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KL: Well, this is Kristen Luetkemeier speaking, I am a worker for Manzanar National Historic Site. We're here at Video Resources Studio in Santa Ana, California, with Joyce Okazaki. Joyce and I have both completed filming of the roles that are going to make us famous in a new documentary of Ansel Adams. It's June 20, 2012, and we are gonna be talking today about Joyce's childhood before World War II in Los Angeles, her experiences being held at Manzanar, and then their family's relocation to Chicago, and her adult life back in California and her involvement with the Manzanar Committee after that. And Joyce, I know that your grandparents, especially your mother's parents, were an influence in your childhood, and that you know some things about your grandparents on both sides, so I'd like to start talking about your maternal grandparents. What were their names and what can you tell us about them?

JO: My grandfather's name is, was, Takejiro Kusayanagi, a really long name. And my grandmother's was Matsu Kusayanagi, Matsu Hoshizaki Kusayanagi. Hoshizaki was her maiden name.

KL: And they were both from Japan?

JO: Both from Japan, from Kanagawa-ken, where all the Kusayanagis and the Hoshizakis lived, I guess, as I understand it. I didn't quite understand, but that's what it is, I guess. People with all the same last names come from a certain area.

KL: Makes sense. [Laughs] Yeah. And they didn't know each other in Japan, or they did know each other?

JO: I don't know if they knew each other. Maybe their parents or somebody knew. But my grandfather came over at the age of nineteen. I think the records show that he was nineteen. I always thought he was seventeen, that's what my mother used to say. But he actually was nineteen years old, and it was 1899, and he came over with two other friends to seek their fortune. He had a wicked stepmother who tossed him out of the house, so he had no place to go. Thought he would try to find his fortune here in America, and he did, eventually. But my grandmother was... I don't know, I can't remember if my grandfather went back to Japan to marry her, but she came over in 1906, so that's seven years later, and they got married. I don't know whether they were married in Japan or whether they were married here. I missed that part of the... of the history.

KL: When he came, when your grandfather came to the United States, where did he come in?

JO: He came through San Francisco. That was another thing. My mother told me he came through Seattle, but records show that he came through San Francisco, and his boat, the listing on the boat was one that docked in San Francisco, and then from there I guess he worked his way down as dishwasher or whatever, farmhand. He and his two friends, they each... of course, each of them did very well, became very successful when they got older. One of them owned half of Orange County, a huge farmland.

KL: Do you know their names?

JO: One last name was Nitta, and it's not very well-known now, I don't think, but they had a huge farmland. And then the other one was Hoshizaki, and he was a... he did very good in importing. He would import from Japan, and he formed a company called Mutual Trading, which is still around today, I think, but under different ownership.

KL: But the three of them stayed in touch and stayed friends?

JO: Yes, stayed friends all through their lives until they all got too old. And even after camp, they all... I don't know what the other two went, if they were also arrested, but when they came back, they stayed in touch. Because they all belonged to the same ken, and in the Japanese community, the kens would have picnics. So Kanagawa-ken would have a picnic, and everybody, including the families, would get together. So that's what they did, kept in touch that way, and through other various get-togethers with the ken, same ken.

KL: And when your grandmother came, where did she, was he still in San Francisco, or had he already come further south?

JO: I believe he had moved to Pasadena, I think, because by then it was seven years, and he had, he started a bathhouse in Pasadena, because at that time, there was no indoor plumbing, so people had to take baths in bathhouses. And the men would go there and have a shave and take a bath. And I guess even a haircut, he even did haircuts. And later on, my grandmother opened a little, I guess you'd call it like a boutique, but in that time it was just a little area where she sold collar buttons and things that go with shirts, and that's how they started their business, is she started selling things. And then eventually they opened a dry goods store in downtown Los Angeles. But before then, they were living in Pasadena, and so my mother was born in Pasadena.

KL: Do you know why they chose to move to Los Angeles?

JO: I really don't know. Probably the opportunity, I think Pasadena in those days was just a small hick town with maybe a one-lane road, I don't know. Because he did move to Main Street, right across from City Hall.

KL: In L.A.?

JO: In Los Angeles, Los Angeles City Hall. So he had a store there. And there was a bunch of stores along that same street, and there was also a bank. It was a Bank of Italy which became Bank of America.

KL: Oh, I didn't know that.

JO: And apparently my grandfather went to the bank to borrow money for his store and became friendly with the president of the bank who was, at that time, I can't remember his name. It'll come back to me later maybe.

KL: In the middle of the night. [Laughs] "It was Salucci."

JO: But anyway, he knew the president, and apparently the president is who told him that it's okay to borrow money, but you should invest your money in stock. So that's how my grandfather became interested in investing in stock. And he did that from, I guess from the time he had any kind of money.

KL: And did your grandmother work in the dry goods store, too, both of them?

JO: Yes, yes. And when my mother was old enough, she worked there, too. The children had to work in the dry goods store.

<End Segment 1> - Copyright © 2012 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.