Densho Digital Archive
Manzanar National Historic Site Collection
Title: George T. "Joe" Sakato Interview
Narrator: George T. "Joe" Sakato
Interviewer: Tom Ikeda
Location: Denver, Colorado
Date: May 14, 2008
Densho ID: denshovh-sgeorge-01-0044

<Begin Segment 44>

TI: So I just want to end with a few questions about, you decided to settle in Denver. Why Denver?

GS: My wife was from Denver.

TI: Okay, so it was because your wife is from here.

GS: She's from Denver, she likes it.

TI: And you talked a little bit about meeting her when you were traveling with your brother.

GS: Brother.

TI: So what, what is it about Bess that attracted you to her?

GS: Just the cutest little thing I'd ever seen. [Laughs] I used to, I'd go with a Filipino girl, Filipino-Japanese girl in Arizona, but my parents, they didn't want that. They didn't, we, my brother-in-law, my brother, Ken, was meeting another girl, being that I'm descent of a samurai family, they go by the numbers now, you know that. And then if they're not the right family number, no, can't marry her. So somehow they talked to her and she sent me a "Dear John" letter when I was overseas. That kind of hurt for a while, but I come home and seems different girls, well, they didn't want me to marry her. So then I met Bess and I says, "I'm going to marry her anyway." So they finally met her, then they finally met the family, everything worked out all right.

TI: But interesting how, so your parents were really kind of strict in terms of...

GS: Oh, yes.

TI: ...of you and your siblings in terms of who they would marry.

GS: They wanted one of his boys to go to Japan because the other brother didn't have a, boys in the family, to keep the name Sakato, but neither one of us wanted to go. So we're the last of the Sakatos, no more, and my brother's...

TI: And your children, you have, I know, one daughter. Is that it, or do you have other...

GS: That's all. Then my other brothers had just daughters, too. They had one, Ken had one boy, but he got sick and he died, because diabetic, and he passed away. So, me and my two other brothers is the only siblings left for the Sakato family.

<End Segment 44> - Copyright © 2008 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.