Densho Digital Archive - Tamiko Honda Interview (denshovh-htamiko-01-0003)

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RP: Tell us about your siblings. Maybe you can list them starting with the oldest first and their American and Japanese name?

TH: Yes. I'm one of five, the middle child. My oldest brother, firstborn, was fifteen years old when my father took us to Japan, the whole family unit of (eight) of us to tour Japan and to visit relatives. And my brother, who was fifteen at the time, decided he was going to stay in Japan to study because he realized that his opportunities in the U.S. was very few. And so he looked to getting an education in Japan for his future, and so he stayed of his own volition. My father and mother encouraged him to come home with us, but he decided to stay, and he was caught during the war in Japan. And he, of course, was struggling because he had no funds. But in the university where he was attending, he looked for some kind of a scholarship and he found something that was offered by the Manchurian railway. Now, he took it. And so the Manchurian railway gave him the scholarship, and he was exempt from the army, and he graduated the year the atom bomb was dropped. And so he had no more obligations to the Manchurian railway, so he was fortunate in that respect. And he came home after the war and joined us, and that was my oldest brother. My sister and I relocated to New York City just to get out of camp, because camp had become such a stifling place with no future. And because my brother Jim, younger than I, was in Connecticut attending university, he met a fellow who had a nursery in Long Island, and they became good friends, and his friend invited him to come to work and visit during Christmas vacation and spring break, and he did, and Jim met the family, (the Yamaguchis). And the family asked Jim all kinds of questions about camp. They happened to be Japanese Americans, and they invited my sister Mary and myself to Long Island, and they would be our sponsors. We had no job offered to us, so we had to have a sponsor to get out of camp, which we did. And that was in June of 1944.

RP: So there was Nobu was your oldest brother?

TH: Nobu was the oldest brother.

RP: And then there was Mary.

TH: Mary, and then myself, and then Jim, who went to university, and Kei. Kei was still in high school at the time. And in our family group we had a grandmother, my father's mother, who was sixty-four when we entered camp. And that was our family unit. Of course, my uncle who my father raised, he and his wife and their baby girl, we were one family group, number 21835.