<Begin Segment 1>

BY: Today is March 20, 2023, and I'm interviewing Chisao Hata. My name is Barbara Yasui, and our videographer is Dana Hoshide. And we are doing this interview in the Densho studio in Seattle, Washington. So we're going to go ahead and get started. Can you please tell me your full name, the name that you were given at birth? Let's start that way.

CH: The name that I was given at birth was Joyce Kathleen Hata.

BY: Okay, and I know that your name has changed. Can you please talk about that a little bit?

CH: Well, I think my search for identity and that whole journey led me to going to Japan, studying a lot of personal history, and I just really wanted a Japanese name, and I wasn't given one at birth. So when I went to Japan, I actually, it was part of my quest to find a new name, but none of the names people were, in the family were recommending, they didn't resonate with me. One day, it sort of dawned on me that I always felt this closeness to my grandmother's name, who I never knew, Chisao. So I think it was in '85, I had a ceremony and changed my name to Chisao.

BY: So now you are?

CH: Chisao Hata, I go by Chisao Hata for many years now.

BY: Okay. And when and where were you born?

CH: I was born in Des Moines, Iowa.

BY: And when?

CH: 1950, August 27, 1950.

BY: And what generation are you?

CH: I'm Sansei.

BY: Okay. So you said that you didn't know your grandmother Chisao. Can you tell me anything about her?

CH: So Chisao was my mother's mother. She was a "picture bride," settled in Hood River with my grandfather, Gunichi Tamiyasu. And she had my mother almost a year after she arrived here, and then she continued to have children every year and she died in childbirth with her ninth child when my mom was sixteen.

BY: And do you know much about her husband, your grandfather?

CH: I know a little bit, but not a lot, because I lived in Iowa and I didn't get a chance to really grow up in that community or know them. I met him maybe three times, I think, and so went to Hood River.

BY: And what about your grandparents on your father's side? Did you know them at all?

CH: No, because they had passed by the time I was born.

BY: Okay. And again, you were in Iowa.

CH: I was kind of far away.

<End Segment 1> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.