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PW: Today is April 15, 2022, we are in the office of the late Lawrence Ferlinghetti, owner and founder of City Lights Books in San Francisco. My name is Patricia Wakida for Densho, and on camera we have Brad Shirakawa. Today I'm interviewing Paul Yamazaki. Thank you so much for agreeing to this interview. So let's just start with your immediate family and their background. First, when and where were you born?

PY: I was born 1949, April 17th, Cincinnati, Ohio.

PW: And what was the full name that was given to you when you were born?

PY: Paul Andrew Yamazaki.

PW: Tell me what your father's name was and where was he born?

PY: So, James Nobuo Yamazaki, Los Angeles. I don't know which hospital he was born in.

PW: Can you tell me anything about his parents, would have been your grandparents?

PY: So his father came over, John Misao came over in 1904, was in San Francisco for the earthquake. Took the bounty that was being offered to Asian Americans to leave San Francisco anywhere. So he came to Los Angeles, and he also had patrons, Caucasian patrons down there.

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PW: So your grandfather came to the United States, and he had a special occupation?

PY: He became an Episcopal priest. Family legend says he's the first graduate from, Japanese graduate from Yale seminary in New York, I forget the name, the specific seminary. His wife, Mary Tsune, so they're from Matsumoto. She was an orphan, and they were introduced by white Christian missionaries. And so he was here for ten years before Mary Tsune was able to immigrate, and they were actually, by that time he was an Episcopal priest and he was married here in San Francisco at Grace Cathedral.

PW: Did they have children besides your father?

PY: Eldest son John, who also became an Episcopal priest. My dad was the next, and then a younger brother, Peter, and then a sister Louise. So the family was kind of... both John and Peter were Goldwater Republicans, and James and Louise were, well, New Deal Democrats, I think, is the term. And even more extreme, they were Henry Wallace Democrats.

PW: And they were pretty much based in Los Angeles for the prewar period?

PY: Right.

PW: What neighborhood did they live in, do you know?

PY: Yeah, Uptown, so, like, Normandie and Olympic. And so that was... so my mother was raised in Boyle Heights, but they moved to about 27th and Hoover around, somewhere during the Depression, because she ended up going to Manual Arts instead of Roosevelt.

PW: Tell me, let's go to your mother. What was your mother's full name?

PY: Akiko Hirashiki. So Okinawans, her parents came from Naha, around Naha.

PW: And where was she born?

PY: She was also born in Los Angeles. There again, I don't know which hospital, but she was raised in Boyle Heights. So they were just up the slope from Evergreen Cemetery over on East First, and that's where both sides, Hirashikis and Yamazakis are all buried, or interred.

PW: Do you know much about her family?

PY: Her father was a wholesale produce grocer and he came over in 1911. Worked for a short time in San Francisco and also moved south to Los Angeles and became a very successful wholesale food broker, had a lot of connections with Terminal Island. And so he helped get provisions for incoming Japanese, both merchant and naval. So he was rounded up on December 8th.

[Interruption]

PW: And what about her siblings? Was it a big family?

PY: She had an elder sister, Teri, and a younger brother Jimmy. So Teri was already in New York by 1941, so she was not incarcerated. So the family was really split up. So Teri's in New York, her father is, I forgot which camp in Texas. He spent over a year there before he was reunited with the family. And they were at Manzanar.

PW: And what about the brother? The brother also went to camp?

PY: Yeah. So he was a teenager. So Jimmy, I think, had a good camp, like many of the teenagers did. He was able to be kind of very independent. But he ended up enlisting in the army. Never went overseas, because he was still really young, but he ended up in the occupation forces in Tokyo.

PW: Do you know when your mother was born, just to give me an idea?

PY: 1924. My dad was born 1916.

PW: So tell me what your mother's personality was like.

PY: She was quiet. Very supportive, just always kind of very artistic, that seemed to run in the family. Teri was a pianist at Juilliard. If she had been born at another time, she might have been more career-oriented. Her husband was Minoru Yamasaki, and so she ended up kind of raising the kids and teaching piano privately. We have some early recordings for her, and I'm no expert, but she was a very proficient and excellent pianist.

PW: So she moved to New York to go to school?

PY: Yeah, she went to Juilliard. So it shows you, kind of, the economic substance of the family at that point. In the middle of the Depression, they were able to send the two eldest daughters to college, and Teri to Juilliard.

PW: Do you know how she met Minoru Yamasaki?

PY: I don't know specifically, but there was a circle of Asian and Asian Americans in New York around that time, and (Isamu) Noguchi was part of that circle. And my mom eventually was on the outskirts of that when, after she left camp, and she went to New York.

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