Densho Digital Archive - Rose Tanaka Interview (denshovh-trose

<Begin Segment 3>

AL: Do you know, you said he came when he was fifteen?

RT: Fifteen years old, uh-huh.

AL: What do you know about how he got over here and where he came to?

RT: Well, I think he was accompanied by an older friend. But at that time, because the country of Japan was careful about who they sent over, they also had some ministers, Christian ministers who came and who facilitated their getting to the United States, and they also, in San Francisco, for instance, the minister was also responsible to kind of watch over these young men and make sure that they conducted themselves well and had a community. So that's all I can say.

AL: So he came to San Francisco?

RT: San Francisco, yes.

AL: And you said that was about 1900?

RT: Year 1900.

AL: Do you know if he had any other family over here? You said he had an older...

RT: He might have had an older brother, not here in this country.

AL: Do you know how he made his living when he came to San Francisco?

RT: Well, he had no skills except what he knew what to do, being a craftsman's son. He was ready to do anything that was expected of him. In the year 1906, the great earthquake occurred in San Francisco, and I think he just went around helping with whatever cleanup there was to do. He worked... oh, I know, he worked -- oh, I know. He worked in a laundry, and back in those days, for hotels and other reasons, there was quite a large, of course, the Asian population were in charge of, were asked to do the laundry. And he mentioned that as a young man he was pushing these tumblers that tumbled the towels and sheets, the linens, and it was all done by hand, and he said he just did this practically all night long, or all day and all night. He said he could even take a nap while he was doing it, it was just a matter of physical, being able to have the sturdiness to do it. And he was, for a Japanese, I think, he was about 5 feet 5 or 6, and was well-built. So he did that kind of work. He didn't like doing work for other people, the language problem was probably the biggest impediment. And so never having learned English, he had difficulty dealing with employers and understanding.

So a lot of these young men wanted to just go out and be their own bosses, so he did different things. He would fish, he tried being a fisherman in California. We lived on the coastline, do you know abalone? You know what abalones are? There were abalones all over the place.

AL: Can you explain it for us?

RT: And he would go down and pry off the abalone and they would send them to the canneries. And, of course, abalones became almost extinct because they were so widely harvested. And I remember as a child that we ate a lot of abalone and clams and fish. We didn't have much money because he was, by then he was a farmer. And that's how we survived.

AL: Do you know where he lived in San Francisco? Not in terms of address, but did he live in the Nihonmachi, the Japanese section?

RT: Probably, I would guess, yes.