<Begin Segment 5>

KL: I guess we should back up and ask how your mom entered his life in California.

KM: Do you know how they did that?

YI: Well, my mother's sister and my father's brother had a boarding house in Pasadena, and they didn't get along very well, but they did business together. And when my mother came --

KL: Were they a couple or they were business...

YI: Not really.

KM: Yeah, they were a couple.

YI: Well, she says they were a couple.

KM: Fuzzy says.

YI: Another cousin did live there, and I guess that's what he told. But, so they kind of arranged, because it was my father's brother and my mother's sister doing the business. So when my mother came, I think they kind of set it up somewhat so that they would at least meet.

KM: "Have I got a girl for you." [Laughs]

KL: So she didn't come... what brought her back to the United States?

YI: To connect back with her family. All her siblings were here.

KL: In California?

YI: In California.

KM: Yeah, that's true, too, but they, her sister said, "Why don't you come to the United States with us? There's nothing for you here." And her fiance was a Buddhist priest, and he had gotten ill and died. So at the last minute, since my mother was a citizen, she just took her passport out and got it okayed and came to L.A. and then to the boarding house where my aunt lived.

KL: She had a Buddhist priest fiance in Japan who died?

KM: Yeah. "If you didn't want to get married, why didn't you say so?" Anyway, she...

KL: So she didn't come for marriage.

KM: She was betrothed to the man.

YI: She was probably heartbroken, you know, because he passed. So I don't know what the arrangement was, but I think that might have been part of it, to come here and meet someone else.

KL: Were her parents in California?

KM: No. Her mother, her father had died when she was about fifteen, and then her mother was in Japan, but the sister told my mother, "Well, there's no one here, might as well come with us," so she did. And then my aunt was divorced, that was really surprising.

KL: The aunt who ran a boarding house?

KM: Yeah.

KL: Yeah, how did that go over? That was pretty unusual.

KM: It was for that time, even for anybody. People just didn't divorce.

KL: Did that affect the family, or how did that affect her life?

KM: Didn't affect us. May have been affecting them, because they were adults and things were different. But for us, it wasn't anything.

KL: Did you think it was... it was just that she wasn't there.

YI: No, she was so good to us, you know, that I don't remember. She was the one that would take us in the summertime.

KM: Yes, we got to spend it in downtown Pasadena.

YI: Pasadena, on Green Street, which, didn't she have a hotel or something?

KM: That was at the boarding house, too.

KL: Was this before the war?

YI: Before the war. But postwar even, she took very good care of us. They were struggling when they came out, because they had the new baby and no place to go, and no business to come back to.

KL: But before the war, you would go and live with her for the summer?

KM: Not for the summer but at least a week.

YI: Just visit. Yeah, to get away from...

KM: The fresh air of the farming area, it was nice.

YI: It was nice; she was good to us.

KL: What was her name?

KM: Katsuko.

YI: Katsuko.

KL: What last name did she use?

KM: Fujimoto.

YI: Did she?

KM: Didn't she use Fujimoto?

YI: I don't know.

KM: Oh, you could look in the book.

YI: Yeah, it's in the book.

KL: So your mom arrived in California to rejoin the family, and met your dad at their siblings' introduction?

YI: Probably.

KM: My uncle said, "Come to Japan to get brides," and my second uncle, he met, he knew his wife-to-be from, during high school days. So he used to send letters to Yoshiko-san from the United States to Mom to give to his girlfriend.

YI: I don't know any of that part of the family.

KM: You weren't nosy.

KL: How did they decide to get married? Did they ever speak to you about it?

KM: No, I think... must have asked my aunt and my aunt must have asked my mother or grandmother, and I guess she got the proper permissions to get married. It was that end of the family.

KL: Yasuko, you mentioned your dad's adoption, and this is out of order, but would you tell us that, about that?

YI: I don't know all the details, but from what I understand, they needed his name, his sister, who adopted him, to carry on the family name she married to. And so I don't know how long he was adopted, but there are official papers that we have. And then, after a period of time, then he gets, I guess, dis-adopted, and they have someone else that they chose to carry on the name.

KM: Yeah, because my father didn't care.

YI: Yeah, because if he's here, then he can't be their son, and if they had, I think, a firstborn son in the family, then they did not have to serve in the military in Japan, so that was kind of a thing, they wanted to keep the name and then make sure he survived and did not have to serve in the military. I think that was part of it, too. But we do have the official papers that this transpired.

KL: So the name Miyoshi, was that...

YI: That's his sister's married name. I kind of like it. [Laughs]

KM: Well, it was like the British, you know, they're hyphenated, it would have been Seike, but since it was not his legal name, on his passport, I believe, it's Shigeyoshi Seike Miyoshi.

YI: That sounds really good.

KL: How do you spell Seike?

KM: S-E-I-K-E. So I said it's a royal name, because Heike is, I think, a royal name in Japan. So I bought all that.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.