Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Rose Ito Tsunekawa Interview
Narrator: Rose Ito Tsunekawa
Interviewers: Tom Ikeda, Steve Fugita
Location: San Jose, California
Date: January 26, 2011
Densho ID: denshovh-trose-01-0012

<Begin Segment 12>

TI: Okay Rose, we're gonna start the second part of the interview, and I'm going to now talk about going to Japan. So this is like 1941 and you're --

RT: Yes, in November.

TI: Yeah, and you're eleven years old at this point? So, so tell me what you can remember about the trip to Japan. What was that like?

RT: I was so sick on the boat. I was seasick most of the time and we were in the third class, and the Yonemoto family, I think they were in the second class, but their daughter, Kiiko, who was of, several years younger than I was, I think she was about three or four at that time. She had lost her mother and she was going back to Japan with her father and her older brothers, so she was always down at our third class cabin and sleeping with my mother, but it was, I don't know, it wasn't a very happy journey. It was third class in a boat, ship, and when you're seasick and you can't eat much... and my sister was two years old and so they had her in a dog leash so she wouldn't fall overboard. They had her on a leash.

TI: So this is November 1941, so this is probably the very last ship to have --

RT: Yes, it was. We were told that the ship that left San Francisco after us returned, so it was the last, Tatsuta Maru was the last ship. And we landed in Yokohama November the 14th.

TI: Now, was there anything significant about the people on the boat that you noticed? Was it...

RT: No. No, we, it wasn't any, it's not like the cruise ships of now where you have a lot of recreation or playgrounds or anything. All I know, remember is my brother, younger brother Roy, he insisted on sleeping on the top berth and he fell during the night. That was, oh, scary.

TI: So when you arrived in Japan, was there anyone there waiting for you when you got there?

RT: No. Not in Yokohama, no. And my father took us to Nikko and maybe we went to Yasukuni Shrine. I don't remember. I remember we went to the Nikko resort area to see the falls. It was cold, late November. We weren't used to that kind of weather.

TI: So it was pretty chilly, pretty cold?

RT: Oh yes, it was chilly, wet.

TI: Now, did your father ever take you to Yasukuni Shrine?

RT: I think we went to Yasukuni Shrine, but I don't remember.

TI: And so where did your family go to live?

RT: Oh, after we landed in Yokohama and did a little sightseeing, then we, we had, my father had an aunt living in Aichi-ken, in the outskirts of Nagoya, and she was a widowed lady and so my father was, went to help on her farm. He didn't have any job and we didn't have any, he didn't have any resources or anything.

TI: And when your family settles in a place like this, what kind of official work needs to happen, or paperwork? Was there anything that he had to do to register you or the rest of the family?

RT: Yes. My brother and I, we were not, we only had U.S. citizenship. We didn't have dual citizenship, and I don't know why, but my father registered Haruko, my younger sister, when she was born, so she, in the family, Ito family register, she was entered as the firstborn child, oldest daughter. And so when my brother and I started school, we had to become citizens, but they couldn't enter us in the family register because then I would be the second born. And so we, my brother and I, we each established our own family register.

TI: Interesting. Why do you think your, you weren't registered but your younger sister was?

RT: I don't know.

TI: Do you have any kind of idea or, or...

RT: No. I never asked my father. I don't know why, but all I know is it was a problem to get our Japanese citizenship.

TI: So, so let me make sure I understand this, so in Japan you essentially started a new family. You were registered as a new family and Roy was also as a new family?

RT: Uh-huh.

TI: Interesting. Okay, and that was, the reason was so that you can attend school?

RT: Yes. Correct.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.