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BY: So let's talk about your parents. What was your father's name?

CH: So my father was born Tadashi Hata, but he went by Ted. And my mom was Kesaye. And evidently she was born with the umbilical cord kind of around her chest, so they gave her a Buddhist name of Kesa, kesa is the cord, so it's Kesa, but she went by Kay. So it's Ted and Kay Hata.

BY: And when and where was your father born, do you know?

CH: My father was born in Honolulu, Hawaii.

BY: Okay, do you know when?

CH: 1905.

BY: 1905, okay. And where did he grow up?

CH: As far as I know, he grew up in Hawaii.

BY: Okay. At some point he came to the mainland, though? Do you know...

CH: He came to the mainland to go to school, and he ended up graduating from USC, I'm not sure what year.

BY: Okay. So he went from Hawaii to Los Angeles, it sounds like.

CH: Uh-huh, Los Angeles.

BY: Do you know... so he graduated from USC. Do you know much about his educational background or his occupation?

CH: Not in those years, but I have a great big trunk at home that I found that was open that has a lot of information about him. So I still have yet to discover a lot about him. But after camp, when my parents resettled in Des Moines, he became a refrigeration service and he did air conditioning.

BY: All right. And so kind of backing up a little, you referred to him, how they resettled in Iowa. But before that happened, so was he incarcerated?

CH: Yes, uh-huh. He went to Santa Anita, and I'm not sure what the order, but I think he ended up in Pomona Assembly Center, and then my mom, from her notes, said they had to go through a lot to get him transferred to Poston where my mother was. So he arrived in Poston in August, and they were married in September in Poston.

BY: Okay. And how did he end up in Des Moines, Iowa?

CH: Well, you had to have a job to get out, but my mom had one offer in Boulder, and so I believe she went to Boulder first.

BY: Boulder, Colorado?

CH: Boulder, Colorado. And then I guess she had a job offer in Chicago as well. She didn't like Chicago, so they kind of decided to go back west, but they ran out of gas in Des Moines, Iowa. And then my mom applied to Broadlawns Hospital and she got a job there. She was the first Japanese American nurse at Broadlawns.

BY: So they really ended up in Iowa because of your mom's job more than your dad's job.

CH: And running out of gas, yeah. [Laughs]

BY: Running out of... so serendipitous thing, I guess.

CH: Yeah, I think they took that as a sign because it was gas rationing.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.