Densho Digital Archive - Taeko Joanne Iritani Interview (denshovh-itaeko-01-0002)

<Begin Segment 2>

KP: And let's do start back with your parents. What were your, what was your father's background? Where did he come from?

TI: Well, he was born in Fukushima, Japan. His father had left Japan while he was still in his mother. Before he was born, probably in 1899, my father was born on January 2, 1900. So it was very easy for us to keep track of how old he was. His father had gone to Hawaii, and then come over to the mainland and worked in Bakersfield at the Santa Fe Depot cleaning cars. And I, while I was doing my church history in Bakersfield, I found in one of the city directories the name Y. Ono. And I assume it was him living at the dormitory for the young men. The year after that, there was no notation about any laborers of Japanese or Chinese descent. The year after that, there was no notation about any laborers of Japanese or Chinese descent. They had just cut them out. So I was lucky to have found him the year before, 1907.

KP: And that was your grandfather?

TI: That was my grandfather. Well, my father came over here in 1918. And his father had called him, at that time we called it yobiyose, when, to call a person who is a family member, and that's the only way they were supposed to be able to come since 1913 law, I believe, prevented others to come. So he came in 1918, he had promised his mother that he would send his father back home. And so he, my father, my mother told me about how he used to get all the extra work around the Santa Fe station cleaning cars and whatever extra, everybody gave him the extra work. He was, after all, very young. And so he was able to send his father home by 1921 or '22, and my mother says -- see, my mother and father were first cousins. And so my mother said that her, her mother, who was my father's aunt, had told her, my mother, that, "Your uncle had come home from America, but he had the Spanish flu." And so he died after that. So my father had sent his father home to Japan, and he died not too long after that. In 1924, my father was told by other young, other men, Japanese men, "You'd better go back to Japan because the Exclusion Act is going to be effective in July of 1924," and he was a twenty-four year old young man. And so by, before April, I'm sure, he had gone back to Japan, and his mother had already decided who he would get married to. And it was his first cousin who he had played with as, they had played together as children. My mother's family home was the actual family home. Last name was Suenaga, S-U-E-N-A-G-A, and my father's family, my father's father had taken his wife's name, because his wife did not have any brothers. And so he became an Ono, which was not his original name. And so my father went home, he is, of course, Ono. And they married in Tokyo, and my mother told me about how that was the first time she had ridden the train to go to Tokyo from Fukushima, which must be a good two hundred miles, I think. It's north of Tokyo, anyway. And so they got married down there, and she took her sister along with her on that trip. So we have that picture of the three of them together. And they landed in Seattle. They didn't come to San Francisco and Angel Island, they went to Seattle. And so from Seattle, they went down to Bakersfield on the train. Well, while they were in Seattle, my father bought my mother a dress, because all she had, of course, was her kimono. And the family was very poor, so she didn't have a lot of kimonos, I'm sure. But anyway, he bought a dress for her, they lived in Bakersfield, remember, and it was a wool dress. [Laughs] And Bakersfield is very, very hot, and so she talked about and laughed about the fact that she was so hot going from Seattle on the train to Bakersfield. And while they were in Bakersfield, they lived in various places. There was, one of the men in our church who told about how he remembered my mother as a bride, and they lived in the little house behind his house. And so they lived in various places, and my brother was born a year later in 1925. And then my second brother was born in 1926.

KP: Your oldest brother's name? Can you give that?

TI: Yoneo Ono.

KP: Could you spell it?

TI: Y-O-N-E-O. And my second brother's name was Minoru, M-I-N-O-R-U, but he was also named Joe. So whether it was Joe Minoru or Minoru Joe, I'm not sure. And so there were the two boys born first, and then followed by my sister Tomi, T-O-M-I, and then me, Taeko. And then three years later, my youngest brother Takashi, T-A-K-A-S-H-I. And we lived, when I was a little girl, we didn't live in Bakersfield any longer, we lived out in a small town called Tupman, T-U-P-M-A-N, outside of Taft. And that was the oil-producing area, and our house, my mother told me, was owned by Standard Oil. My father was the gardener there, and he, before that, he decided he wanted to learn how to be a farmer. And so he had gone out to the farms where the young men lived in dormitories, and they were mostly bachelors, Japanese men came without families. And while he was there, he met Susumu Kuwano, who became his best friend at that time. And his name is important because he was the reason that my father became a Christian. He looked around at the other young men who were laborers, they were all laborers, and he said they were using their money drinking and gambling. And he said, "I knew I couldn't do that, I had a young family started." And so he found the young men who were not doing that to become friends with, and Susumu Kuwano later on became a minister in the Methodist church. And so my father and mother became active in the little Methodist church that had been a mission church, started by the First Methodist Church in Bakersfield. And the Issei always called our church "Misshon," That's the Japanese accented "mission." [Laughs] "Misshon." And they also called it ME Kyokai. "Kyokai" is for a church or organization, and I assumed "ME" was a Japanese word, but it stood for Methodist Episcopal. So...

KP: If we can jump back one question, what did -- it sounds like your mother's family and your father's family kind of came from the same area. What kind of background --

TI: Well, they were cousins.

KP: Yeah. What kind of, what were their backgrounds? What did your family, what did that family do?

TI: Their family, they were farmers. My father's, father's father originally came from that family. He was their, probably, second son. And so the first son takes over the farm, the second son either finds another way to make a living, or you get married, and in his case, he got married and took his wife's name. He was a yoshi, they call it. And his family, his new family actually had a little store. But I'm assuming they didn't do too well, because he was supposed to take over that business, and instead, he came to America where the, perhaps they all saw it as the more lucrative possibility. And so that's why he came over here.

KP: Okay. So your father's desire, you think, to get back into farming had to do with the family tradition?

TI: Well, being in Bakersfield, that's when he saw most of the Issei were farmers. There were a few people who owned stores in Bakersfield, but mostly they had farms that they had to rent. And are you familiar with the alien land law? Well, I found out when my children were doing their biographies, autobiographies in, like, third, fourth grade, that we sat down and they interviewed Grandma, my mother. And that's when I learned that not only could my father not purchase the land or lease the land, he had to rent. And I didn't know that until I was a parent. So we have a lot of learning to do.