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