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SY: Hi, today is January 9, 2012, and we're at the Centenary United Methodist Church talking to Arnold Maeda. My name is Sharon Yamato, and Tani Ikeda is on camera. So Arnold, can we start with you telling us your full name and when and where you were born?

AM: My full name is Arnold Tadao Maeda, and I was born in Santa Monica, July 17, 1926.

SY: Very good. July -- Santa Monica, California?

AM: Yes.

SY: Can you sort of tell people where Santa Monica is in relationship to Los Angeles?

AM: Santa Monica is roughly fifteen to seventeen miles west of downtown Los Angeles, and it, of course, starts from the coastline and then comes in about four, four and a half miles to the border of West L.A., Sawtelle, what we call Sawtelle. And toward the south is Ocean Park and Venice, and to the north is, oh gosh, Malibu area.

SY: So very much a beach town, right?

AM: Yeah. Brentwood.

SY: Brentwood and Malibu. And were you born in a home or in a hospital or where?

AM: I was born on a farm. My birth certificate has the name of the, the lady that delivered me. I can't remember her name.

SY: I see. And your, the farm was a farm that your parents were working?

AM: I beg your pardon?

SY: Were they working on the farm, your parents? This farm that you were --

AM: Yes. Don't ask me what they were doing. [Laughs] I was too young.

SY: You don't know. Well, maybe we can go back a little and talk a little bit about your parents. Do you know where they were from originally?

AM: They're from Kochi-ken, which is on Shikoku. And my mother always used to call it something like Kochi-ken Agawa-gun Nagahama-machi. I'm not sure that's right.

SY: That's the full name of the town?

AM: Yes. Well it, I think it's a village where many of their friends came kind of, well, they conglomerated together after they got here.

SY: I see. And your parents were from the same village?

AM: Yes.

SY: So they met in Japan?

AM: Well, they knew each other, I guess, before they came. My mother -- I'm sorry, my father and his parents and brothers came to the United States, I'm guessing in the early nineteen, maybe '15 to the '20s, something like that.

SY: And what was your father's full name?

AM: His name is Toyoshige Maeda, and he went by Norman.

SY: He named himself?

AM: That I don't know. I know he went to school here, so... there's a lot of things I wanted to ask him, but when I realized I wanted to ask him it was kind of late.

SY: So he came to the United States with his brothers.

AM: Yeah.

SY: And can you tell me about them? Do you know anything much about them?

AM: Well, the oldest was Shitsuke, and my father was in the middle, and Toyone was the third boy. And they had a sister, I don't even know her name. She didn't come to the United States.

SY: So his parents, then, stayed in Japan as well?

AM: No. They both came.

SY: His, so your grandparents and your father --

AM: Yes.

SY: -- all came, but left the sister in Japan.

AM: Yeah.

SY: And on your mother's side, how, do you know about how they, how she came?

AM: She came with my father, just before, well, they managed to get on the last boat to the United States and so that was 1924. And that's how she came over here.

SY: Okay, I, so your father and mother weren't married then, but they came together? Or were they already married when they came here?

AM: [Laughs] I don't know.

SY: That's quite alright. [Laughs] But somehow they, they both were together when they came here.

AM: Yes. Yeah, because he went after her.

SY: He came, he, I see, he came to the United States, went back to get her, and then they returned together.

AM: Well, he went back alone.

SY: To Japan.

AM: And I don't know if they got married and then came back together or what.

SY: I see.

AM: Or got married here.

SY: I see.

<End Segment 1> - Copyright &copy; 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.