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AI: Excuse me. I was going to ask you moth-, about your mother as well. Where was she from, and...?

CN: Oh, they, he was from Fukuoka, and my mother is also from Fukuoka. And the two families -- at this present time -- by car they live about ten minutes away from each other. And...

AI: So, very close.

CN: So, very, very close, and the family crest on both sides of the family, it's the same.

AI: How interesting.

CN: So I've decided that they, years ago, belonged to the same tribe, I guess. But my, my mother came here with my fath-, no. My father was, when he was twenty-eight years old, called back to Japan, that they had, they had a young lady that they wanted him to marry, so he went back and married my mother. And they came back here, and he brought her back here to Seattle.

AI: Do you know approximately when that was that she came over?

CN: Yeah. She was born in 1900, and she was just graduated from high school, so she was, that was 1918.

AI: Well, that was rather unusual for farming families to have daughters that went all the way through high school at that time, wasn't it?

CN: Well, I guess. But anyway the whole family -- from what I understand, and also when I went back as a grown-up, I did ask questions, and they they were all, went through high school. And my, my uncles got their education, too, in Tokyo and so, and part of the family on both sides have located in Tokyo, majority of them in the 1920s. And not all of them because my mother is one of twelve. She was the oldest of twelve, and when I went, nine of them were still living and nine of them are still living. So, and one was, died when she was just an infant. My aunt, my oldest aunt, died during World War II as did my mother; and then there was one aunt who died when she was in junior high school. So, and my father was one of six.

AI: So your father had a brother who also had immigrated to the U.S. at one time, and then did your mother also have any siblings that immigrated to the U.S.?

CN: No. She had a father who wanted to see what this was all about so he came and spent about two years, is all, and didn't think that it was for him or his family and so that's, that's that, I guess.

AI: Do you know whether your parents intended to go back to Japan at first or whether, do you know whether they had decided to stay?

CN: Well, I think, though they didn't talk about it much, I think they did expect to go back because my sister, who is four years older than I -- well, if she were living, she'd say, "No, it isn't exactly four years," it's not quite four years older than I -- was sent to, was taken back to Japan after she finished kindergarten here. She went to Bailey Gatzert School. And it was in July of that year that she and my father and mother and I went to Japan so she could start first grade in Japan. And my mother fully intended to stay just a few months, but, and I was two at the time. And we stayed there until a couple, well, not even two months before I was to start kindergarten.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.