<Begin Segment 4>

TI: So let's go to Walnut Grove. What kind of work did your father do in Walnut Grove?

WM: Shoe shop. Before, see, Dad came and worked for the Sada Nursing Home someplace. They got, like in there, everything.

TI: Okay. So at the, describe the shoe store for me. How big was it, where was it located?

WM: Downtown Japanese town.

TI: So in the Front Town?

WM: You went Japanese town, too?

TI: Uh-huh.

WM: This side, pretty big building. See, before, he was doing only shoe, then he want to sell the shoe after that business.

TI: Okay, so he sold the shoes and then...

WM: Repair the shoe.

TI: Repair the shoes. And how many people worked at the shoe store?

WM: Only my dad. My sister didn't help, huh?

[Interruption]

TI: So we're back on camera, and so I just got handed a document, a translated sheet about, from a book, about people from Kumamoto, it looks like a Japanese government book. But it describes your father's...

WM: History.

TI: History, yeah, exactly. So he came, according to this book, in 1907, he came from Japan to the United States. The first thing he did was, he was a farm laborer in Vacaville. Did this for about three years, and then went to Sacramento. Interestingly, he worked at a hospital for nine years. So for a long time he worked in the hospital, and he gradually saved his money, and then that's when he decided to open the shoe store. But he did this in Sacramento, and there were other shoe stores there. And so he decided to move to Walnut Grove where he opened a shoe store, so he was there the only shoe store. It was a hard business, and your mother's health went down, and so (he went to Japan with his sick wife and Baby Bessie). And so maybe this was his first?

WM: Yeah, first wife.

TI: His first wife. Okay, so his first wife was sick and was sent back to Japan. This document was done in 1929, so this was after you were born. But that gives the early history. So 1907, about ten years, so this was probably all before 1920 that all this happened. Okay, good. And that makes sense because Toshio...

WM: '21, he was born.

TI: Yeah. So probably... and Bessie was older, so she was the first...

WM: Ten years' difference.

TI: Got it. Okay, now it makes all the sense. So with your father's first wife, he had Bessie, born in the United States, it looks like she was a very good student, and then the second marriage, there was a gap of about six years before Toshio was born, and that was with your mother. Good.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright (c) 2009 Densho and Preserving California's Japantowns. All Rights Reserved.