<Begin Segment 4>

KL: I actually have a couple questions about Seattle and Snohomish if it's okay.

LP: Okay, if we can make a note to, descriptive stuff, come back to it?

KL: Yeah, for the assembly center and stuff. I wondered, your dad was born in Hawaii, you said. Do you know how he got to Washington?

EY: For a job. Looking for a job, and he had a brother, younger brother, just two years younger than him, so somewhere along the line I think his father went back to Japan. So the two brothers had to kind of fend for themselves, so they were in their teens yet. So then they thought that, I think the mainland had more job opportunities, and I think that's how come they came. But there again, I never talked to him, so I don't know.

KL: Do you know if they came in through Seattle or if they were other places first?

EY: No, I don't know that.

KL: You mentioned that your parents may have met in Japan. What was the nature of your dad's time in Japan? Was he there for education, or was he just on a visit?

EY: I think probably purpose was to find someone. And not for education, but to find a possible mate. And I don't know whether... my uncle didn't find one because he married my auntie, she was up in Washington. And I can't... I want to say Bellevue but I'm not sure. But she was a country girl, too, and they had a hard life, too. So I don't know, I cannot answer that question, that's something.

KL: I did wonder about your auntie, too, you mentioned her a couple times. She was your father's brother's wife, is that right?

EY: Yes.

KL: What can you tell... was this the brother who came with your father then?

EY: Yes.

KL: Can you just tell us a little bit about both of them, what their work was, what their marriage was like?

EY: You mean my uncle?

KL: Yeah.

EY: Yeah, well, he, I think, was... I don't know if he was two years younger or four years younger, but I know that they were quite close. They belonged to a baseball league and their team evidently were all men that they knew one another from the beginning, they got together, and I guess they had enough members to form a team and said, hey, we got enough here, let's call ourselves so-and-so, and became a baseball team. And then they participated in this league. So there's a few pictures of my father with the brother in a baseball uniform, and there's a picture of them. But as far as education, I think his brother had a chance, somehow, to go to a mechanic school where he learned auto mechanics, so he became that. And so when he went to camp and relocated to Chicago, he worked for a firm that had autos, and he put that back to practice. And then when he relocated down to Los Angeles, then he started a business of his own. And because my father had such a hard time in Washington and also he wanted to be close to his father, his brother, when we were in Gila, Arizona, then he said rather than go back to Washington, he's going to relocate to California and Los Angeles. So that's how come he ended up over there.

KL: What were your aunt and uncle's names?

EY: Pardon?

KL: What were your aunt and uncle's names?

EY: George Yoshito, Y-O-S-H-I-T-O, Tanaka, T-A-N-A-K-A. And my auntie's name was Mary. I think she was Yoshiko, Y-O-S-H-I-K-O, I'm not sure. And then her name was... her maiden name was Hayashi. No, Higashi. Higashi was her maiden name, so she became a Tanaka. And she had four kids, too.

KL: What was your mother's maiden name?

EY: Last name? It's pretty long, it's U-C-H-I-G-A-S-H-I-M-A, Uchigashima.

KL: It's as long as mine. [Laughs]

EY: [Laughs] Is it? What's your last name.

KL: Luetkemeier. It's got eleven letters, too. Did you know your grandparents, the Hawaiian grandparents ever?

EY: Never had a chance, unfortunately.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2015 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.