Densho Digital Repository
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Helen T. Sasaki Interview
Narrator: Helen T. Sasaki
Interviewer: Patricia Wakida
Location: Emeryville, California
Date: April 7, 2022
Densho ID: ddr-densho-1000-505-2

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PW: Let's stay with your mom for a little, for a moment. So she was born in the United States, but her parents were born in Japan.

HS: Yes.

PW: Do you know which prefecture they came from?

HS: Yes. They were both... both grandparents were from Aichi-ken and near or in Nagoya.

PW: And do you know anything about your mom's parents, mom's family before they came to the United States?

HS: My grandfather, their name was Sato, as of course my mother was, I had heard that he was a youshi. So the Sato comes from my grandmother. And I don't know what his name was before he changed to Sato.

PW: Can you explain for people what youshi is?

HS: A youshi is someone who, many times a family has only girls. So when another family where they're going to be, if she's going to get married, they would ask a man who has already a brother, and their name is going to be perpetuated. They would ask him if he would change his name to the bride's name. And so that's why my mother's (last name) was Sato and she never changed it from Sato.

PW: Do you know what kind of work your mother, the Sato family did?

HS: My mother's father, I'm not sure whether it was, from the time they were young (...). But my mother, when we went to Japan for the first time (in the early 1950s), my mother's sisters (were living there) -- we visited my mother's family, but it was actually my mother's sister and her husband who ran a clock watch shop. He sold watches and clocks, and he also repaired them. And I don't know that it was my grandfather's business, I don't know that, but it was my auntie's and her husband's business.

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