Densho Digital Archive - Rae Takekawa Interview (denshovh-trae-01-0001)

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AI: Today is May 8, 1998, and we're speaking with Rae Takekawa. My name is Alice Ito, the interviewer. We're in Vancouver, Washington. Matt Emery is the videographer. And Rae, I just wanted to start off our interview from the very beginnings, and ask a little bit about your parents. And maybe you could just start by telling us your mother's and father's name, and where they grew up, where they came from.

RT: Okay. My dad, of course, is Tom Takeo Matsuoka and he was born in Hawaii, but was raised in Japan; and he was born in 1903. He's still alive. My mother, on the other hand, was born in Bellevue. She was probably one of the first Nisei to be born in Bellevue, and she was born in 1908. She was raised in Bellevue, she went to high school in Bellevue, and lived a short time in Seattle after getting married, but actually she was one of the pioneers, I would say, among the Nisei in Bellevue. They lived in Bellevue 'til evacuation.

AI: And, excuse me. What was your mom's name?

RT: Oh, my mother's name is Kazue and her last name was Hirotaka. And they spent quite a big portion of their lives after evacuation in Montana, and my mother died in Montana in 1986. And...

AI: Now, when was it that they got married?

RT: They were married in 1926 in Seattle at the courthouse, and they had a big party afterwards, but they had a very simple wedding.

AI: And when were you born?

RT: And I was born in 1927, in August.

AI: So as far as you know, what were your parents doing and where were they living at that time when you were born?

RT: My father was working for a furniture factory in Seattle. My mother was probably -- by this time she had quit work; she had been working in Seattle. And I think that shortly after they were married, they moved back to Bellevue, and they were living with my grandma -- our "baachan," as we called her -- and the rest of my mother's family. And we all lived together in one farmhouse, which, of course, no longer exists. And the farm itself no longer exists, because it is now the City of Bellevue, rather than the small town or hamlet of Bellevue, which was what it was when I was growing up.