<Begin Segment 2>

AL: So in, I'm assuming most people who see this interview will know that your family is profiled in your sister's book Farewell to Manzanar. And in there she talks about your father's family, or your father being of samurai lineage. Is that true?

GW: Yeah.

AL: What do you know about that?

GW: Well, as far as I know, when they went back and... see, some of my nephews, or even my brothers, are Mormons, were Mormons, and they go through your family history and they try to trace back your family tree. So they, that's one of the requirements for the kids, that they traced their heritage back, and then we found out that on my father's side going back, back, one of the fathers at that time was samurai. And before the samurai, one was sort of like a governor or a lord or something. But I understand in Hiroshima there's a park called Miyajima where they have this torii standing in the water.

AL: Orange torii gate?

GW: Some of this trace back to our relatives who built that, and that's... I don't know how true that is, but that's what they say. And then there's a village in Japan near Hiroshima where the relatives were like the owners or the head holders, or that time, the lord having a castle and all that stuff.

AL: Where did he fall in his family? Was he the oldest, youngest, middle?

GW: I have no idea. But I don't think he was the oldest, otherwise they wouldn't have let him come.

AL: Did anybody else come over with him or did he come by himself?

GW: I think it was just himself. Because we tried to trace and see if there were any other relatives of his that we could find here living in California. But because that name Wakatsuki is, it's not well-known, or it's not like a Smith and Jones where you can open a book and find a lot of them, you don't find too many that are not relatives of us.

AL: What do you think about... I mean, what you knew of him as an adult, what would drive him at sixteen? That's really young to go halfway across the world by himself.

GW: I guess the thought of having to serve in the military, and not very fond of war or whatever, that he would have to go into.

AL: Do you know when he was born?

GW: When?

AL: When, what year?

GW: No.

AL: So it would probably be around...

GW: Eighteen-something.

AL: 1888.

GW: Is that it? You know, huh?

AL: July 31, 1888. No, I was just trying to think of his age at the time, like at the Russo-Japanese War, he would have been about military age, if he was born in 1888.

GW: It could have been that there were, Japan was warring with somebody at that time. But he didn't want to go into the military as far as I know, that's why they came over.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2014 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.