<Begin Segment 1>

AR: Okay this is an interview with Dr. Roy Ebihara, a second generation Japanese American who was born in Clovis, New Mexico. The interview is being conducted by Andy Russell on behalf of the New Mexico Chapter of the JACL and its Confinement in the Land of Enchantment Project. Today is July 10, 2012. The interview is taking place at the Best Western Motel in Roswell, New Mexico. So thanks for speaking with us today. Dr. Ebihara, you were previously interviewed in detail by Tom Ikeda of the Densho Project and this interview will eventually become part of the Densho collection. So I'm not going to attempt to a full life cycle interview that would likely cover much of the same things that Tom covered. Instead I want to ask some questions that might enhance what was captured in that last interview, maybe fill in some details, and also ask you to reflect on some aspects of this field research that we've been doing the last couple of days and will continue to do tomorrow. Okay, so for starters you mentioned that three of your siblings were born in Japan. Does that mean that your father and mother were married before they came to the United States?

RE: That's correct. They were married for several years I would imagine, at least five, six years. And my dad, of course, came to America, was supposed to go Philadelphia to further his education in tool and die and machinery type of thing, expertise.

AR: And then he took the job with the railroad.

RE: Yes, in San Francisco, I guess he was gonna catch the boat back to Japan but I don't know, I guess he ran out of money or whatever transpired there. [Laughs] so he was stuck in the United States but felt that there was an opportunity for him to probably strike out on his own if at all possible.

AR: So he called for your mother to come over with the kids about 1922?

RE: Yeah. After he ended up in Clovis and was able to put away enough money for boat passage, my mother arrived with her three kids.

AR: What was her background and what was her reaction to coming to Clovis?

RE: Well, you know, she was in a family that were pretty well off in Japan's caste system. She had a formal education, all the niceties of life that her mother provided. But coming to America, I guess it was a shock to end up in Clovis where we lived in a railroad camp, so to speak, and it was more or less, as she saw it, like a ghetto existence. And unlike perhaps my father presented a picture to her, the streets were certainly far from being lined with gold, you know.

AR: Do you think she felt isolated there? Well, I should ask how many Japanese women were in that community, and do you think your mother felt isolated or did she have plenty of female company?

RE: Well, I would assume there were at least seven or eight women married to these railway workers. I guess she still adhered to the old ways that you don't associate with people of lower class level, coming from other occupations. So she really never made any great attempts to associate with these women. That made her life miserable. She, I believe, certainly isolated herself from the greater community.

AR: So her family was more of an upper class.

RE: That's correct.

AR: Was it banking industry that her family...

RE: Well, you called it today... I think her mother or my grandmother was a money lender. I guess back in those days there was no building or institution. People knew that she had the money to, if you loaned it, she loaned it out and if you took the loan, you better pay it back.

AR: I see. And the other wives were more from the farming class background?

RE: Yes. I think people who immigrated to America were mostly agricultural people, where Japan's economy at that time was not very good.

AR: Okay.

<End Segment 1> - Copyright © 2008 New Mexico JACL and Densho. All Rights Reserved.