<Begin Segment 24>

TI: I want to just go back to your father, so he really wanted to come back to the United States. Before the war he was very supportive of the Japanese war effort and Japan, so why did he want to come back to the United States?

RT: He was, he was, all he knew was being a farmer in the United States since he was here from age fifteen, and he wanted to come back and be a farmer again.

TI: And so did he return to the same area to be a farmer back in California?

RT: Yes, he came back to the, to Sunnyvale to the Yonemoto Nursery, although Mr., it was Mr. Yonemoto's brother Fred that was in charge of the nursery, but my father and brother, they were able to live in the little cabin on the nursery premises, so they lived there, but my father didn't have any resources to get back to farming. Like many other Isseis that came out of the internment camps, they became gardeners or...

SF: Did your dad ever talk about the, the, any remorse he might have had from being kind of a very successful farmer before the war to having to kind of start over or have a small...

RT: No, I think he, he was one of these, I guess, passive Isseis that took his fate. Shikata ga nai, you know?

TI: How about his decision to return to Japan? Did he ever talk about that, whether or not that was a good decision or a bad decision?

RT: No. He didn't say. I think, well, when he found out how his fellow Heimusha Kai group people were doing, being sent to Tule Lake or wherever, separated from their families because they were, when the war started I think many of 'em were taken away right away by the FBI, so perhaps he was a little relieved then, I don't know.

TI: So your father and brother got this job, and then eventually your mother and sister --

RT: Yeah, after I got married.

TI: So then you all came over. And so you got married, and talk about the, you said initially the U.S. government didn't recognize your marriage as legal, but what did you have to do to make it legal?

RT: I had to, my husband had to get a test just like the Japanese girls that were gonna marry GIs, had to get VD test and all these other physical, medical tests, and my husband had tuberculosis, so he didn't pass. And although his tuberculosis was inactive, it showed, still showed a shadow, so after a couple of years they talked to me, well, I talked to them and they said, "Well, in his situation, although, even if we did give you permission to marry him legally, you, the visa requirements, he wouldn't meet visa requirements because of his tuberculosis. It still showed a shadow on the x-rays." So I said, "That's okay, I will remain in Japan if that's the case," so they finally let me marry him legally. And after that, in 1959, he went and got a lobectomy so that the x-rays would clear his situation, and so he was finally able to come to the United States.

SF: How did your husband feel about coming to the United States and leaving Japan?

RT: Well, it was very, very difficult, but in those days there were very few jobs and so, and his physical situation wasn't that good, living in Japan, so that's probably why he, I talked him into coming to the States and start a life. And I'm glad we did that.

TI: Okay.

<End Segment 24> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.