<Begin Segment 13>

TL: Can you talk a little bit about how your mother came to move to Sacramento, since you had been born in Hollywood?

AT: My mother always had restaurant business, one or the other different places in Los Angeles and Hollywood. And so, in her restaurant, she was handling Japanese sake. And there was a big dealer in San Francisco, a wholesaler man. He would go to Sacramento, Los Angeles, Fresno, and different towns to sell his sake. And so this person... I was told later that he knew of Kyotani and my stepfather later and my mother separately, but he knew these people. So here was widow -- not widow, a woman with children, and then Kyotani didn't have wife, so he put these two together. It was not -- they didn't find each other; they were introduced. So mother probably felt it's about time to have a nice family for us, so she married him. And then when she went to Sacramento, she told Kyotani that she has to go back to Japan once more to settle what to do with the two children in Japan. But she decide to bring me back 'cause my younger brother was like five, six years younger than I, and she thought maybe I could help him with the housework and growing up together so I came back with her.

TL: So Kyotani is the third husband?

AT: Uh-huh.

TL: And then the second one, can you talk a little -- that was Glen's father?

AT: Uh-huh.

TL: Can you describe what you've heard about him? I guess you never met him.

AT: My brother, Glen, his Japanese name is Gentaro. His father is from a very nice family from Shizuoka who went to London to study. And after he graduated from school, instead of going back to Japan by way of Indian Ocean, he crossed Atlantic and landed near New York and travel to Los Angeles. That's where my mother, he met my mother. And he kind of liked her, I think. So he stayed on and decide to marry her. But, after he passed away, my brother -- Glen's father passed away in Los Angeles -- my mother brought his ash back to Shizuoka. That's when mother and Glen came back to Japan.

TL: Oh, all at the same time.

AT: Uh-huh. It was too bad that he passed away 'cause he was from very nice family.

TL: How was your mother received by his family when she brought the ashes?

AT: Well, because their son is dead and this woman is from America, so I think the family gave her, give my mother substantial amount of money to tell her to raise this boy yourself instead of accepting this little child to the family. I went to Yokohama with my aunt when my mother returned with my younger brother and also went to Shizuoka family with them. And it was a kind of mansion that you only see in the movies, huge gate and a beautiful huge garden, and in the distance you find two, three, houses. Yes. It was a very well known family in that area. So I can see why that the grandmother... probably would like to keep the child, but she probably thought it was better for mother to raise him herself. She was given substantial amount of money, I think.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.