<Begin Segment 5>

[This transcript has been extensively edited by the narrator.]

SY: So let's back up a little, and if you could tell us how he met your grandmother and whether they came together.

GN: Yes, he knew my grandmother. My grandmother grew up in (Gifu too). I'm kind of fuzzy about that, but I'm pretty sure she grew up in Gifu because my uncles and aunts and my brother have gone to visit the family, and I think they visited both sides of the family in Gifu. But then my grandmother used to tell me stories, too, of when she was living in, they called it the city, Tokyo, Yokohama, (Osaka), all that area. Some of her family were pretty wealthy merchants (in the city).

SY: And so they met while they were in Gifu, you think.

GN: I think they met while they were Gifu. It was a baishakunin wedding, it was an arranged marriage. They were different in many ways. She was very practical. My grandfather played the biwa and she said, "That's a waste of time. You have to do other things, more practical." [Laughs] He did (play) the biwa, but (the) biwa is no more. Then he used to like to spend a lot of time playing goh, and he belonged to the goh club in Little Tokyo. He's quite an expert in goh. I think my grandfather could have been anything that he wanted to be, but he chose to be a librarian because he loved literature and books. He loved calligraphy. He won the emperor's poetry contest and he got a lot of medals from that. He could write beautiful poetry and I have samples of his poetry.

SY: That's wonderful. So did they start their family in Japan, then?

GN: Well, actually, my mother (was their) first child, and when she was one year old, they came to America and they didn't come in steerage. You always hear about people coming in steerage, well, they came in first class, (Oriental Steamship Company's Nippon Maru), and I still have the steamer trunk that they brought with their things in it. It's in my garage, I've got to find some home for it one of these days. But life was not easy for them. When they first came, they landed in (San Francisco, California, May 18, 1907). Then my grandfather got an offer from (Sadamatsu Takeda, a relative in America who) started a farm in (Iline, Harris County, Texas). So they went by train, and my grandmother said, oh, they went on the train, and she had this baby. She would tell me how hard it was. My grandfather worked in the fields, they both worked in the fields, and she wasn't used to doing all that kind of hard work, not used to that at all. And neither was he, he's a librarian. [Laughs] He was the librarian actually in Osaka, that's where he was able to get a position.

SY: So they moved from Gifu to Osaka, and was that where your mother was born then, in Osaka?

GN: I think on her passport it says she was born in Gifu. I have her passport papers, too. I have both of their passport papers and they're very interesting to my daughter because my daughter is an immigration and nationality specialist (in the law). So anyway, they came to the U.S. and then they went to Texas, and it was hot. And then my grandmother got malaria, and she was very sick and she almost died. And of course they didn't have antibiotics or anything in those days. My grandmother always said, "I came as close to hell as I've ever been. It was terrible." [Laughs] So then my grandfather left, and he had a friend that got a job on the railway in Pueblo, Colorado. So then they moved to Pueblo, Colorado, and my mother went to elementary school. By that time there was my mother, then later on she had another sister, Aiko, and then they had another sister named Shinko who passed away, and then a brother named Nozomu who passed away. And then they had my Uncle Toshihisa. They call him Dr. Tom Watanabe. He had an x-ray lab right there across the street from JANM, that was his last office before he passed away. Then my youngest aunt, Teru. My two aunts lived for a long, long time, and they died, I think they were both ninety-five when they passed away.

SY: But your mother was the oldest.

GN: My mother was the oldest and she died when she was sixty-seven. Kind of an untimely death. And (her sisters) never married, and I took care of them, too, because they had no one to take care of them.

SY: When they were old. So when your mother was going to school, then she mainly went in Colorado?

GN: Well, she went to elementary school (when) they moved out to Pueblo, Colorado. My mother had a terrible accident when she was there. That's why she always said she'd never let us go barefoot in hot summer days in California, always had to have shoes on. She was running around barefooted in Pueblo, and someone had had a bonfire outside and there were hot ashes. And she had stepped into the hot ashes and it was terrible. My mother had scars where this one foot had fallen into this ash pit and had burned her up to her (knee), and she had scars from that. It was terrible. I always think about Pueblo, I think about how terrible that was for my mother. But when she was, I think, in high school, they moved to Hewitt Street.

