<Begin Segment 13>
MA: And so you met and decided to get married?
CY: Well, I had nothing to say about it. My parents negotiated all that with them. They even set the date. Not right away, but they set the date as August the 26th.
MA: And that was 1944?
CY: '44.
MA: And how did you feel about this marriage?
CY: Well, I didn't think anything more about it because that was, I was trained all that, all these many years under my mother, and it was... and then the, my mother and my father, they were twenty years apart, and my husband and I were thirteen years apart. And my parents, they were married... well, the reason for that, my mother's explanation was in Japan, you don't marry until you're... what do you call it? Settled for life. You have to have a good job and be able to provide for your wife, not work together to make a living, like children were getting married when they were twenty-one, and they were husband and wife, both twenty-one and twenty-two. But in my mother's days, that wasn't the policy. You didn't, a person would never bring a, introduce a young man to another family to ask for her hand unless he was established with a good job and earning money to be able to support her.
MA: So that's why the men were usually much older.
CY: Much older. By the time you graduate college in Japan and get settled, it'd be ten years.
MA: And so it was sort of expected for you, then, that you would...
CY: Oh, it was expected.
MA: ...that you would, your parents would sort of arrange your marriage?
CY: Uh-huh. Oh, my mother even had my dress all ready.
MA: A beautiful kimono.
CY: But she was very Japanesey all her life. And the reason for that is, she told my niece Janet that Grandma never learned how to speak English because she didn't think it was necessary. She never planned to stay in the United States this long. [Laughs] She was going to go back in a few years, so why bother?
[Interruption]
MA: Okay, so we were talking about meeting your husband, and you said you married in August of 1944. So tell me about your wedding in Topaz. What was that like?
CY: It was, we bought our cookies and things from Salt Lake City, and I think I bought my wedding material, that wedding dress, too, the white wedding dress my mother kind of helped make it. And we had a lady, a very good friend of my mother's who was in the cleaning business before the war, so she came one day and ironed it all out just before my wedding, so it was a simple dress. It's in that, Dory wore it for her... so anyway, it was made in Topaz.
MA: And your mother had brought a kimono with her.
CY: With her, yes.
MA: For to you wear in your wedding.
CY: And so after the regular wedding, we, she dressed me afterwards and we took a picture.
MA: Of you in the kimono.
CY: In this kimono.
<End Segment 13> - Copyright ©2008 Densho and the Topaz Museum. All Rights Reserved.