Densho Digital Archive - Mas Hashimoto Interview (denshovh-hmas-01-0003)

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TI: So there's that time after he went to San Francisco, a couple years you're not quite sure what he did but you think he was a cook. So pick up the story in terms of where you can, you know what he was doing again.

MH: Well, somewhere along the line he, he... I don't know exactly how, but he got involved in the "picture bride" needs, my mother. So the story now goes to my mother. My mother was born in 1893 in Fukuoka-ken also, but I don't think they knew each other, I think it was a different village. My mother had an unhappy marriage. She was divorced, she only had a sixth-grade education, to a gentleman by the name of Tanaka. Now, I learned this when I'm twenty-five years old, I'm going through the safe deposit box, and I see divorce papers, and I'm shocked by that, 'cause I didn't know my mother was divorced before. And so she willingly becomes a "picture bride." And the difference in age between my father and my mother is sixteen years. When he sends for her, there's no disappointment. She knows that he's gonna be much older, and she came in 1914, in January of 1914. She spent only a day on Angel Island, but she was listening to the stories of the Chinese immigrants who, many of them had been there for months, while she was only there for a day. And actually, my father and mother, they never really got married, because marriage licenses were expensive. And so they took up living together with commonlaw, after seven years you're legally married. So I couldn't find a marriage certificate between my father and my mother, and they said, "Well, there isn't any."

TI: Oh, how interesting. And so going back, what was your mother's name?

MH: Haraguchi, Nami, N-A-M-I. And I thought that was such a pretty name, Nami. And I don't know of any other -- there might be, but I don't know of any other person who has the name Nami. It means "wave."

TI: And so your dad sent a picture back to Fukuoka, your mother saw this, 1914 she comes to Angel Island, they get married. Then, then where do they go?

MH: They moved to Watsonville, and they were living in the country first, and then later to, two of the brothers were born, and then to Main Street, again, two more brothers will be born. And then to 110 Union Street where three of us, three boys were born. So there were seven sons in the family.

TI: So that, that must have been unusual just to see a family with seven, seven sons.

MH: In one sense, yes, but there are other families, like the Onos had six daughters. Most of the families were larger than, you know, today, so...

TI: So let's, so you mentioned your brothers, so let's, at this time, just kind of walk through each of your, your brothers in terms of their names, and then roughly when they were born. So the first one in 1914, who was born in 1914?

MH: Okay, Hiroshi will be born in December of 1914. Now, he wasn't registered until March, and then he gets registered again in Japan on another date. So he claims to have three birthdays, but we're not going to give him three presents every year. Following him was Wataru. I don't know exactly what year he was, he was born. Tsuyoshi will be the third brother, and so he's going to be born around 1922. And then Tadashi, about 1924, Noriyuki about... 1930. And then Mitsuru, 1932, and then Masaru, that's me, 1935. So my oldest brother is about twenty years older than me.