SY: Hewitt Street in...

GN: It's down in Little Tokyo area.

SY: It's very close to Little Tokyo (in Los Angeles).

GN: Hewitt Street, and then there's an interesting story. They came with the people that owned Fugetsu-do, originally they came from Japan together. They lived in the same area in Gifu, Kito-san. He has the Fugetsu-do right there on First Street, and Brian (Kito) still runs Fugetsu-do. So I have all kinds of wonderful stories about Kito-san because my grandfather and grandmother were good friends with them, so they went to make mochi there with them. They always made mochi, so we still go there and buy mochi for New Year's. And my grandchild was doing a project on Japan, she's now thirteen, but she was a little girl then. Brian was there, it was between Christmas and New Year's, and she went to buy some things that she wanted to take back (to her home in Santa Fe, New Mexico). I think she was in maybe fourth grade, she wanted to take (goodies) back because she was going to give a report on the Japanese New Year's. So then Brian put his arm around her and said, "Come over here. I want to show you a picture of my dad and my grandpa." He shows the pictures and said, "They were all friends with your (great-great) grandma and your (great-great) grandpa." So it was very nice that Paloma got to meet Brian.

SY: They were just good friends. What did your grandfather end up doing?

GN: My grandfather ended up working for Bullock's. First he was in the custodial department, and then later on he worked for Packard. He retired from Packard and I remember they gave him a gold watch, and I still have the gold watch someplace. So he did that hard manual labor, but he took his lunchbox every day, he never complained. Went on the P car in East L.A. up to his work.

SY: But he continued his interest in reading?

GN: He continued to write and continued to read, he wrote several books (published in Japan).

SY: While he was working at Packard?

GN: Packard, yes, he wrote several books and then he played goh whenever he could. Played the biwa until my grandma did something with the biwa. [Laughs] While they were living in that three story apartment house, a lot of Japanese lived in that apartment house. The Komais had the Rafu Shimpo, because the Rafu Shimpo's over a hundred years old. And one night, Kameyatsu-san -- and Kameyatsu is a big name in Little Tokyo (history). They have longevity. I have a lot of pictures of all these people that lived in Little Tokyo then. He was the press man at the Rafu. When he came out of the Rafu, it was early in the morning. He saw this red glow in the sky. He thought, "It's too early to be dawn. Something's wrong, it must be a fire." So he ran towards the red glow, and then to his horror, he realized that it was the (apartment) house. My grandfather and grandmother lived on the third floor, so he couldn't reach them. He (called), "Watanabe-san, Watanabe-san!" But the fire was crackling and it was up on the roof. There was gravel in the parking lot and he got the gravel and he threw it at the window, then my grandfather heard the stones hitting, and he came to the window and looked and there he was, "Watanabe-san, kaji, kaji." So they came down in their pajamas in the middle of the night, and my aunt said that they prayed and prayed. She said it was like a miracle, the heavens opened up and the rain came pouring down and put out the fire. And there was a big hole in the top of that (apartment) house, but she said nobody perished. So that was one of the exciting stories that she had to tell.

And then another story that she had, my mother and my Aunt (Aiko) went to the YWCA founded by (Miss Bartlet). She was pivotal. She formed a Japanese baseball team, too.

SY: She was very important. I can't think of her name either.

GN: I have it, I have pictures of her.

SY: It was a club that she started for Nisei, right?

GN: Yes, she started this club. And then she started this YWCA Blue Triangle for the women, and my mother was one of the first people to go to Asilomar when it was just tent cabins for a conference. And she has photographs in her photo album. And there was a cypress tree there. So Yosh and I went there on our honeymoon, and we were camping, so it wasn't the best situation, but we went there. That cypress tree was still there. So I've kind of kept an eye on that. I have favorite trees all over the place. Idyllwild I have a favorite tree, too, that I've watched since it was a little tiny seedling growing on the side of this canyon.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.