<Begin Segment 11>

TM: Well, I'm going to go back to your parents and who they were as people. And they were loving, they had a loving relationship, and were they gentle and kind people, your parents?

FP: Yes, yes.

TM: And what was your father like, his personality?

FP: Very stoic. And the first time he ever hugged me was when I was in high school, at Washington High School. And there was a program, it was like it was daughter-father day. And the assignment was, the person that was the emcee said, "Oh, give your daughter a big hug." So that's the first time in my life I got a hug from my dad. Otherwise, he was always so stoic and never showed his expression, and kept anger and so forth aside from his life. Or it's kind of like the Japanese movies that you see. It's not verbalized, but you read the picture. You get to be, it's the nonverbal culture. It's like you see a person and you know that they're nervous because they'll be going like this, wringing their hands and stuff, and you know that they're worried. So then you make inquiries, "Well, gee, why are you so worried?" And that plays a big role in Japanese culture. The American culture is quite vocal and very confrontive, but the Japanese culture is not that.

TM: For your mother, what was her personality like?

FP: Mother was a very gentle being. She was just very sweet and kind, and a hard worker. So, but that was difficult because she was raised as a real dutiful daughter. Because when she got married, oh, my word. I think she rarely stuck up for herself, she did everything that was asked of her to do.

TM: Can you describe what their relationship was like?

FP: Mother and Father's relationship? Very loving. They lived happily together, and they had sixty-two years of marriage, and it was an arranged marriage. So it's very surprising for an arranged marriage. But arranged marriages can and do work out, because usually the matchmaker will kind of match the personalities, and they'll match up people that... I mean, I imagine they look into genetic types of things, I mean, I'm sure they do. I mean, informally it passes down through the generation, "Don't marry into that family." They've got genetic thing, bad genes for this or that or whatever. And things like that came out. But then, for the continuation of the culture and the race, that is kind of a protective (reaction) that occurs. And it does prevent a lot of genetic things. But this is where we have a question mark in our minds. My brother, who's severely retarded, we always wonder. The matchmaking... my mother and father were very distant cousins who was matchmade by Mr. Sumida on Bainbridge Island. And even if they were distant cousins, did they pass on a recessive type of gene where my brother was born genetically flawed? So that's always in the back of your mind.

TM: You and your brother were raised by this loving couple, gentle, stoic father. How would you say your parents, in your observations, how did they deal with difficult situations?

FP: Well, in general, I only saw Mom (break down and cry one) time in her life. They would just deal with it. It was like, okay, and this is where stoicism does have a protective quality. You don't just break down into pieces and cry and let your emotions get away with you. Okay, the attitude is, "This, too, will pass, we will get through this." And that's how Mom and Dad's attitude always turned out to be, "We will get through this, we will get through this," instead of being all upset about being sent to camp and so forth, and breaking down in tears and having an emotional breakdown. Because there are some (Japanese) families that did have emotional breakdowns. The fathers sometimes committed, they felt useless because their occupation was gone, and here they lost their whole livelihood, and they had nothing to do at camp, so they committed suicide. They would run into the barbed wire fence and the guards would shoot them. And I think that happened occasionally as well in Tule Lake, it probably happened some more, because of the (incarcerated) people that were, the "no-no" people and the leaders of the community that just felt utterly useless and had lost everything.

TM: With your mother, the incident where she broke down in tears?

FP: Oh, later on, she and Grandma would... when Mother got a little older and she started to come into her own, she had quite a disagreement, falling out with Grandma. And so that's the only time, and then she, and then she ran away and ran up to Seattle to live with her (family), you know (for) two or three weeks. And then she came to her senses and came back (home).

TM: When was that?

FP: That must have been like in the '40s or the '50s.

TM: Going back to camp, when did your family leave Minidoka?

FP: They left in, they were there in Minidoka about maybe a couple years, okay, because... now, see, that was in, we were moved to Minidoka in September of '42. And then by late '44 or early '45, so it may be two years, two and a half years, we stayed in Minidoka until the two uncles who were in uniform and could be trusted (by the American public) because they had fought valiantly for our country, went inland. So they went and settled at a place in Minneapolis that we could go to, so we wouldn't have to keep living the life of a, as a POW in the internment camp. So they opened up Minneapolis for us, and so Dad went and joined them and brought the rest of us there.

TM: Just a pause here, your father, his two brothers, your two uncles, were in service, is that correct?

FP: My father wasn't.

TM: But your father, his two brothers, your two uncles?

FP: Yes, yes, my two uncles were definitely in uniform.

TM: Nobi and Ro?

FP: Yes.

TM: And can you tell us briefly what, were they in MIS or 442nd?

FP: Yes. My Uncle Ro was in the midst of it. He came home with more than one Purple Heart, and he was in the Italy, France and Germany area, you know, where they shipped them around. And so he was in the 442nd, right. And he was awarded, recently, a Gold Medal, so I purchased one of the replica Gold Medals.

TM: The Congressional Gold Medal?

FP: Yes, yes.

TM: And Uncle Nobi, he was...

FP: He was trained at the Monterey language school, which Dad pointed out when we went to Monterey, California, way after the war for a vacation. And so he was sent to the Asian Theater. And in the Asian Theater, he was one of our secret weapons, because he could integrate and speak Japanese, so he probably interrogated. He couldn't say much because it was very hushed. But later he said, "I interrogated the Japanese prisoners as they came through."

TM: So he was in the Pacific Theater as part of the Military Intelligence Service.

FP: Right, right.

TM: Interesting.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2014 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.