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BY: So what was your father's name?

DR: My father's name was Takeo Tagawa.

BY: And where and when was he born?

DR: He was born in a small town outside of Hiroshima, (Ube), and I think it was in Shimane-ken.

BY: Hiroshima is a ken.

DR: Shimane(-ken), actually, the name of the town was Ube.

BY: Ube, okay.

DR: Ube-shi.

BY: Okay. And do you know when he came to the U.S. and how and why he came to the U.S.?

DR: His parents brought him here when he was around sixteen years old to avoid the Chinese-Japanese war. They did not want him to be a soldier.

BY: Was he their only son?

DR: No. Actually, I had three cousins that were male, and one that was a female. And they just brought him here and left him.

BY: So he had the three brothers?

DR: Yeah, right.

BY: But he was the one that they brought?

DR: Right.

BY: Do you know what the family did in Japan?

DR: They were farmers, they were chicken farmers.

BY: And who brought him?

DR: My grandparents, his parents.

BY: And do you know who they left him with?

[Interruption]

DR: I don't know, he was left with somebody, though, a family, I believe. (Narr. note: At first he was a houseboy.)

BY: So you don't know if it was friends or relatives?

DR: It wasn't friends or relatives. (I think they were hakujin).

BY: Oh, okay. And so he was sixteen years old?

DR: Around sixteen, yes.

BY: All right. And so it's an interesting story that he was just sort of being left here on his own? Do you know what he did after he got here?

DR: I'm not sure. I think he was a houseboy for a while. And then he was working as a cook, I believe in a restaurant down in Little Tokyo.

BY: And he did that for a while and then what did he do?

DR: After the war, he worked at Tashiro Hardware.

BY: So up until the war, do you know...

DR: No. Well, that was before I was born.

BY: Right, you weren't.

DR: But I think he was a cook.

BY: Okay.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.