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TI: And since we're talking about your grandmother, tell me her name.

LI: Her name was Shigeko Morikawa.

TI: Okay. So your dad's here with Shigeko's father.

LI: My grandfather, yeah.

TI: Grandfather, and they're here. So how does she come to Yakima? How does she marry your father?

LI: My grandfather? Well, my grandfather came to this reservation, this is the Yakama Reservation, and he broke ground out of sagebrush, and he and his brother Tomoji worked together to clear 120 acres of ground on the reservation. And I'm told that Japanese pioneers were credited with breaking over 20 thousand acres of ground out of sagebrush on the Yakama Reservation. And so because he was Japanese, because of the alien land laws at the time, he could not become a citizen. And because he could not become a citizen, he could not own land. So when other growers in the area were settling the ground and breaking things out of sagebrush, they might buy it for a buck an acre, cleared the sagebrush but they owned it. The Japanese could not become citizens, so they could not own the land. So I don't know how he came to the reservation and why, but I'm suspecting that he was recruited, the whole Japanese community was recruited in some kind of organized fashion. Because Kiyoshi and the people in Yakima, Kiyoshi came to Yakima and he had a hotel and a candy store. And there was a block in Yakima that was set up with stores and hotels, laundry facilities, Japanese grocery stores. And I believe that they were set up to accept the immigrants who were coming to break the ground out of sagebrush on the Yakama Reservation. The town of Yakima is not on the reservation. So I believe they settled first in Yakima and then once they got set up, they were there to house and to equip the immigrants coming to break the ground out of sagebrush.

TI: So this is your great grandfather who had the store.

LI: Yes.

[Interruption]

TI: So Lon, we were just talking about, you said, this area and historic Yakima where there was a concentration of Japanese businesses set up. And you were going to talk about where that was located. And this was your great grandfather had, you said, a candy store?

LI: Yeah, a candy store and a hotel. And so, yeah, there was a number of Japanese businesses in that area. That was located south of Yakima Avenue, west of South First Street, east of Front Street, and north of Chestnut. So it was a one-block area, and just kind of across the tracks from where the Chinese community was. And both of those communities were closely located to the railway, which makes sense for that time of the century.

TI: And so your great grandfather was a real pioneer for the Japanese community in this area, Yakima, and it was early. Because given his age, so he was a little bit, probably, older than most people, too.

LI: Well, I'm guessing he's probably pretty close in age to my grandfather, maybe slightly older. Because there was an eighteen year difference between my grandmother and my grandfather. And so when my grandfather, I guess, broke the ground out of sagebrush with horses, 1920 was probably the peak of his career. You know, he had a Stevens car, he had a tractor, he had the second fastest hitch in the valley, and that was when he went back to Japan and brought my grandma back. And so part of the deal was, since she was coming from quite a privileged background, was that she wanted to come to this country and only if she could study to be a concert pianist. And so when she came back, she spent like two weeks shopping in Seattle, and she spent some time in the gardens of Masahiro Furuya. And so Masahiro Furuya had like a vacation home for his employees on Bainbridge Island. And so I have pictures of her in Furuyas' gardens there, and so she spent two weeks in that Seattle area shopping, and then she came and spent six months, and spent six months studying music and voice from a Professor Dow, and his partner was Toll, and they were in the city of Yakima. And so Professor Dow was a piano instructor, and Toll was a voice instructor. And so coming from a privileged household in Japan, and then spending the time shopping and doing all that stuff, they also... my grandfather bought her a piano for their wedding present. And for their honeymoon, they got in their Stevens car and went with several of his friends. I think Mr. Matsushita and possibly his brother were also, they also had some pretty fancy cars, and they took a trip to Yellowstone Park. And from what John Ball, our Yakima Valley Museum former director told me, that was the first car caravan from the Yakima area to Yellowstone Park. And I have a few pictures of people on that caravan as well, so they were very affluent.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.