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BN: So we're here on October 4, 2022, in Granada Hills, California, and we're interviewing Robert Moriguchi at his home. Yuka Murakami is shooting the video and my name is Brian Niiya. And we'll start with Robert, or Bob.

RM: Bob.

BN: Bob. As we often do, I'd like to start with your family. So I wonder if you could tell me a little bit about your parents, your mother and father, and what you knew about them even from... in your dad's case, from Japan as well.

RM: I was born in San Francisco, but they were farming in Half Moon Bay. They were farming with... my grandfather was there also from Japan, and then the number five son was there, number six son was there, and my father was number seven son, number eight son. Those were all farming together in Half Moon Bay. So I think when I was born, Half Moon Bay is about maybe 30 miles from San Francisco, and I don't know if my mother spent the day in San Francisco at my other uncle, number two, who was in San Francisco. Anyway, that's when I was born. And how our family came to America is that in 1915, San Francisco had the Panama-Pacific Exposition to celebrate the opening of the Panama Canal. And that was a huge exposition in the north end of San Francisco by the Golden Gate Bridge, and it occupied quite a bit of that territory, part of the Presidio there. And in the Japanese pavilion, my grandfather sent his second son to the exposition to display our somen. This is the ibonoito somen, which was the most popular somen in Japan, which was started by my great-grandfather about 1860s. But it was a co-op, it wasn't a family business, it was a co-op. So it's Ibo-gun, like a county of Ibo that was occupied by the workers there. And since my great-grandfather started it, my grandfather at that time was the president of the co-op. So he chose his second son to come to the exposition to display the somen.

[Interruption]

BN: Maybe go back to the somen.

RM: Okay, since my great-grandfather started it, my grandfather was the president of this co-op. So he sent his second son, Kinjiro, to the exposition to display and to promote the somen. Now, the somen was already being sold here, so in fact he headed to Seattle first to settle an account with a firm, and I don't know what the name of the store was, but they had complained that there was some bugs in the somen, so they wouldn't pay their bills. So my uncle went over there to settle that problem, then he came down to the exposition. And when he looked around, he said that this might be a good place for him and his (brothers) to start their lives. Because they had been planning to immigrate somewhere. They were preparing already, my uncle said that they had learned plumbing -- not plumbing, but carpentry and various farming and things like that, so they were preparing to immigrate. And, in fact, they almost went to Indonesia at one point, however, that deal fell through. And then they were almost going to go to Brazil, and that deal fell through. And also, Hyogo Prefecture was not too keen about people leaving. They said, "Well, there's plenty of jobs here," you know, Kobe was a very busy port, and so they said, "You people don't have to go." So it was not encouraged to leave. So there's very few people from Hyogo Prefecture in the United States.

However, my uncle decided this might be a good place for him and his brothers to start their new lives, so he told his father in Japan to come and take a look, because he was only twenty-one years old. So he told the father to come and take a look. So my grandfather came in 1916 and decided this would be a good place. So he started calling his sons over one by one, so the number five son came first. Now, in Japan, the chonan, the firstborn inherits everything that the family has, but then they're responsible for taking care of their parents. So the number one son took care of the family, and the number three son went youshi, which is to go to a family, married into a family that didn't have any son, so he took over that family name. So that was in, he went to a nearby town, what was the name of it? I can't remember. [Narr. note: Kogeta] And then the fourth son went to Kyoto and started a jewelry business. So the number five son came, and then in 1919, the number six son, Torao, and my father Tatsumi, my father was thirteen, his brother was fifteen, they came together. And my father turned fourteen when the boat landed. But it was an interesting thing that he told me, he was looking for the Golden Gate, the Kinmon, you know, that means "golden gate" in Japanese. So he was looking for the Golden Gate, couldn't find it. This is before the Golden Gate Bridge. but anyway, that was the story he told me. One of my uncles said that when he landed, he was surprised at the cows that was so huge. But that's getting to the side issues.

BN: So he was very young, he was fourteen when he came over.

RM: Yeah.

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