Densho Digital Archive
Friends of Manzanar Collection
Title: Kenji Suematsu Interview
Narrator: Kenji Suematsu
Interviewer: Sharon Yamato
Location: Los Angeles, California
Date: April 19, 2012
Densho ID: denshovh-skenji-01-0019

<Begin Segment 19>

SY: So in the meantime, while you're in the army those three years, really on your own, then your father is, and mother, what were they doing?

KS: My father was still working for the mortuary at the time, I think, and my mother, she was doing housecleaning and that kind of, whatever she could pick up and do. And after I graduated from high -- well, I was in the army, so from there, they had moved from this house in Riverside, east L.A., to a location on Washington and, I forgot what street. It's just on this side of Vermont, I believe, Washington and Vermont area.

SY: Sort of mid L.A.

KS: Bought a home, I think they bought a home. And he says, and my father -- it's a statement I guess a lot of fathers make -- says, "This is the house I'm gonna die in." That's the house he died in. Anyway, but he moved there and it was at that house where he passed away in the early part of the years, and then my mother passed away there in that house, I think while I was still in the, I'm not sure whether I was still in the army or, I'm, yeah, I was still in the army when my mother passed away. My brother took care of all the arrangements and everything else.

SY: So real shortly, within the same time period almost. Several years in between?

KS: I think it was several years between my father's passing away and my mother's passing away. I just don't have the exact time period. My, my wife wrote, written it down a card here, but I probably can give you that later.

SY: You know, I didn't ask you, and it's probably late to do so, but what was your father's full name and your mother's full name?

KS: My mother, my father's was Eijiro, E-I-J-I-R-O, Suematsu. And I don't know if he had a middle name, but my mother's was Miyuki Yamauchi.

SY: Yamauchi. So she was from Yamauchi?

KS: She was from, I don't know if she was, she was born in Hawaii but I don't know specifically where, and she shortly went, I mean, then she went to Japan to be raised by her parents or somebody in Japan. And that's vaguely all I know. I know she spent some time in China when she was a little bit older, but what the actual story is, I do not know.

SY: And when they, and just thinking because they both obviously had a very hard life, right? I mean, your... and was there any talk after camp you can recall as you were getting older, of them talking about that experience of having to go to camp?

KS: No. Like I said, after camp and, right around camp and after camp, the communication, you might say the end of the book was there. There was no more...

SY: So even as you got older, you still --

KS: As we got older, as I got older I had less and less communication and I had, shall we say, some problems with my sister in that, where I had a relationship with her after two hours of spending time with her, the immediate thing that would come out, say, "You don't know nothing. You didn't educated. You don't have this." Finally my first wife says, "That's it. No more. That's it. We don't talk to you no more." So during the course of time that my first wife was alive, we never talked to her again. [Laughs] We had it up to here.

SY: But your, your parents never learned enough English to --

KS: No.

SY: Never. So they were really on their own. Your father was really industrious, though.

KS: He was industrious in his way, but the thing is, had he learned English I think he would've gone a lot longer. But I have, I guess emotionally I have only one thing that I feel bad about, and the fact that as much as he struggled and as much as he tried to do on business situation, he had one thing going against him. He had no knowledge of how to run a business, and unfortunately I have picked up that too. I have no knowledge of how to run a business. [Laughs] Otherwise, I'd be in a better position now than I would, I am now. All this reputation don't mean a thing when you don't have any money to go with it.

SY: So he, that was his drawback. But he managed to make enough to buy a house.

KS: Yes.

SY: And so he really came from nothing, having nothing, right?

KS: Well, he took a step and he came up to about here, and we had still a long ways to go. I'm about in that same position right now, and my time period is coming to a near end.

SY: Well, he had a family, two, three kids to support.

KS: Yeah, he had a family. Well, the thing is, you can say one thing. Out of his raising these kids, all three, including myself to a degree, have surpassed where he is, or was. My brother accomplished all the education he can get and he accomplished a position that when he retired, he retired with at least a million bucks, whatever value he's got there. I don't know what it is. I never asked him. My sister owns a business building and several other things, so she's financially well in that position. I'm the only one that's basically, at the moment, financially struggling. Though I'm not struggling to the point where I'm flat broke, but I can't go out, I got to be careful what I'm spending.

SY: And I never did ask you also your brother and your sister's names, their...

KS: My brother is Takashi Herbert Suyematsu. His is Y-E. And my sister is Kazue Suyematsu, Y-E. They accuse me that I don't want to have anything to do with them is the reason I drop my Y on my... I says, "Look, I had no choice about that one. The government made me drop it."

SY: That's how your name is spelled differently.

KS: Uh-huh.

SY: And do you also have a middle name that's --

KS: No, I don't.

SY: You're the only one who doesn't have... and your parents named your brother and sister with the full...

KS: I'm not sure whether my father named my brother with a middle name. I think it had to do with the doctor that delivered him. And I, if my guess is right, they probably, the doctor's name was Herbert. [Laughs] But at the point I'm at, I have no idea, though my brother prefers to be called Herbert than Takashi. So when you call him, says, "Is this Herbert?" [Laughs]

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.