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-01-0015

<Begin Segment 15>

KL: So I disrupted sort of your train of conversation while you were talking about your parents coming back to California, and you coming back to California while Richard was going to Tokyo.

JW: Yeah, Richard was in Tokyo and I was in Minnesota, Minneapolis. And then the war ended, so he was in Tokyo then, but he wrote and said he would be home on a certain date, so I decided, well, I'm going to go home, too. So on the way I visited some friends in Denver, Colorado, and came on home.

KL: Were you glad to be back in California?

JW: Oh, yeah. And then I stayed with (a) family. That house was overloaded. But anyway, I got this job with this one... what was her name? Beckmans or something, Becklers? And then I went over to the Powells' and worked for them, and then Richard finished his school, so he got a job overseas. He said it paid well, and it was a two-year thing, but he'd call me back in two months. But you know what? When did I go there? It was a couple years. Yeah, it was a couple of years. Was it a couple of years? Yeah.

KL: Yeah, that's what you told me on the phone. I think you said 1950 to 1959 maybe, you were in Japan together? Was it that long?

JW: Oh, December '58 is when we got home.

KL: Did you go look up any of your parents or your stepfather's family members in Japan?

JW: Yeah. When we were in Japan we did, yeah, in the '50s. Went to my mother's, visited them in Yokohama, they lived in Yokohama, my mother's brother. And then we moved to Fukuoka, Richard was working there, so we visited his folks and his aunts and uncles, cousins and all. Yeah, we did a lot of visiting. And then when we came back in '58, Christmas '58, anyway, and from then on, I guess he got lonesome for his people. So every time we had a vacation, where shall we go? I wanted to go to Switzerland, he said no, we're going to go to Japan. We made many trips to Japan.

KL: Did your mother ever travel with you or did she ever...

JW: When we were there she came and she visited my daughter when she was about a year and a half. Yeah, she came and took her all over.

KL: What it was like for her to be back decades later?

JW: She enjoyed it. She saw her younger, I mean, her schoolmates, they were still there because she wasn't that old. That was in Shizuoka. So we took her there, she enjoyed it, she really did. Fujiyama, Fujisan, is in Shizuoka, so she enjoyed that, too. She saw her brother in Yokohama. And Richard took her to see his folks and my father's relatives, 'cause that's where he came from.

KL: How was that, to meet your father's family several years later?

JW: Who, me?

KL: Yeah.

JW: They were nice. Let's see, who were they? Oh, yeah, Yasuko. I liked it. My father's, not my father-in-law, but my father's sister, I saw her, I met her, I met his nephews, nieces. He came over too, one year.

KL: Your stepfather?

JW: Uh-huh. And Richard took him around, too, he liked that. But boy, the Japanese custom, I guess, it's same with anybody, that when you go to Japan and visit your families and relatives, omiyage, your gifts, you take gifts, you're loaded with gifts. So when you come home, you're loaded with gifts. So Richard said, "We got to go there sometime and just not have to take anything." I said, "Well, that means we can't see our families." He says, "Let's take the girls." So we took Gina and Sondra, went to Japan, didn't tell any relative that we were coming, we had a ball.

KL: Are those your children, Gina and Sondra?

JW: Yeah, my daughters, yeah. We had a ball; it was nice. No gifts coming back. And besides, when you go visit your families, they want you to stay with them, and it restricts your wants, they have plans. But I appreciate them anyway.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2014 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.