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LT: So today is May 13, 2014. This is an interview with Tomiko Takeuchi at the Oregon Buddhist Temple in Portland, Oregon. Ian McCluskey is the videographer, and the interviewer is Linda Tamura. So, Tomiko, you were born in Portland on April 18, 1942, but your given name was different.

TT: When I was born my dad had a friend or something whose name was Linda, and he liked another friend named Ann, or I guess it was my mother, so they named me Linda Ann. However, as I grew up and got into college -- and until then I really didn't know I was Japanese, I lived a very "white" life. And I went to college and realized that there was a whole ethnicity I knew nothing about. I started working in Salem, Oregon, and there was, like, fifteen hundred people that worked for Salem, and I wanted a way where, when I went anywhere, people would know who I was. So I took the name Tomiko because my mom was Tomiye and my dad was Kaname. And I thought I was being so cool taking "Tomi," putting "ko" at the end for "child," and I paid a huge price with an attorney to make sure there were no liens on the name or anything. I got home, the day I got home with a letter that said my name was now Tomiko Takeuchi, Charlton Heston was on TV in a movie called Hawaii, and his concubine was named, of course, Tomiko. So all of the bloom kind of left the name in one instant. But since then it's been terrific. I worked for Portland Public Schools, there are thirty-five hundred people there, and I can call anywhere and say it was Tomiko, and they knew who I was. So it did, in the end, obviously, it worked out terrific.

LT: Thank you. Actually, that makes it even more compelling to learn your story and what you said, you didn't know that you were Japanese. So as we learn more about your growing up, your childhood and your early adult, we'll learn more about your self-discovery, and then I'll ask you the question again at the end about your discovery. So let's begin with your grandparents in Japan and the birth of your parents. So let's start with your paternal grandparents. Your grandparents were born in Hiroshima. And what do you know about their, how they made a living, the kind of work they did, and how they decided to come to the United States.

TT: As I understand it, the great-grandfather owned a farm, and Yojiro, my father's father, was just sixteen when he came to the U.S. And he had done some barbering before, I don't know if it was just family, but he did come because he wasn't the first son. And so he came with a young wife, and we know very little about her because she had a bunch of children and then actually passed away. But he actually did come from a farm family, came right out of high school or out of schooling, and came to the U.S. and started a barbershop in what is now Old Town.

LT: Okay. And then your father Kaname Takeuchi was born in Portland on June 1, 1907. What do you know about his early life and his aspirations?

TT: And that one I do know. Luckily I have much more story there. Dad always wanted to be a doctor, and so, and he was extremely intelligent, and went through school through about sixth grade and then his father took them back. And I think that's probably when his mother passed away. And so they moved back to Japan, so he went from sixth grade until I think he was about sixteen, seventeen, when he came over, back to the United States. When he came back to the U.S. he went to Lincoln High School, and because his English was not very good, rather than putting him in as a junior -- they were so nice to kids -- they put him in as a freshman. But he did, he was very successful. He was extremely persistent, and he loved books, so he read all the time. So then he did, he was very successful at Lincoln, and helped at Dunaway school, he used to help with the track club and things like this, and I'm guessing it's to make extra money, because they were very hard up that way. But he'd always wanted to be a doctor and chemistry came very easy to him. So when he went to Reed, he majored in chemistry and then was set and ready to go into the medical field and go on to med. school, but then his father moved back to Japan and his father needed someone to help send money so that he would be able to get along. And so my father stopped at that time. Didn't pursue that career, and instead went on and started a grocery store.

LT: And what do you know about that grocery store?

TT: That grocery store was terrific. It was a little teeny one, and I can remember it was on the corner of Fifty-Seventh and Fremont in Portland, Oregon. And on the corner there was a drugstore, and then we were next door. One of the funniest things was the outside was made of this cement with these little teeny rocks in them. And I always have been a rock hound, and I'd go out and pick out the little rocks. I had quite a collection of rocks; I was always afraid the building might collapse, but it didn't. And the store wasn't very large, but Dad had a meat market in the back, we always had fresh produce, and it had two counters only. And all of us went and kind of helped, we lived just four blocks away so we could actually walk to the store to spend time. And I can remember shelves and shelves of dusting, and you call, it's called facing the shelf, so if someone takes a can of beans, you move everything forward so that the shelf always looks like it's filled. So we did things like that. I wasn't the best worker, but I ate a lot of candy, and I enjoyed myself. My other sisters were much better at working than I was, but I have really fond memories of it. They spent a lot of time there, and I'd come up from school and oftentimes go up to the store just to hang out with the folks.

LT: Now the store was at Fifty-Seventh and Fremont?

TT: Yes.

LT: And what was the name of the store?

TT: Fifty-Seventh Food Market.

LT: And how did your father gain the funds to purchase the store?

TT: He was lucky. He did a lot of work in the summers and stuff, like when he was going to Reed, and he made some really good friends. And the one thing was Waddems Food Distributor. People in that place, they were friendly, and so they actually gave him funds to be able to start a store. He leased it, he didn't buy it or anything. But they kind of started to come out as far as to help him buy supplies and things, and then he paid them back. And so that's why he got started without any ready cash, obviously. And in the old days, they actually, I think the front opened up quite a bit, so it was almost like a greenfront in New York, where there were vegetables that kind of, the shelving would come out. And I don't remember that, but I was looking at pictures and I could see where it was more open than I remember. I only remember it as the store we went in, but I don't know.

LT: And his customers were Japanese?

TT: No, it was a totally Caucasian neighborhood and I don't remember any ethnicity. Even when I went to regular school, the neighborhood school, we were the only people of color. And I can't remember any immigrants or people who didn't speak English. It was very, very white, the whole neighborhood was. We were just across the street from Rose City Cemetery, actually kitty-corner, but that whole neighborhood, there was just a gas station, the grocery store, a drugstore, a barber, and then it was residential all around.

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