<Begin Segment 2>

RP: How about your mother? Her name?

TH: Tsutaye, T-S-U-T-A-Y-E Nakano. And she came to the U.S. in 1920.

RP: Was she a "picture bride"?

TH: Yes, she was a "picture bride," which was very common at that time. I think they were married in, by proxy. It was recorded in the Japanese courthouse, their local courthouse, and so she was able to come to the U.S. and raise the family, immediately started a family.

RP: Do you know if any, if you or any of your other siblings were registered as dual citizens? Did you have dual citizenship?

TH: Actually, the three oldest of us five siblings, and I'm the middle child, we had dual citizenship, which was expunged -- I don't know if that's the word you call it -- but anyway, we gave up our Japanese citizenship when the war started.

RP: Did your mother ever talk about what it was like to come over from Japan --

TH: Yes.

RP: -- and enter this strange new culture called America?

TH: Yes. She came at a young age of... I believe it was about eighteen or nineteen. She had no Western clothes, she came in her kimono. And she said when she first went shopping -- oh, the day they arrived in San Francisco, my father took her to Japantown where there was a merchant who sold Western clothes to Japanese women. And so from top to bottom, she was introduced to Western clothes, and of course she didn't know which one to wear first, so they were all numbered, "number 1, number 2, number 3," and so forth. And that was the last time she wore Japanese kimono.

RP: Did she share with you some of her feelings or opinions about America? Was it, she had difficulties fitting in, becoming a wife?

TH: Well, she was young, of course, but she had friends who had written her telling her that it was quite comfortable. And so I don't think she had any real apprehensions, maybe too young to even think about it.

RP: Now, one of the stories about these picture marriages was the guys would often send a picture of themselves about ten years, when they looked ten years younger than they really were?

TH: Yes, I've heard stories like that. But in the case of my mother and father, she knew who he was. And she's lucky my father was good-looking and a nice, kind man.

RP: There was no false advertising.

TH: No, no false advertising.

RP: The real thing. And your mom also came from...

TH: Fukuoka, yes.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2010 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.