Densho Digital Archive - George Iseri Interview (denshovh-igeorge

<Begin Segment 6>

AC: Your parents tell you very much about how it was living in Japan?

GI: Never talked about it. Never talked about it except one that I remember very plainly, and this was quite a coincidence, that she used to talk about playing as a kid. Let's see, she was about eighteen when she got married, I think, and she never learned other than katakana, the simplest Japanese character. So we asked her several times about, "Mom, how come, didn't you go to school and how come you didn't learn any more Nihongo, reading and writing." She used to just laugh about it. "Well, my family, my folks, your grandparents, said, 'A woman doesn't need to learn anything, out of books. You just learn to be a good mother, a good daughter, good mother, and raise a family.'" But anyway, about that time, why, she remembered playing in the yard of her home where I visit quite frequently, and every couple three years, I'll go to the home place of my mother's and my dad's too in Kumamoto, Japan. And she used to talk about playing out in the garden and this and that. We had an acquaintance come by one time, and this is in the last ten or fifteen years. He said, you know, boiling it all down, he realized he was from the same place as where my brother was born. And we got to talking with my mother, and my mother, she said, "I used to play in the yard under a certain tree with your mother when we were teenagers, little kids," and my mother had never met him before but knew his mother, and he was very well acquainted with it because he had lived there during the, part of the war. Later, he became, had his citizenship reinstated, was working for the U.S. government. But she and he talked about that, and it was just so clear to me, and I got to thinking about her last night. Dad being sixteen, I don't remember him saying anything about before he came to this country. He did mention, now, my mother mentioned this, that Dad's half brother was in Seattle, and he was a big shot. He was a poor big shot. He learned to get to know the big officials from I guess the consul and things like from Japan and things, and he wanted to be a big shot. But anyway, I guess he wasn't much of a... my mother and dad think he was causing more problem than they thought, so they suggested he go back to Japan which he did, and he took a bunch of, or took or had shipped a bunch of American fruit and vegetables, plants and seeds and things and went back to Kobe there to establish them in Kobe where he had his family assistance, half brother now. And in recent years, we've come across a little pamphlet that he had made to sell vegetables and fruits, American vegetables and fruits to the Americans that were in Japan. Kobe was kind of a center of, I guess that's where probably the embassy was, U.S. Embassy was right along there. But I think Uncle might have done fairly well there. But that's about all I knew. I knew my aunt, my dad's youngest sister. I met her the first time I went, and that's almost fifty years ago, but that's about all. I have one cousin, first cousin on my dad's side left in Japan. I have probably seven or eight first cousins on my mother's side left over there. But I'm sure sorry I didn't get the story from Dad. My sister knows more about it, but I'd like to have had the story from Dad just telling us about why he came to America and what life was like before he came, although I know it was real tough.