Densho Digital Archive - Rose Niguma Interview (denshovh-nrose

<Begin Segment 10>

MR: You said your father left. Where did he go? Did you hear from him after?

RN: Well, see, my father left, and my uncle tried to help him. My uncle's eight years older than he is, and I think back in Japan, he probably helped my father get out of scrapes because my father is sort of bratty. And, no. He was a little willful, and my uncle wasn't, but they did love each other. He tried to help. Having children, there will be interference because children have their own idea. So my father had a good friend. He did go up, when the business was slow, he took George with him and went to Alaska to work in the canneries. And then other times, he'd take my brother George with him and go to send him to work to hop yards because my uncle was a foreman. He had to find workers for the hop yards. He had his own real estate business, but Saturdays when he did that. So my father had experience, so he went to San Diego, Terminal Island, where they had cannery and fishing and all that. There were very many Japanese working there. So he's getting business, you can't tell from day-to-day what it will be. But now, he has a permanent job and permanent wages. So he wrote a letter, told my mother, "Come down to San Diego. I have a permanent job, bring all the kids with you," this and that, but my mother had enough of him, so she just tore the letter up and dumped it because he was abusive, domineering. No woman should take that. And he tried another time to get another response from her. It was same. She didn't want to return because the situation will be the same. He won't change. It will be the same. Whether he's working or not, he'll still be domineering, and my mother just didn't care for that because she was raised by a very caring father. My grandfather was very caring, and my mother was youngest of three sisters. And my mother being the youngest was my father's baby daughter, see. Then after that, two sons arrived. And in Japan, men are very important, so my grandmother dropped her, took care of these two little boys that came along. So my mother felt neglected. But it was my father, her father who replaced my grandmother and looked after her, so she felt very close to her father. Then to come to this country, no escape, marriage [inaudible] person must have been horrible for her I think. There's no escape, can't go back. But so many of them came here "picture bride." But my mother was family arranged because my uncle was married to her first cousin, see, and her first cousin was my grandmother's favorite niece. They got along beautifully. And so when she sent her over here, she thought she would be a help to her, see. And so she always felt that of the three daughters, why should she be the one to be sent to a foreign country? She felt very homesick. But she said, "The moon is the same." She heard a caw crow. She said, "Well, that's the same crow," and she sort of adjusted. Then she had her first daughter, baby daughter, but the baby daughter died at eight months, and that hurt her. She named her daughter after her younger brother.

