<Begin Segment 2>

DG: And your father's name was what?

NS: What?

DG: Your father's name was?

NS: Moritaro Yanagimachi.

DG: And he's from what ken?

NS: Nagano-ken, Nagano-ken, Japan.

DG: That's just west of Tokyo, right?

NS: Yes.

DG: Kind of...

NS: That was where the Olympics was held this last year.

DG: Right.

NS: I was surprised to -- my brother had a map of Nagano where the Olympics were held, and there's one section right by the railroad station with the name Yanagimachi with this grammar school named after him and then some shops or something. Anyways, I have the map and will show it to you. So he was in... so my mother insisted that he go back to Japan to visit her folks, and so he made a trip in 1925 or so, '-5 or '-6, someplace around in there. He was in the Russo-Japanese war, but at that time he knew he wanted to come back here.

DG: So at the Russo-Japanese War, he was like, twenty-something, right?

NS: Uh-huh.

DG: Because he was born in around 1878? Is that what you said?

NS: '70 or '80, someplace around in there, probably more in the '80s because he wasn't too old. I think he was still in his sixties when he died.

DG: So you said that he came originally at age sixteen.

NS: He came -- well, he went as a sailor on a boat and I think at that time it was an "NYK" boat, and at that time he went to England the first trip.

DG: So NYK stands for?

NS: NYK, "Nippon Yusen Kaisha." He went to England and the reason I know that is that he had a piece of red flannel that he had for a long time. And I remember getting -- my mother making a jacket for me out of that red flannel that he had gotten in England years and years ago and that he probably brought it back to my grandmother. And then my grandmother came to the United States when my mother went to visit and I was about two or three years old.

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