Densho Digital Archive - Joseph Norio Uemura Interview (denshovh-ujoseph-01-0004)

<Begin Segment 4>

TI: Good, so he does a year of more this graduate work at Berkeley, so about 1912, and then what happens?

JU: Well, he was ordained some time there, I think it was 1913, he was ordained. But he decided he needed a wife before he took a church. And so he went to Japan, back to Japan, and with the help of the Japanese church, Christian church in Japan, in the offices in Tokyo, of course. He asked them to help him find a wife, preferably one who spoke English.

TI: Oh, that's interesting. So it's almost like, in a traditional sense, I interview a lot of people and there's always this go-between to find a wife.

JU: Yes.

TI: And in this case, it's the church.

JU: It's the church offices.

TI: That's the go-between.

JU: That's right. And the Japanese Methodist Church had built, I think they were in business by then. But since 1907, the Aoyama Gakuin began its being, established itself in 1907, and so he'd come around about six years later. But they referred him to a Christian family, obviously, and the family happened to be a third-generation Christian family from Shizuoka. And so my mother was a, one of the first graduates of Shizuoka Jogakuin, it was an eiwa school, and so they taught in Japanese and English. They were, it was founded by missionaries from Nova Scotia, Halifax, Nova Scotia, the Trinity Methodist Church in Halifax, Nova Scotia. And they had established the girl's school. And girls didn't go to college in those days, right? And so that was their particular aim, was to educate girls in English and in Japanese, teaching both languages, to make sure that they were helping others learn English in that case.

TI: And so this was, so your mother came from a family with third-generation Christian in Japan.

JU: That's right.

TI: And so she went to this school, you mentioned earlier that your father was looking for someone who also spoke English, preferably?

JU: Yes.

TI: And so did your mother also speak English?

JU: Not only she not only spoke English, after graduating from Aoyama, she (had graduated from) Shizuoka, the girl's school, and then went to Aoyama and took a teaching degree, teaching certificate as it were, and was teaching English in Kanazawa City, which is on the north coast of Japan.

TI: So she, she was very educated. She had lots of education, training.

JU: She had more than the average bear, shall we say.

TI: And what was her name, your mother's name?

JU: Hana Morishita.

TI: Good.

JU: Morishita, and she was the eldest of three girls and one boy, who was the youngest.

TI: Now, had she ever traveled to America before this?

JU: No, she hadn't.

TI: And so you were growing up and you talked with your parents in English, how would you compare your mother's English with your father's English?

JU: Oh, she was much better than he was. [Laughs] I mean, she was fluent, she wrote in proper penmanship, she could do Palmer Method penmanship. And so, teaching English in Kanazawa City was quite a job, because it was a Japanese language place and she was teaching the English courses. And so (Dad) actually went to Kanazawa City and got acquainted with her. And then she later invited him to Shizuoka where the family was.