<Begin Segment 5>

BF: So you had the combination of an oldest son who really, really did plan on going back, I mean and, and had motivation to; and a mother, his wife, your mother, his wife, who being Kibei probably had very strong connections culturally and had a well, a well-to-do family back there. So they, they were sort of unusual in that sense, and they probably were going to go back.

TM: Yeah. And that's why it was kind of a fortunate, but a kind of a match that I, I would have not felt pretty com -- it was probably not very common I'm guessing.

BF: So did he, during that prewar, prewar period, did he then, in the course of business go back to Japan any at all?

TM: Prewar, probably not. But right after the war he went back a number of times. I used to, we used to do business with the ships, the freight ships, freighters. So he used to go back. He loved the freight ships because you could take a lotta stuff back, and it used to be maybe two weeks, but he would go back frequently, so he enjoyed going back.

BF: Now I just want to mention again, your sister. She was sent to Japan much in the same way that your mother's family sent your mother back to Japan so again to be, why? To be trained or --

TM: Probably educated, culturally. Especially if my father really had the desire to go back, it would've been nice to have at least one daughter that could speak Japanese fluently. Who knows. I have a feeling that although they went back, my sister and my, then the youngest brother, Mori, who was only a year old, went back, and I suspect that they wanted to leave my sister only for a couple of years, I'm guessing. And then the war broke out.

BF: Right, right. So let's talk about that. The, your father's business was doing fairly well --

TM: From what I could gather --

BF: At that point...

TM: When he started it was the 1930's, or '28 or something.

BF: Right.

TM: And, and it was, economy wasn't very good.

BF: Yeah, the Depression.

TM: Right, and then it moved in to the Depression. So I think, like most businesses, he was struggling. And it was just as the Depression was ending 1935 or '40, I mean prior to 1940, I'm guessing his business might've started to improve, and that's when the war broke out. So you know it was kind of down and then up and then kind of down again. So, it was a -- that's one aspect that we don't talk about, this whole relocation, which economically these people that were in business were just recovering from the depression when they get hit by something like this. Must have been very devastating. And maybe, I don't know why, but maybe that was the reason why he went to -- we first went to Tule and he had a chance I think to move to Minidoka or other, but he chose to stay there because he considered, continued to consider going back to Japan. I remember receiving letters, him receiving letters from his sisters, I didn't read it, but they were saying well the sisters were discouraging him to come back to Japan because things were not very good and the food was scarce, and thank God he, he chose not to go back.

BF: Yeah. I remember my mother telling me that she overheard her parents discussing whether or not they should go to Japan immediately after they heard about the war breaking out...

TM: Oh.

BF: And they heard about the evacuation orders. They actually considered at that point repatriating or patriating.

TM: Oh, that's the first time I heard that I didn't -- I don't even know if there were ships at that time.

BF: Yeah, it probably, they probably couldn't --

TM: Yeah.

BF: That it, but, she remembers them arguing about it. So your father has -- his business is just starting to pick up, he has a daughter in Japan, and then, then war breaks out. I mean that must have been tremendously stressful.

TM: Right. And probably more so for the mother.

BF: Yeah.

TM: My mother, but that's, those are things that the war caused. And those stories we'll probably never hear about. Real, real stories. The real feelings. But that's probably what makes the Isseis what they were. They had the basic strength and they were given unfortunate opportunity to keep bringing that strength forward I guess. Yeah, when you think about the Isseis, they all suffered so much. I mean in addition to the language and everything else that they suffered all this other stuff. I guess we're fortunate that they didn't -- they continued to retain their values.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 1999 Densho. All Rights Reserved.