<Begin Segment 12>

BN: And then the cleaner's, it was the same name as before the war, it was a different location.

JF: Different location. My mom says she left me on the ironing service whenever a customer came in. So she would leave me there -- there's no side rails on this thing, ironing board. And then she would dash out to the front to take care of the front customers, and then come back to find me still there, safe and sound, didn't make that four-foot drop onto the concrete floor.

BN: At least that you know of.

JF: Yeah. And so that's why I had a flat head -- that's what she says. [Laughs] Kept me in there, kept me on the board.

BN: Do you remember the dry cleaners?

JF: No, not at all.

BN: Just what you've heard.

JF: The customers would also race in to say, "Hey girlie," -- that's what they called my mom -- "hey girlie, your daughter's out there. She might get hit by the traffic." They would say that about me when I was in diapers and crawling, she had to leave her pressing duties in order to run out and retrieve us from the sidewalk, because didn't want to get us smashed by cars. [Laughs]

BN: Were there just the two of you?

JF: Yeah, my sister and myself.

BN: And then we talked about this a little earlier, but I wanted to get back to this. You did not have a Japanese middle name like I'd say most Sansei.

JF: I did for a couple minutes.

BN: Did your sister?

JF: Yes, she did. She was given my grandmother's middle name, Aki, and my uncle Nori, his full name was Noriaki. His middle name was, of all things, Hiram. Don't ask me why. I tried to find out why, but who knows? And then Harvey's middle name was... good grief, I'm drawing a blank. Anyway, it was a Japanese name. So let's see. My mother... my father's father, my grandfather, so it was Otohiko Furumura. And so when I was born, first boy in the family, my father says, "I want him to have my initials, Jack Taro Furumura, JTF." So Jeffrey, okay, they agreed on that. And then for the T, my dad said, "Tadahiko," I guess because rhymes with Otohiko, there's some onomatopoeia or whatever you call that stuff. Anyway, my mother said, "Tadahiko, that's too Japanesey." [Laughs] "Let's just shorten that to 'Todd,' or, the way it looks, T-A-D, Tad," like in tadpole. So that's how I got my name. So for a few seconds there, I did have a real Japanesey name, but then my mother put her foot down. I guess she got that from her mother who put her foot down when her hair froze. All these critical moments in time that change things forever.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.