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BK: Well, June, perhaps you could start us off by telling us about your parents' life in Japan, just a short summary.

JT: You know, I really don't know very much about their life there. I know that they were just farming -- fishing village, actually, 'cause they lived in Kagoshima which is the fishing area of Japan -- and I'm not sure if they were fishermen or if they just had a farm there. But anyway, they came to the United States, I guess, in about 19', about 1916, I think it was they said. And my mother and my father came and it was a very rough voyage because I remember my mother telling me -- I asked her why she didn't go back or why she... 'cause she had, she had children over there -- and I asked her why she didn't bring them or go back to get them and she said it was just too bad a trip. She said it was so rough and she got so sick that she just couldn't even think about going back again. So therefore, that's why I have sisters in Japan now, 'cause to this day, they have never been over here and my mother, during her lifetime, never was able to go back.

BK: I see, so you had then... they had two children in Japan before they came over to America?

JT: Actually, there were two and my older sister so three all together, I just don't think about my older sister 'cause she's over here. But there are two remaining in Japan now and my oldest sister is here but she was, she was born in Japan and she came here. But, I have to take that back, because the two sisters that were over there, were born over here, so I'm not sure exactly how the sequence of that went. And Mom took 'em back to Japan and then left them over there.

BK: Then she returned to America?

JT: Uh-huh. And then they came back together, my father and my mother. And they left everybody over there at that time because -- for another thing, my uncles didn't have any children so they wanted for Mom to leave them there so they could raise the kids -- which she probably agreed to because of the wild, wild seas and everything when she came over, (as) she was deathly afraid of the water like that.

LH: And what year was this that your mother actually came over to Japan, came to the U.S. and then left your older sisters in Japan?

JT: Yeah, let's see, my sister now is -- the oldest one, is in her nineties -- she is ninety. So she came over when she was sixteen, I think she said. 1922. So that would have made that about 19... 19... well, she was sixteen and then she was, when came over here that would have been sixteen from twenty-two makes it, what, 6? 1906. They must have been born somewhere around 19... late 1900s, is that right? I mean, not late 1900s, in the 19... early 1900s.

BK: Early 1900s.

<End Segment 1> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.