<Begin Segment 24>

DG: So, okay. So then he, your, your father-in-law came back and for a visit and this was probably then in around 1944.

FN: Yeah, that's it, 1944. He, he just came back for a short, short visit. But and then there was another, another thing that I should explain, too. That Father was one of, one of the Japanese that brought all those cherry, those flowering cherry trees to Seward Park and Greenlake. That was all, he and the Japanese. He was, he was, went to the Japanese Chamber all the time. So they got together and they brought all those cherries from Japan. He knew the source where you could get --

DG: Oh, this is your father-in-law.

FN: Yeah, my father-in-law.

DG: And his name was what?

FN: Isao. No, yeah. Isao. And then also the ones that are in Washington D.C. too. They, they had something to do with all that, too.

DG: Wow.

FN: So I thought that was. When I go down and see it, it's hard to imagine that they did at that time. That's way, in the late '30s.

DG: That's right.

FN: Maybe before that because look how big the trees are now, uh-huh. But that was one thing that Dad, my father-in-law did good. But they thought of that though that cherries would look, that blooming cherries would look nice around Seward Park.

DG: And Washington, D.C. That's wonderful. What a legacy. So did he bring them through the Japanese government association or just himself?

FN: Well that, that I don't know how they, how they made the arrangements to bring them here. But they, he was involved a lot in that, in them and I thought that's. That's the only part that I remember because I, I never went in detail how, how they brought all over. Because that was a lot of cherries.

DG: So when he went back to stay in Japan, he was basically retired.

FN: Well, well yeah. He retired early. He wasn't in the, after I was married, he wasn't in the business very long. I mean he didn't do much work. He was too busy doing other things in town. Like investing in gold and doing all that kind of setting. Maybe one day he would have been rich, I don't know.

DG: And your mother, your mother-in-law stayed here.

FN: Yeah, she stayed here.

DG: Here the whole time, right.

FN: Yeah.

DG: And she didn't want to go back.

FN: No, she didn't want to go back. She was a real quiet type lady.

<End Segment 24> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.