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SY: So we'll start today with the fact that we're at Centenary United Methodist Church in Los Angeles and we're talking today with Robert Nakamura. The date is November 30, 2011, and I'm Sharon Yamato, and on camera is Akira Boch. So first of all, Bob, I'm curious to know, can you tell us what your full name is?

RN: Yeah, it's Robert Akira Nakamura.

SY: And your parents, that was actually your name at birth?

RN: Yeah, right, right.

SY: And I love the fact that when I google your name, forty-four Robert Nakamuras came up.

RN: Oh, yeah, that's... there's a lot of us.

SY: So do you make a point to use your full name in your work?

RN: Well, I put Robert A. because there were a lot of Roberts. There's a lot of Bob Nakamuras.

SY: Did your family refer to you with your middle name?

RN: No, they called me Akira.

SY: They did call you Akira. And so once you started school, that's when...

RN: Then Bob.

SY: I see. So speaking of family, can we talk a little bit, maybe start with your father. Tell us, give us his full name.

[Interruption]

RN: Okay, my father's name was Harukichi Nakamura and he came from Kagoshima, which is on the southern tip of Kyushu, which is the most southern island of Japan. He was from a very small fishing village, very poor. He used to talk about what they would eat most of the year, sweet potatoes, and so he had sweet potatoes in the morning, carry a sweet potato for lunch to school, and have a little fish and sweet potatoes for dinner. And he'd only have real rice on New Year's. So they were very, very poor, and that was part of his reason for coming to the U.S.

SY: Did he have brothers and sisters?

RN: Yes, he had an older brother which I forgot the name now, and a younger brother. And so he, after school, he worked on a fishing boat for a while. And during that time, his brother went to the U.S., came in through Mexico, came in illegally through Mexico, and started, I think, a produce market, business, and then later sent for my father. So he sent him boat fare and five hundred dollars. And so it was a tourist boat that my dad was on, and it landed in, docked in San Francisco, and we had to pay a five hundred dollar bond in order to get off the ship. So he paid his bond, got off the ship, and his brother was waiting for him in the parking lot, I guess, and they went to L.A., so that's how they got...

SY: Amazing story. And his parents, in the meantime...

RN: His mother passed away quite early. And I don't know that much about my father's grandparents. He just doesn't talk about them too much, primarily because I think they had passed when he was fairly young. So, yeah, other than they farmed and fished.

SY: So primarily fished, though, his father?

RN: Yeah, it was primarily a fishing village.

SY: And when he was sent for by your uncle, I guess, was there a reason that he sent just for your father?

RN: Let's see. No, not really. He was next in line. He's the middle brother, so I guess that's... and I don't know, I think my other uncle didn't really want to come, so he sent for my father.

SY: And your other uncle, the younger one, was he someone that they stayed in touch with?

RN: Yeah, he eventually came over. So as my father said, he was the scholarly one who was the one that completed school and everything. And he came over later.

SY: Later as in...

RN: In, I think after the war.

SY: Oh, much later.

RN: Yeah.

SY: So I assume this was probably, when your father came over, was in the early part of the century.

RN: Yeah, yeah. I'm trying to... I told you on dates.

SY: Dates are not good, huh? But when your father came, your uncle had already started this produce business?

RN: Uh-huh.

SY: So it was a natural thing for him to work?

RN: No. He, for whatever reason, he worked as a gardener. He was a gardener until he married my mom and they saved up their money and they opened a produce market in the Los Feliz area right on Franklin and Los Feliz Boulevard, I think, in that area. So they had that until the war came and they lost it all. And when we came back to L.A. my father just didn't have it in him to start a business over again so he went into gardening again and stayed there.

SY: That's the first time I've heard, there were very many Japanese gardeners back in those prewar --

RN: Yeah, I'm trying to figure out the date, but yeah, there were quite a few. Quite a few. That was the first thing that they could do.

SY: And the area in which he worked? And where they settled when they first came over?

RN: Yeah, that would be... he settled in, this area, I forgot what it's called in Japanese, but it's near MacArthur Park.

SY: Part of Los Angeles?

RN: Yeah, there was a kind of Japanese area in the Virgil, what they call the Virgil area.

SY: Sort of close to Little Tokyo but not... within bus distance, just a short bus ride?

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