Densho Digital Archive - John Tomita Interview (denshovh-tjohn

<Begin Segment 4>

KP: And your mother, she worked? What did she do in that time?

JT: Well, she did everything. Yeah, she was a waitress and she did cooking and yeah. Yeah, as far as breakfast and dinner, etcetera, we all ate together. But never, I remember my mother was never involved. She was always in the kitchen. And she's cooking something. Oh, she was a great pastry maker. She was the daughter of a confectionary store in Japan. So, oh, she used to whip out any, any pastry that... she was a terrific...

KP: Was it an arranged marriage between your mother and father?

JT: Yes. I found out a lot later when I went to Japan when I was in the '50s. Met the cousins and whatnot and they were telling me how my mother, she, before she could go to school she had to make something for the store that she had to make it and then she could go to store. And she, she must have been a pretty smart gal because she was attending one of the top high schools in Kumamoto. And in order to enter that school you have to be smart to, to enter that high school. And I understand with low I.Q. they cannot attend that school. So, now, back in '50s they were telling me that it was just like... the high school was just like a, a college in those days. So, they consider her among the smart gals. Yeah, I understand, see my father was, came to America when he was sixteen and then he went back to get a wife. And he picked her and she was still going to school so she was around eighteen I guess when she got married. And, the, my cousin and relative in Japan tells me that, yeah, he was, wasn't supposed to come back to America. The arranged marriage, this was an arranged marriage, that he was supposed to stay on the farm. See, my father is the only son so in Japan, where he came from, the number one son inherit the whole family's estate. So they had a, my father's father never actually farmed. He got the land from his father and so he, they rent the farm out to various people that want to farm and they live off of them. But, according to my mother, I mean, my father's father was a very generous person. They supposed to give so many sack of rice and, and then from the rice they make the sake and then it, always New Year time he distributed the sake to the, to the village people.

KP: So why do you think your father... it sounds like he had a pretty good deal going in Japan with inheriting that farm. Why do you think he gave that up and went to the United States?

JT: Well, he, what I heard... when he was in Japan, all he did was taking care of horse. He had a pet horse. All he'd do is wash that horse and once a year they have some kind of a fair and he raced that horse. That's all, that was his job. But, so he could have stayed, yeah. But somehow he didn't want to stay there. And he came, yeah.