My younger brother became a university professor. My grandmother, my mother's second sister above her was very progressive, very intelligent. She could do work a class ahead of her. She's very intelligent. She took after my grandmother because my grandmother was the one that my grandfather, he handled the finances. If there was opportunity for her to buy property, she bought it, so she was a business woman in her mentality. And my mother's sister above her had the same mentality, very bright. And she told my grandmother after she graduated from grade school, sent her to high school because times are changing, and it be better for her to have more education. But my mother had to commute from city to farm back and forth, and they had a, the tuition had to be paid. It's not like here. The tuition is paid there from the first grade on in her time, so a lot of these Isseis didn't have opportunity to have good education because their family couldn't afford it, the tuition. So my mother had four years of college, not college but high school, but it's similar to attending college because that time, women weren't that educated because they wanted to keep the woman inferior to man. So when she graduated, the teacher asked her to become a teacher of grade school. She's nineteen years old. She thought that would be wonderful. She has a career, but she didn't have it because family arranged marriage, so she had to leave for America. And she never knew my father, so she married a total stranger. So she came here, and the life was hard for her. But my grandfather was a very gentle person. He loved my mother. And so she's mentioned him now and then, but I knew that she thought of him, and I don't think the grandpa, I mean my grandfather approved of her coming here anyway. But my mother, her mother is more dominant personality, grandmother, and she came here. I knew that when my mother was dying, she had liver cancer. Her life was terrible. She had lymphoma, she had liver cancer on top of that at the prime of age. Well, her final days, she mentioned her father, and she mentioned the person that she was supposed to be married to who was a distant relative. And when she was dying from, Seventh Adventist Hospital, it was on Belmont, and I never dreamed that they opened her up, told me she had terminal cancer. There's no way of rectifying the problem. That's what they told me. She probably have nine months to live, and I thought was a horrible thing to happen to my poor mother. I felt so unfair. I thought, but I took care of her because it was not, it was 1953. It wasn't far from being out of camp, so we weren't covered or anything. And the doctor said take care of her at home because nine months in hospital will be a tremendous bill, and so I took care of her. But the doctor was young, he was quite young. I think he was about in his early forties. He came to see my mother every week to check on her, and he knew exactly when she was leaving. He was accurate. But I took care of her, and I took care of her day and probably night because I loved her. And she's my mother, I knew she suffered so much. So the doctor was, come, and then he looks at me. He says, "You take such good care of her." So I told him, "She's my mother, and I love her." That's all I said. But he was a young compassionate doctor. So he came in, checked her out three, whatever. There's nothing he could do, but he checked her every weekly. In the nine months, she never had a bed sore. The reason is I gave her alcohol bath all over, and I think that killed the staff germ or whatever that goes into bed sores like Christopher Reeves died from complication of bed sores. Even now, alcohol bath wouldn't help him because he's paraplegic. Well, I can move my mother. You know, she lost a lot of weight, so I moved her. But I gave her, besides, her skin was thicker than mine. Her hair was heavier. And when I did that, gave her the bath, she said, "Oh, it feels so refreshing." She appreciated it, so I did it every day. I think that's why she never had a bed sore. It kills the stupid germ. I don't think they do that now in the hospital. I don't know, but they did at that time. They gave them alcohol bath, so I gave her alcohol bath.

But just before she died, we're not affectionate. We're not raised that way in second generation, third and fourth. Even the second generation would be much more affectionate. But my father's real old fashioned, you know, real old fashioned, and so we don't show our emotion. But through the, and she looked at me and says, "I'm leaving now," she told me. She held her arm out to me, said, "I'm leaving now." I said, "Oh Mom, be a little bit stronger," I said. And what happened, she fell into a coma. She stayed in a coma for a while. Then she turned her face on the side. When she died, there's a white aura. You can barely see it, but it's a white aura. That's your life leaving your body. I saw that even in a fish. My father caught a rainbow trout. It was so beautiful, jewel-like color and all that, but when lying there, it turned gray, and there's that white aura. I could see it leaving, see. That's when they're dying. And my mother smiled. She didn't smile in her coma. She smiled and turned her side. Her father came for her. I knew it because she dreamt about her father. She dreamt about him. She was thinking about him, but she dreamt about him. But she fell, she smiled. I thought, "Could Christ come for her?" No. It was her father, or in her mind, she saw him. She smiled. So I want her to live longer, but I thought to myself I'm being very selfish because she's suffering, so why should her suffering be prolonged? It's freedom from the pain. Then she passed on. It's part of life too, but you learn things like that. I missed her for about a year. You're not supposed to grieve that long, but I did. Sometimes I turn a corner, I see someone that looked like my mother, so I'd hurry and look, not there. But that's life.

My life hasn't been very easy because George didn't have a good retirement. He's totally deaf. He went through a depression, took six years to get him out of it, for him to accept it, and then Kay suffered colon cancer. The doctor wasn't smart enough to see it. He could have caught it earlier, but he didn't. So my brother suffered, and there retired my art. I mean, you don't feel creative anyway or about going on. It's part of life because I just have undergone things that I have, see. I'm not the only one. But it does retire the creativity anyway. But still, whatever that's inside of me persisted. That's why I didn't give up. It just hung onto me until I fell, then I haven't painted for a year. But I have a canvas there, I've got paint there, and I'm hoping that I could paint. I don't know what I will paint though. But whatever, I hope it's better than what I've been doing.