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LG: So your mother wasn't able to return to Hawaii. Did she talk about that growing up? Do you know if she missed it, being separated from her family in Hawaii?

MR: Oh, eventually we did, I think when I was eight or so, we went back, and did my mom go? And eventually she would go back to Hawaii frequently.

LR: Like every year.

MR: Was it every year she'd go back? That's right.

LR: She would go, she had a timeshare in Honolulu.

MR: Something like that, she would be back all the time. There was always communication, and people were coming from Hawaii all the time, whether they were students, whether they were other relatives, they were coming to visit, there was usually a lot of contact from people in Hawaii. And then she would, she sent me out there to spend summers at least twice. I would stay for, oh, for the whole summer, I think, with my uncle and grandpa and grandma. My uncle, her brother, lived with my grandma and grandpa, I think.

LR: Did they have the tea house then?

MR: Yeah, I know he had a tea house. Oh, my grandma would go to... oh, you know, I think they weren't allowed to become citizens until after the war, 1945 or something like that. My grandma refused to become a citizen. [Laughs] Yes. So she was always going to Japan to do more tea, do tea ceremony. And then he came back here, she would be sitting where the foreigners were sitting, because he wasn't a citizen, so she'd be sitting in there, they had to go pick her up in that area when they came back from Japan. They found that very annoying, they thought she was very silly, but she refused for whatever reason. Everyone else became citizens, all the other relatives, the elder relatives.

LG: So she was connected to the tea school?

MR: Is that a tea school or something, Urasenke? Yeah, she would go there a lot. And they had a house, and on the side, they had, rather like Shofuso, the house. There was a regular ranch type of house overlooking the bay.

LR: Chinese graveyard.

MR: Was it near the Chinese graveyard? But it was also overlooking the water, wasn't it? Overlooked the harbor? I thought so. I don't know, anyway, but on the back of it, there was also a tea house, and she would do tea ceremony. I think she taught the tea ceremony.

LG: This was the tea house on their property?

MR: Yes, a tea house on their property, rather like the one at Shofuso.

LR: Akaga Place.

MR: In Akaga Place, right. Is that where you stayed?

LR: That's where I stayed.

MR: When you slept over? [Laughs]

LG: So what was it like spending summers in Hawaii and then coming back to Philadelphia? What was the difference between these two spaces growing up for you?

MR: Well, I often found myself kind of bored over in Hawaii, nothing to do. [Laughs] I remember just reading comics all the time, they thought that was terrible. Because I guess my cousins a little younger than me, they'd be running up the hills, and they finally had me go to art classes, I think, at the Honolulu Art Museum, wherever they had classes. They had me doing things, but a lot of times I just didn't have anything to do, because they had younger children, busy with them, busy with their family life, but there wasn't always activities for me. So sometimes it was kind of, I don't know, kind of boring, but such a beautiful place that you couldn't... it was wonderful. But I had more fun, I think I had a cousin on Maui who was closer to my age, and that was kind of more fun to do things with. That was Gail. And is it Paul, her brother? She was a little bit older than me, so we could go around, and then she had this little brother, Paul Maehara, who was an awful pain in the neck. [Laughs] He was always pinching you or doing something like that, I remember he was terrible. But he's a real nice guy.

LR: Turned out all right.

MR: He's a nice guy.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2023 JACL Philadelphia. All Rights Reserved.