<Begin Segment 8>

DH: And I asked you this before, too. So your family came from fairly well means from Japan. Did they ever speak of the hardship here when they came because they found they couldn't make their fortune right away and go back?

KN: I don't know if my dad ever wanted to make a fortune and go back. He's never said that. Have you ever heard him say that? I don't think he's ever said that. He knew he couldn't go back because he couldn't get back home to America so, but it was a hard life. Mom used to complain because she really didn't have to be a farmer's wife 'cause she had a good education, and she could have been a teacher. But of all the pictures she's seen of the fellows, she picked my dad, and they were thirteen years apart.

DH: She was an arranged marriage in Japan?

KN: Beg your pardon?

DH: She was an arranged marriage in Japan?

KN: Uh-huh, uh-huh.

DH: Going back to Sam for a second, your parents came when they were married, but your father knew a lot of bachelors who did send for picture brides. Can you tell us a little bit about that experience?

IN: Yeah. Well, many of the people that migrated to America were men and a lot of bachelors and very few women. It was quite unusual to have a family go, but over in Port Blakely there were a number of people with families, but the... eventually a lot of the men wanted to have brides and the way a good many of the women came over were picture brides. A go-between would pick out a prospective bride, and the men would send over pictures of themselves and a lot of it was [Laughs] a lot better looking than they actually were and younger than they actually were. And so the woman came over and sometimes it was not what they expected and some of them went right back to Japan, but many of them stayed and had families and it worked out.

DH: And then, Kay, you were saying that your father also purchased the land, then, in his son's name because of the laws that --

KN: No, he couldn't purchase. We were young yet so he borrowed somebody's name. I'm not too sure whose.

DH: Because he could not own land being an alien.

KN: No.

DH: And he could not become a citizen because of the law, and then eventually they also stopped the picture brides from coming over. They cut off the number of immigrants.

KN: Uh-huh.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.