<Begin Segment 1>
BY: Today is April 28, 2022, and I'm doing an interview with Mary Okazaki Kozu at the Lakeshore retirement community in Seattle, Washington. I'm Barbara Yasui and here with me is Dana Hoshide who is doing the videography. All right, so thank you, Mary, for agreeing to speak with us. I want to start with a little bit of background information. So can you tell me when and where you were born?
MK: I was born here in Seattle on June 14, 1931, and I was born at home.
BY: So did a midwife deliver you?
MK: Yes.
BY: Do you know who that was? Has anybody ever said?
MK: (Sumi Tajiri, midwife).
BY: Okay. And what was the name that your parents gave to you when you were born?
MK: It was Mary Hideko Okazaki.
BY: Okay. So Hideko was your Japanese middle name.
MK: Yes.
BY: And what were you called growing up?
MK: At home I was called Hide, of course, being Japanese. But my siblings, they used both names, but mostly Hide because my parents called me Hide.
BY: But when were you called Mary? At school, or when?
MK: Yes, at school.
BY: How about the neighbor kids? What did they call you?
MK: They called me Mary. Yeah, didn't call me... I was called Hideko just at Japanese school.
BY: Okay, or at home by your parents then.
MK: Yeah.
BY: Okay. And so I want to talk a little bit about your father and mother. What was your father's name?
MK: Kazuo Okazaki.
BY: And do you know where and when he was born?
MK: In Okayama, Japan.
BY: Uh-huh. And do you know what year?
MK: 1890.
BY: Okay, all right. And you say Okayama. In the Okayama-ken, do you know the, like, village or city or town?
MK: No, I don't know that, but I know he was on a small rice farm.
BY: So his family owned a small rice farm?
MK: Yes.
BY: So they were a farming family?
MK: Yes.
BY: Okay, all right. And when did he come to the U.S. and why did he come?
MK: Well, he came because he had two older brothers who were sent here to make money and to help pay for the farm. And apparently they both worked for a lumber mill, and they learned wine and women. You know, they stopped sending the money, and so the mother was the strong one, my father always worshipped her because she was strong. She met with creditors each month or whenever they came, and they said, oh, they will send the money but it didn't happen. So she finally had to get a way to get money (...). And (my father) had an older sister, six years older, who had married somebody who was twenty years older than her by an arranged marriage. And so my grandmother, my father's mother, asked the son-in-law if he would sponsor him as being his parents because of the age difference. So that he could go, you know, come to America. And so with some coaching he agreed to it. And so that's how he came over.
BY: So just, I just want to make sure I'm understanding this correctly. So this was your father's older sister's husband.
MK: Yes.
BY: Who was twenty years older than your father's sister, who agreed to sponsor your father to come to America?
MK: And my mother told me later that this man had a brother the same age as my father, but he opted to sponsor him, so my mother always marveled that he would agree to let my father be his son.
BY: So in other words, he didn't pick his own, he didn't choose to sponsor his own brother. Instead he chose to sponsor his wife's brother. And do you know his name, by any chance?
MK: No, I don't know. Oh, the man who...
BY: The man who sponsored you.
MK: His last name was Shiraishi, but I don't remember his... and he passed away when I was six.
BY: Oh, so you don't really remember him.
MK: No. But the only thing I remember is his cremation at Butterworth. I could still see it. I was six or so, and they held me up to a window to see the cremation. And at my age, I was just frightened but scared to say anything because they were all taking their turns and they lifted me. But it's always stayed with me.
BY: It's very vivid in your memory. Well, something like that would be. So then do you know what happened to your father's two older brothers? Did they stay in the U.S. or did they go back to Japan?
MK: I never heard, and my father never talked about them. It was my mother who told me all this.
<End Segment 1> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.