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TI: You said something else in terms of, so your grandmother's father was part of the Japanese Association.

LI: Right.

TI: So your grandmother, it sounds like, was in Yakima before your grandfather?

LI: No. My great-grandfather, my grandmother's father, was in Yakima. He had left my grandmother and her sister in Japan to live with her grandfather, who was like a big landlord kind of guy. So he had a farm, he had a lumber mill, he had a silk farm, and he was also a samurai. He was kind of, because he didn't have anybody else to take over his operation, he was teaching my grandmother the ways of the samurai, as well as a way to manage the operation. And so she was the oldest of her siblings, and she and her younger sister remained in Japan while my great grandfather -- Kiyoshi Morikawa was his name -- he came to the U.S., I believe it was after the Russo-Japanese war.

TI: Early 1900s.

LI: Yeah. So I'm thinking closer to 1905. And it was kind of funny because my great, great-grandfather did not have any children. So he adopted his niece, (Kazue), to take over the family name, and then he adopted Kiyoshi to marry his niece. So I don't know how that works, and that's kind of the way it was with my grandmother, who kind of explained that. And so it's kind of different, I guess, but that's Japan.

TI: That's so interesting. But Kiyoshi, rather than staying in Japan to kind of do things, he came to Yakima.

LI: Oh, yeah.

TI: And do you know why he came to Yakima?

LI: I think he was, like, quite adventurous, and coming from an affluent family. He actually had a manservant in the Russo-Japanese War. [Laughs] So what a manservant does in a war, I don't know. So I think that he came to the United States for adventure. And my grandmother was kind of upset about it, so she would always tell me that he was a playboy, (probably because he left her and her younger sister in Japan while he left for America).

TI: Okay. So she was talking about her father?

LI: Her father, yeah.

TI: So she was in Japan with her younger sister, you said, and her father was out traipsing around.

LI: Right.

TI: Furthermore, he was actually talking to her future husband because he recruited him to come to Yakima and probably got to know him in Yakima.

LI: No, he got... I think they were friends in Japan.

TI: Oh, in Japan.

LI: Because I think they were about the same age. So my guess, and when I visited Japan, they were both in the same village. So my guess is they were friends in Japan. And so when Kiyoshi came to the U.S., and it was kind of weird because my grandmother always told me that her grandfather, her father, Kiyoshi, was a playboy. And so when I thought, wow... and when John Baule from the Yakima Museum told me, "Oh, did you know he was the first president of the Yakima Japanese Association?" I thought, "Oh, how could that be? He was a playboy." [Laughs] But then I read somewhere else that said, "Oh, those Japanese associations were first formed as social clubs," and so then it made sense. But my mother, my grandmother always talked about him as a playboy. [Laughs]

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