<Begin Segment 6>

MA: So going back a little bit to that house you were talking about that you grew up in, that big Victorian, you said there was something you wanted to talk about, about the house, that house?

BU: Well, yeah, because when my grandmother was alive, before she had died, she used to (perform) in the basement of the three-level house, they had a small room that they converted into a, I wouldn't say... but they had a little stage, and they used to perform. And my grandmother was pretty active in that -- I don't remember because it was before my time, and, but I do know that they had, going into the basement, I saw that little raised stage, and she and all her, some of friends used to perform for friends and relatives. And put on these shibais, I don't know if you've heard that term.

MA: Well, explain the shibai.

BU: Shibai is... what is it? It's a show, performing, a stage performance, play, you know. And they used to have a lot of parties. And even after, well, when my mother moved into that house, when we moved in, every Thanksgiving and Christmas, (...) my mother had to cook two twenty-pound turkeys. And in the dining room, they had this huge table, and the first serving was for all the kids, grandkids. And, yeah, grandkids, and maybe even the boys that were not married yet. And then (...) my grandfather would sit at the end of the table and he would do all the carving. You'd pass your plate up, and he would carve and put it on your plate. Then we'd pass the rest of the food around. (My) grandfather was quite an artist at that. He was so, such an artist carving that turkey. And then the second sitting, they brought the other turkey out, and that's not only the aunts and uncles, but a whole bunch of other friends that he had. And those, there were a huge party, I don't know how many they used to sit, twenty at the table at one time. It was huge. And my grandfather was a party person, and he, there'd be other times that they'd have parties, and all these people would show up, and I remember them going on picnics and excursions to Russian River, with a whole group of people, and just camp out for a while. And somehow my -- no, my grandfather was the host, we used to go to Yosemite, and did a lot of that. Lot of fun growing up. Although my grandfather didn't have, didn't spend too much time with us young ones, I was just too young. Not like the Minami grandpa, (...) I spent a lot of time with. My paternal grandpa, he was Dr. Utsumi, (...) just never sat down and talked with us. He just seemed like he didn't have time for us young ones. He liked the adults. Well, like I had, my Aunt Rennie, who was a Yawata. They had three older children, and they were three, six, and nine years older than I was. And I guess I remember him spending more time with them. Of course, his practice was in their house, too, so maybe that's why. But he just didn't have a lot of patience with the young ones.

MA: Great, well, that's a great story.

BU: But the Minami grandpa is different, though. That one, I spent a lot of time with them, with the Minamis. Every vacation, whatever, or I would spend weeks at a time with them in the summertime, and weekends with them during the school year. And I'd pester my grandpa, I was always inquisitive, and he wouldn't give his sons the time, or daughters, 'cause all he wanted them to do was work. And I can remember one of his sayings, is, "If you're gonna talk, keep your hands moving," you know. But he would give me time as a young, youngster, and I found out that how he came to land in Seattle, and to get to (...) Oakland, well, Alameda, and somebody in Seattle met him and made a sign, "Oakland," and hung it over his neck and they put him on the train. He didn't speak English, and porters, I guess, got him off in Oakland. Some of the things that, well, one of things that I found out that he had difficulty with when he first got here, was turning on and off water faucets. And he says he could turn it on, but he had trouble trying to figure out how to turn it off. And oh, I forgot some of the others. But an amazing man. He, I can remember him saying, one of the things I can remember him saying was at the nursery, it'd be a cloudy day, and they had a, what do you call it, wind... it's not an, not an anemometer, but the one that, weather vane, it was in the corner of his house. He says when that vane points to the north, which means a southerly wind -- it was normally pointed to the east or south -- he says, "When that weather vane turns, it's gonna start raining." And I didn't think much of it until later in my years when I was in pilot training and taking weather, and found out that, why. It's because when the low pressure area comes through, and it comes through and a weather front comes through and changes direction, and then the low comes, comes across, that changes the direction of the wind, and that's what brings the (rain). And here he was, un-, well, I wouldn't say uneducated, but it's something that he picked up on his own, and it just amazed me. But he told me a lot of things that even my mother, being the oldest girl, didn't know. Because he just didn't give them the time, they were all too busy working to make a living.

MA: Sounds like you had a great relationship with him.

BU: Oh, yeah. I had a better relationship, closer relationship with the Minami side than the Utsumi side. A couple reasons. Well, on the Minami side, Minami side, I was the oldest, the chonan of the next, the Sansei generation. Whereas on the... well, actually, on the, on my Yawata side, well, they weren't, they never considered themselves Sansei, because both their mother and father were born in Japan. But I, I'd consider, even on the Utsumi side, I was a Sansei.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright ©2008 Densho and the Topaz Museum. All Rights Reserved.