Densho Digital Archive - Eddie Owada Interview (denshovh-oeddie-01-0003)

<Begin Segment 3>

AL: Just to go back a little bit, your mother... what is your mother's name and when and where was she born?

EO: Mother was from Japan. Her name was Kikue, K-I-K-U-E. And her last name was Goda, G-O-D-A. And I don't know what... well, wait a minute. She was born in 1897, 1897... you know, I remember that because we celebrated her hundredth birthday last year, in nineteen, in 2007.

AL: Hundred and ten birthday.

EO: Hundredth birthday.

AL: Last year was a hundredth birthday? Okay, so she was born in 1907, maybe?

EO: Maybe it was 1907. Dad was born in 1888. Yeah, 1907.

AL: 'Cause if it was last year that would be 1907.

EO: It was 1907.

AL: Is she still living, your mom?

EO: Yes.

AL: She is?

EO: California.

AL: How is her health?

EO: Real good. Gets around, pretty spry, does not use the cane.

AL: We should be interviewing her. 'Cause you're just a, you're just a kid.

EO: Yeah. I'm just a kid. I can set it up for you.

AL: We would be, I think, very interested because, you know, we don't have so many Issei interviews because there's not so many Issei around anymore. So we, we can talk about that. But I think we'd be very interested in talking to her if, if she would be willing and able.

EO: Right.

AL: So, what... do you know anything about her family life in Japan?

EO: No, I don't. No, that's one thing... see, because Mother and Father separated when I was five and a half years old. And so I wasn't old enough to know enough about the questions to ask about her home life back in Japan, things like that. I was just a kid.

AL: Do you know anything about what brought her to the United States? Was she a "picture bride"?

EO: She was the bride, arranged marriage, baishakunin, they call it. And that's how she came to the United States.

AL: Did she know your father in Japan or his family?

EO: Dad knew her family and her family came over here... I don't know if they came here before her marriage to Dad or after. But her parents were here in the United States, living in Seattle, Washington.

AL: Okay, so was she born in the United States?

EO: No, that's the part that is kind of cloudy. I hear she was born here in the United States but went to Japan right, almost, very shortly after her birth. So she did not have, somehow, did not have an American birth certificate. So she kind of went by the fact that she was born in Japan and I, I haven't seen a birth certificate from Japan. But that's just a kind of a talk back there in those days that things weren't really very clear.

AL: Do you know, was the baishakunin in, in the United States or in Japan, and who it was?

EO: It was, it wasn't made clear. But there was a knowledge of knowing her parents, and I don't know exactly how that worked. I was too young to have interest in that area.

AL: Do you know what year they married?

EO: Yes, I think it was about 1924, about a year before I was born.

AL: So she would have been, with the immigration law, she would have been right at the tail end of "picture brides." Because they, the immigration act was in 1924. What do you know about... were they married in Japan or in Tacoma, do you know?

EO: I believe they were born in Tacoma -- wed in Tacoma. Yeah. They were married in Tacoma.

AL: Do you know anything about the level of education of either of your parents?

EO: Dad, I believe, completed what we call high school. And so did Mother over there. And the reason I say that father is because he had to take his training in photography somewhere along the line. And it was in Japan. And if he did not, he did not finish high school, I doubt if he would have been able to get into photography school.

AL: Okay.