Densho Digital Archive
Twin Cities JACL Collection
Title: Joseph Norio Uemura Interview
Narrator: Joseph Norio Uemura
Interviewer: Tom Ikeda
Location: Bloomington, Minnesota
Date: June 16, 2009
Densho ID: denshovh-ujoseph-01-0002

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TI: And so your father and his older brother, your uncle, come to the United States.

JU: So they came to work on the railroad. And Dad was assigned a ship at the... they arrived in Tacoma, Washington, on a ship, I guess. And when they were parsed out by the American railroad, oddly enough, his elder brother was assigned to the Pacific Railroad, Union Pacific Railroad, and he was, and Dad was assigned to the workers. I don't know exactly how they were assigned, but he was assigned to the Northern Pacific. So he was working in Montana, mostly, and his brother was working in northern California.

TI: And did your father tell you any stories about being a railroad worker in Montana?

JU: No, he preferred to forget about those things. [Laughs] It was pretty awful, I guess, and terribly, you know, big work. It was muscular work all the way. So he worked the railroads.

TI: And how long did he work the railroads?

JU: I think he only worked with him for a couple of years, actually. Because he arrived, he and his brother arrived in '96, I believe. And by 1900, they were out doing other things.

TI: So let's talk about those other things. What did they do after the railroads?

JU: Well, my dad ran into a Christian missionary, that's what happened. And the missionary was holding meetings with the Japanese railroad workers. And then he said, "You don't belong on the railroad crew." I don't know what the bosses thought of that, but, "You don't belong on the railroad crew. What you really need to do is go get your English education and make sure you go back to school." So he was sent by this, I think it's an itinerant minister, to Portland, or rather to Salem, Oregon. And he said, "Salem is a good place because it had a university, it is a capital city, lot of politicians around, lot of good schools, and you can learn the English language." And he led him to a Christian home. That's how he got involved in Christianity.

TI: Did your father ever say what he thought this minister saw in him? When he went to your father and said, "You don't belong here," what was it about your father that this minister saw?

JU: He was carrying the Bible. [Laughs] He wanted to know what the Bible was all about at that time. And the missionary, of course, just took him from there.

TI: Okay. Was it a Bible in Japanese or was it in English?

JU: Well, he was reading, he was trying to learn English, and the Bible's a good place to start. And he actually had the Japanese and the English Bibles. And of course, their immediate translations. You can get the verse from here and translate and learn the English immediately.

TI: That was a pretty transformational moment for your father because at this point, he's essentially brought, then, to Salem to start a different life.

JU: Absolutely. And living with a Christian household also.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright ©2009 Densho and the Twin Cities JACL. All Rights Reserved.