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AC: This is an interview with Sumi Saito, a Nisei woman, age seventy-seven. The interview is occurring in Ontario, Oregon, December 4, 2004. The interviewer is Alton W. Chung, for the Oregon Nikkei Legacy Center's Oral History Project 2004. Thank you so very much for agreeing to go and speak with us today. You've brought several items, photographs and things like that. Would you like to tell us about them?

SS: Well, I thought first I would talk about Paul's family. This is his mother and father's wedding picture, and I'm not sure what year they were married. But they were both from Fukushima-ken, and Paul probably told you everything about the family, but here's a picture of parents and his brothers. They had three boys, no girls, and I believe this was probably when Paul was in high school. So it was probably in the late '30s.

AC: Who are they? Who are the brothers?

SS: This is Abe, the middle son, and this is Joe, the oldest, and this is Paul. Paul's father's name was Yoshikichi Saito, and grandma's name was Hiro Kurotsu Saito. And she was always kind of bummed because her name was Hiro. And she said she didn't even get three syllables in her name, and she didn't get a "ko" or "uye" or whatever on the end, and she was always kind of mad about that. [Laughs]

AC: And what was so significant about having "ko" or "uye"?

SS: I guess it was just nicer or something. More grand or something, I don't know. And this is a picture of the Saito family when Paul's oldest brother, Joe, and his wife Nellie went for a visit. And I'm not sure what year that was, but the one in the center is Paul's aunt, and she's probably the only survivor of that generation, and these were her children. I know this fellow here is Paul's cousin. He looks a lot like Paul's brother Abe. But I thought, well, I'll tell you about their family, but Paul's already talked about his family, so I'll talk about my family.

I'll show you a picture of... let's see. This is my mother and father on their wedding day, and they were married in Japan on February 13th or 11th, 1916. And my dad was thirty years old, my mother was twenty-one. My dad left Japan when he was seventeen, and he thought he would get rich in the U.S. and go back and get his wife he was promised to a lot earlier, but it took him 'til he was thirty to get enough money to get back to Japan to pick her up. But I don't know, Dad had a lot of hard experiences. Can you imagine coming to this country when you're seventeen in 19... or the turn of the century? It was real tough. This was a picture of my mother and father on their fiftieth anniversary. And, oh, this is a picture of the mother and father and the six girls and two boys. And this picture was just of the six girls. And at the time of their fiftieth anniversary, this was the whole clan. Well, the children aren't here, but, let's see, I think everyone was married, and so their spouses were pictured in this one. But my parents had eight children, and amazing thing, they're all still living. My older sister is eighty-seven, the next sister's eighty-five, and I have another one that's eighty-one, and then Shingo, my brother, is... what is he? Let's see. He must be about seventy-nine, I think. And then I'm seventy-seven, then I have a younger sister seventy... let's see, seventy-four. Let's see, how old is Jim? Jim's seventy-one, and then the youngest sister is sixty-nine, I think. But that's my family.

I guess I could tell about my dad coming over when he was seventeen, and in those days, the Isseis, they thought they were coming over here and making a lot of money and then they were going to go home with all their loot and be happy. But they found out how rough it was. And Dad, I don't know what all he did, but I know one time he was a houseboy, and I think that's how he learned English a little bit. And he worked on the railroad in a gang and said it was really awful. They'd give you a biscuit for breakfast, a biscuit for lunch, and a biscuit for supper a lot of times. And he said there were a lot of times he cried for his mother, just seventeen, can you imagine? And let's see... I don't know... I know he started farming with his first cousin, Mr. Matsui, his name was... I can't remember now. Hachisuke Matsui was his first cousin, they came to America together, I think. And then they were living in a very crude place when my dad got married to my mom. He went to Japan to get her, and she said, "Oh my goodness," in Japan in those days they didn't ever see the bones of meat, and she came to this place and there was a ham hanging in the kitchen with the bone exposed. Thought she wanted to go back right now. [Laughs] But that was one of the stories she tells. And then Mr. Matsui went back the next year and got his bride, so the first year after my mom and dad were married, they had their first child. The next year, the Matsuis had their baby, so they took turns every year having a baby. But Matsuis quit at six and we had eight. [Laughs]

<End Segment 1> - Copyright © 2004 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.