Densho Digital Archive
Manzanar National Historic Site Collection
Title: June T. Watanabe Interview
Narrator: June T. Watanabe
Interviewer: Kristen Luetkemeier
Location: Anaheim, California
Date: October 15, 2014
Densho ID: denshovh-wjune-01-0001

<Begin Segment 1>

KL: Thank you. So this is tape one, I'm Kristen Luetkemeier, I'm with the Manzanar oral history project, and I'm here in the Anaheim home of June Watanabe for an oral history interview about her life including her time spent in Rohwer, Arkansas. And June, before we start talking, I just want to confirm that I have your permission to be talking to you today and that it's okay if we make this available to the public.

JW: Definitely, yes.

KL: Thank you for that. You were starting to tell me a story that you had heard from your husband, Richard Watanabe, about his dad's immigration to the U.S.

JW: His, oh, gosh, Jugoro, his name was Jugoro Watanabe. But Richard always told me, and I thought it was kind of funny, but he said that his dad worked for Pancho Villa as a cook, I think it was Pancho Villa. And so one day he decided he wanted to come over to the States, and so he said he swam, but I can't believe that he swam, I don't know which channel, but that's how he got to America, coming over, swimming. [Laughs] That's really funny.

KL: That's really memorable.

JW: Yeah.

KL: Pancho Villa's cook.

JW: At least it's a story, you know, but I never believed him, but I don't know, he kept repeating that a number of times, every time we talked about his dad, he said, "Remember, Dad came over from Mexico and he swam?" I said, "Swam?" He said, "Yeah." That's funny.

KL: Yeah, could be. Some people cross the river sometimes now. Would you introduce me to your parents, tell me their names and what you know about their background?

JW: Okay. My real father, his name was Naosako Yamasaki, and we lived in Venice, at Venice, California, of course, and my mother was Asa, and her maiden name was Sakakibara. And she told me that when he went back there and got her, brought her here, but then she spent a month or so over at... what's that island?

KL: Angel Island?

JW: Angel Island? Yeah. I guess she must have had some kind of a bug. But anyway, they had her here for a couple weeks, I think she said, until she got out.

KL: Did she tell you details of what that was like?

JW: No, she never did. But anyway, so I had my brother, my brother George was born, and myself, and then my other two siblings, Harry and Tom. Their names were Hareji and Tomiji, and my older brother was Takeji, and they seemed to want a "ji" on the end of their names. But anyway, when I was about five, my dad passed away, and, of course, my mother had four of us to care for, and that was really hard. So she remarried a man named Shozaburo Ishii. And from Venice we moved -- and she had a florist, she had a little flower shop in Venice on Washington Boulevard, and so we came to Lawndale, a little town called Lawndale, that was near Gardena, and she married, like I say, Shozaburo Ishii.

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