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MR: Let's go back to the trip, we'll backtrack to the trip over from America to Japan on a boat, I assume. How was that trip?

YD: I remember my brother and my father drove me to Seattle, and we, the night before we left Portland, the family -- I'm going to start getting weepy again. The family all got together, and I remember my brother saying, "Why does Yoneko have to go to Japan, you know. She is too young." And my father said, "Well, we have plans for her." And after we got to Seattle, we stayed overnight at, this is probably now defunct, but it was a Bush Hotel, and we went to the seaport and got into the Hikawa Maru. And I have wonderful memories on that ship because there was James Sakamoto who was editor of JACL newspapers in Seattle, very well-known, and he was going blind, and he thought that if he had gone to, if he went to Japan, he would get better treatment. So he and his brother were on that, the same ship, and we became very great friends. And so every day when we were able to, if the ship was not rolling too much, we would walk on the deck and have wonderful stories to tell. And in later years after I did come back to Japan, I tried to get ahold of him and found out that he had been killed in an accident. He had a white cane, and he was crossing the street in Seattle. He had been killed. But I had a chance to talk to his wife and told her about the wonderful memories that I had. Mr. Matsushima, I remember on the ship, it was Yoji's, Yoji, of course, was not born there, but his oldest brother and sister was still a baby, and they were on the ship with us. And I remember Mr. Yoji's father and mother, of course, were there with the grandfather. And we had a very wonderful trip over, but it took us two weeks on the ship to get over to Japan.

MR: And what year was that?

YD: That was 1931.

MR: And when you arrived at the port?

YD: As I mentioned before that my aunt was there. And there was a cousin there who was a doctor, a woman doctor, and that surprised me very much, and she was in American clothes and beautiful, tall woman, and she was related to my aunt's uncle by marriage. But I think that was the last that I ever saw of her because she was a very busy person. And that surprised me because in the olden days, I didn't think that there would be women doctors in Japan.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2003 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.