<Begin Segment 3>

TI: Going back... so in this four-plex there were four or five families who were all sort of connected back in Japan from the same city. Did they all come over about the same time, or was it a situation where someone was established and then they had a place where people could then come and help the others out? Can you talk about that a little bit?

FF: Yeah. No, they didn't all come over at the same time. My dad came over -- I think when he was maybe fourteen or fifteen years old -- and he came over with my grandfather. So my grandfather was here for a little while. And what he did and how long he was here, I really don't know, but I know that he was here. The other families, the Kitamuras and the Tokudas, they originally came to the U.S. and worked in the sawmills. And they, they were in a sawmill community in Mukilteo. There used to be a, well, a fairly large Japanese sawmill community in Mukilteo. I don't know what's happened to that site, but you know it was really up a little valley, and it was really a kind of a nice place. I mean, we used to -- I can remember as a kid it was sort of like an all-day adventure. We drove out there to Mukilteo and visited the Tokudas and the other people there. It was kind of an all-day affair. They had, we had dinner out there and stuff.

TI: And at the sawmill, were most of the workers Japanese?

FF: Yeah, yeah, they were practically all Japanese. Except really the, I would guess the supervisory people were probably not Japanese. It was at a time when Mukilteo was really a kind of a quaint little community. There used to be a sawmill dock there, and we used to catch, we used to fish for salmon there with hand lines, none of the fancy poles and stuff.

TI: Going back to the four-plex... I would imagine that because of the connection back in Japan, and then living together in this four-plex that the relationships between the families was pretty close.

FF: Oh, yeah. Yeah, of course, in the old days, I guess nobody locked the doors anyway. But we just went in and out of each others' apartments really like they were our own. As a matter of fact, I think really, I used to just eat with anybody I happened to be with when dinnertime rolled around.

TI: And so with parenting, you're almost parented by a lot of different adults. It's almost communal living in some ways.

FF: Yeah. I never thought about it until recently. In fact, until I talked to you here recently. But the... insofar as parenting is concerned, I really think that George Tokuda's mother had as much, was as much involved in my upbringing as my own mother. 'Cause we used to come home from school and even if my mother wasn't home, I mean, she, Mrs. Tokuda was always home. So we always had someplace to go, to get our after-school ration.

TI: That sounds like a rich experience. And it sounds like -- when we talked about earlier -- it became a very important part of your life, too, that connection, because as you were growing up, your mother became ill. And can you talk a little bit about that and that experience?

FF: Yeah, my mother came down with spinal meningitis. Which at that time was really, well, it was either terminal, or if people recovered from it they, they led a life like a vegetable, I guess. But she died in 1937, I think it was, at the age of thirty-four and I was about twelve or thirteen at the time. And I think that the problem with, or the, the pains of losing a parent was really a little bit softened by the fact that really I had these other people upon which we could, I could fall back.

TI: And so when this happened, when your mother went through the illness and then later died, can you describe some of the things or how the other families, especially in that four-plex, some of the things that they did to help the, especially the children? Because you were twelve, you said your sister was three years older so she was about fifteen and then your younger brother would have been about nine. So, so for children, a very hard age, at times, to lose a mother.

FF: Oh, yeah. But of course at times like that, the practical consideration is really having someone that takes care of your daily needs, like preparing three square meals for you and taking care of your laundry and those kinds of things. And those people were right there with that. I mean, it wasn't like things changed very much. I mean, they were somewhat doing that anyway, and so we didn't have really a very difficult transition there. I guess, really the biggest thing was really the loss of some maternal support. It wasn't like... sometimes, I guess, really there may be some compensatory effect of a father becoming a little more attentive to his kids and stuff like that, in the loss of a, of the mother. But it didn't happen like that in our family.

TI: How about your father? How did your mother's death affect him? Did you see a change in him?

FF: Well, I... I wasn't really very sensitive to that at the time. I don't really think that it affected, of course, he lost a lifelong mate and he had certainly, some huge trauma associated with that. But insofar as our relationship and what I could see of his daily living, it didn't seem to change very much. I mean, he seemed to, he carried on as usual. It wasn't very much difference in that, different in that respect.

TI: How about the larger community? The larger, I'm thinking of the Japanese American community around them. After your mother died, were there times when they showed more support or was there a stigma attached, in terms of losing your mother? I guess the question is, how did your mother's death affect your relationship with the rest of the community?

FF: Well, I think really the, our, my mother's friends were extremely supportive. And probably, if anything, my association with them probably became a little tighter. I don't know beyond that. Yeah, I'm not aware of really any real, I wasn't aware of any real changes, insofar as the broader community interactions were concerned.

TI: And after your mother's death, did your father remarry?

FF: Yeah, he did. It wasn't... yeah, he remarried probably in a couple of years. He did remarry.

TI: Can you describe, can you remember what the process was back during that period? I mean, I'm trying to understand how, that process of how he would find another mate. Would they date, or what would the process be? Or was something arranged?

FF: Well, yeah, that was it. I think really, just like nature abhors a vacuum, I think really people can't stand to see bachelors running around. So there are a number of his friends that seem to be on the lookout for appropriate mates and whatnot. And one of these fellows was, one of his friends down in Portland, suggested he knows one lady who was in all places, not in Portland, but up here, in the valley here. And so he eventually, he eventually did remarry. And so far as our reaction, our situation is a little bit different right now. After we got a few years of maturity and whatnot, your viewpoint changes. But because we had all this, this extended family sort of support, we didn't see, we didn't feel as a family, to need anybody to take care of us in terms of our daily needs, like cooking and whatnot. We became really very independent. I mean, each of us washed our own clothes and did our own ironing. And we pretty much got our own breakfast and, and everything but dinner we pretty much handled ourselves. But, so we didn't, we looked at it purely from our selfish standpoint, not from the standpoint of a father that probably needed a mate. 'Cause we, we didn't really accept his new marriage as really, with really any kind of enthusiasm, but we weren't antagonistic, either. But the... I think really, the part of the Tokudas, for instance, they kind of frowned on it because they thought we were all taken care of. They thought really, he, my dad -- considering his position in the community and whatnot -- they thought he really should marry some more mature person. But, it turned out really that this lady was just a couple of years older than my sister, who was just three years older than me. And so that created a little bit of a furor and whatnot. But eventually they did get married. And looking at it from hindsight, I'm glad he did. I mean, I'm sure that it really (added) a lot to his remaining years. So, right now things are fine.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.