Densho Digital Archive - Osamu Mori Interview (denshovh-mosamu-01-0002)

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RP: What was your father's name?

OM: There's kind of story there too. Before the war he was Mitsukichi, M-I-T-S-U-K-I-C-H-I. And then I don't know if it was before or during the war, he changed it to Kokichi, but you use the same Japanese words or characters. Kokichi and Mitsukichi, the first one is hikaru, which is sunlight or whatever. And you could read it Mitsu or Ko, means the same thing. Anyway at the end, his name was Kokichi and my mother's name was Kinu.

RP: What was her maiden name?

OM: Mori, the town where she came from, or he came from, the majority of them were Moris so I used that as my... any time they want a secret, you know, for your name, verification, I used my mother's maiden name. And they always say, "Your maiden name," and I said that's what it was.

RP: Yeah, I can understand that. Where did your dad come from in Japan?

OM: Mie-ken. I guess he was from the city called Yokkaichi, Mie-ken, which is just south of Nagoya. It's a fairly large city and my mother was from a little village south of that called Kuwana, same prefecture.

RP: Can you share with us any information about your father's family in Japan?

OM: My father's family was fairly well-off before they got married, he was married. And then their father passed away when he was young but he had substantial property evidently from, at least from what I heard. And through a kind of a incident, I guess they lost everything. They had to give everything up. So they owned, you know, mountain, what they called yama, which means forest, that means land I guess. But they lost all that so around the turn of the century, 1906 I think it was, my father and his older brother came to this country to seek their fame and fortune or whatever. And they ended up initially going to Wyoming, coal mining, I think it was coal mining and he stayed there for several years. My dad was, you know, kind of a free spender and this and that. Whereas my uncle, his older brother, saved all his money and in a few years he went back to Japan and my dad stayed here. He came here 1906 and I guess he didn't get married 'til 1920s, early '20s, just before the exclusion act came in, he got married and was able to bring my mother over here. But at the time he was already, he came over here when he was twenty... he was born in 1880 and 1906 makes him about twenty-six. So from 1906 to 19, let's say, '20, 1920, that's another fourteen years so that... he was close to forty when he got married. You know, he tried all kinds of occupations including farming, fishing, coal mining. I think he was in the lumber business too for a while, not business, but lumber business, but was not really a success at anything. I mean he made a living but he wasn't very successful. And at the time of the war starting, we were farming. I think the year I was born, 1928, my mother started a poultry business. At that time we were living in San Pedro, that's where I was born. And I guess little by little they built up the poultry business, and I'm not sure exactly how many thousands of chickens we had, but we had, you know, what they called fryers, you know. These days you see it at Foster Farms or whatever but in those days we used to raise fryers and then also poultry for laying hens, laying eggs. And we had a turkey business for turkeys during holidays but she ran all that. And my father did a farming business.

RP: Truck farming?

OM: Yeah, and at that time, you know, leasing land, strictly leasing land. And he built, my father built most of the buildings for the chicken coops and chicken brooders and things like that. So he was a pretty handy man but I could still remember some of the brooders particularly. It was better built than our house. [Laughs] But that's a business kind of thing so that's, you had to have quality, you know. So that's kind of a overview of what he did. But she was much more successful in the poultry business than he was. He was not very good at that, he was trying to baby the... keep everything warm and overheated things. So she did a much better job.