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KL: Do you have a sense of what attracted your parents to the United States? Do you think it was similar?

MT: I think it was just to the excitement being young, fairly young, because they weren't that young either. Because my father was born in 1981 and didn't have children until he was (forty).

KL: You mean he was born in 1881?

MT: He was born in 1881. And so I think it was just the glamour of hoping to make it.

MJT: That was the same thing that everybody, you know, whether Europeans came as well as Asians who came because there was, for some reason, the feeling that there was opportunities in America that was not being afforded anywhere else. So the young came.

KL: And it is interesting, I mean, both of you have parents that, the fact that they met each other and married in Japan is different than what a lot of other people did in that time period with the "picture bride" thing.

MJT: Yes, that's right. Well, I always most of all, we figured only eighteen years of age, going on this kind of adventure, more or less on her own choice. That took a lot of courage and yet also, I assume, a lot of excitement as well, because they anticipated whatever it was that they were, freedom themselves, probably.

KL: When did your parents become Christian? Were they Christian in Japan?

MT: My mother came from a long line of Presbyterian, Protestant, and I attended the church that she grew up in. Of course, had gone through the war, so this was a new building. The Presbyterian church evidently sent missionaries a long time ago, and so my mother says that she comes from a line of Christian families. My father was converted probably in college in Tokyo, and a very strange thing happened with him was that when I relocated from Manzanar, my sister had already gone to Des Moines, Iowa, and Jack was my boyfriend then and he had also relocated to Des Moines, to Drake University, and gotten his permission to go there. And so he got me a job as a housegirl in a lawyer's family. And my sister was there already so that it was the logical place for me to go, too. So I went, and the first Sunday that I was there after relocating at the end of March, it was the first Sunday in April, and my father had helped start the Disciples of Christ Japanese church in Los Angeles. And so he had connections, and so partly that was how we got scholarships to go to Drake University. And when I joined this First Christian church, the Disciples of Christ have what's called an altar call every Sunday, even today, any Christian church, Disciples of Christ, have, at the end of the service, ask anyone who wants to be a member to come down and join. And so my sister nudged me and said, "Dad's here," Pop, we called him. "Pop's visiting us on his way to Chicago, so you should join the church while he's here." And so I went down when the minister had the, those who would like to join the church today, please come down. So I went down and joined the church then. And after the service, my father excitedly came up to my sister and myself and said, "Come down and see this portrait of one of the missionaries that were sent from this church, and there's the man who converted me, and his name was Reverend Guy." And I don't know his first name, and we were talking today that we should look it up through the denomination and find out a little bit more about this missionary who was sent from Central Christian Church years ago, and here he was the one who converted my father. And so I guess I was meant to Des Moines and to join this, the Disciples of Christ Christian Church is very predominate in the Middle West. And there were maybe ten other Christian churches in the Des Moines area, and my sister happened to live with the family in order to go to Drake University, who happened to be a member of this particular Central Christian Church, which it was one of the largest Christian churches in the city of Des Moines. And to have this one be the church from which this missionary was sent made such an impression on my father. And so that's how my father came to be a Christian, is through this missionary that was in Japan on the school days.

KL: That's wild. What was your church in Los Angeles?

MT: My church was the Japanese Christian Church.

KL: That was its formal name?

MT: Yes. And it was the Disciples of Christ, which is now called the Christian Church.

KL: Did it have a Japanese minister?

MT: Yes, we did have a Japanese minister.

KL: Did that person end up in Manzanar also, the minister?

MT: I don't know whether the Unoura... no, I don't think so.

MJT: Mr. Unoura?

MT: I don't think they were in Manzanar, I think they went to Santa Anita.

MJT: Arizona.

MT: Arizona, probably Poston.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2012 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.