Interview with my mother
My father's parents came from Oshima, an island in the Inland Sea. My mother's parents came from Kumamoto prefecture, on the southern island of Kyushu. Her father Toraki Sato was born in December 1882, a second son. Not many first sons from Japan wound up in Hawaii, because by custom, they inherited property. Toraki left Japan because he only had a small plot, too small to farm. He donated it to a Shinto shrine when he left. My older aunts, who were born in Hawaii but lived in Japan for a period while they were growing up, remember a "big river" that ran under the house. When my mother visited Japan for the only time in 1982, while I was stationed in Korea, she said she saw the house and the "river" was "a little ditch."
My grandfather Toraki was apprenticed to a blacksmith. He used to shoe horses. After he'd moved with his wife Chie (born four months before him) to Kohala, Hawaii, his boss transferred to the McBride sugar plantation on Kauai and sent for him. When the family -- the parents and six children (my uncle Tom was the only child not born on the Big Island) -- arrived on Kauai, the company sent a truck to pick them up with all their possessions. This wasn't commonly done for Japanese immigrants, so my grandfather must have been highly thought of.
Before World War I, Chie returned to Japan with the oldest four children. The outbreak of war prevented them from returning to Hawaii, and they stayd there for five years. My grandmother was plump and fair, with reddish hair, so people in Japan called her "Ijing" (foreigner). My mother used to tease her that she must have had some Dutch blood. Chie had very little schooling, but as an adult, she could still recite her elementary primer from memory.
My grandfather was quiet and reserved, but dignified and not without his own kind of humor. Once my grandmother was talking about him to her children, who laughed uproariously, not because of what he was saying (as she thought), but because her husband was standing right behind her. When she realized there, she startled. "All lies!" he said before walking away. Once he told my cousin Richard Koga, who was a talkative child, "Males should only speak three times a year!"
When I was a child, I was amazed that my mother could remember the names of all the families in her neighborhood when she was growing up, and all the family members, as well as all of her classmates from every year at school. She can still remember some of this. "House number 1 on our street was the Ohara family, with three sons. House number 2 was an elderly couple with no children. We were house number 8. House number 16 was the Hasegawa family, who had one daughter. They used to stand inside our gate and listen to us laughing while our father played with us. We made a lot of noise."
My mother was very aware that her family had limited resources. When her mother offered to pay for her to have piano lessons, she refused, because the family hadn't been able to pay for her older sisters to have them. She didn't go to college because she wanted her older brother Ed (who had missed the first couple of years of school due to illnesses and so became her classmate) to have the opportunity. Later, Ed persuaded their parents to send their youngest brother Tom to St. Louis Academy on Oahu because it was a better school than the ones on Kauai. Instead of attending college, my mother went to business school, which she never completed. Firms would call her school asking who the best students were and take them on for temporary assignments. She worked temp jobs with labor unions and the local chamber of commerce. After World War II, she worked for the Hawaii Visitors Bureau, when Hawaii was being developed as a tourist destination for all the demobilized GIs who'd come there during the war.
My mother's older sisters all studied sewing in the Japanese way in Hilo. My grandfather knew tatting and taught them to make lace. When my grandmother "tried to make [my mother] Japanese," her sisters told their mother, "Leave her alone. She's American." (to be continued)
My grandfather Toraki was apprenticed to a blacksmith. He used to shoe horses. After he'd moved with his wife Chie (born four months before him) to Kohala, Hawaii, his boss transferred to the McBride sugar plantation on Kauai and sent for him. When the family -- the parents and six children (my uncle Tom was the only child not born on the Big Island) -- arrived on Kauai, the company sent a truck to pick them up with all their possessions. This wasn't commonly done for Japanese immigrants, so my grandfather must have been highly thought of.
Before World War I, Chie returned to Japan with the oldest four children. The outbreak of war prevented them from returning to Hawaii, and they stayd there for five years. My grandmother was plump and fair, with reddish hair, so people in Japan called her "Ijing" (foreigner). My mother used to tease her that she must have had some Dutch blood. Chie had very little schooling, but as an adult, she could still recite her elementary primer from memory.
My grandfather was quiet and reserved, but dignified and not without his own kind of humor. Once my grandmother was talking about him to her children, who laughed uproariously, not because of what he was saying (as she thought), but because her husband was standing right behind her. When she realized there, she startled. "All lies!" he said before walking away. Once he told my cousin Richard Koga, who was a talkative child, "Males should only speak three times a year!"
When I was a child, I was amazed that my mother could remember the names of all the families in her neighborhood when she was growing up, and all the family members, as well as all of her classmates from every year at school. She can still remember some of this. "House number 1 on our street was the Ohara family, with three sons. House number 2 was an elderly couple with no children. We were house number 8. House number 16 was the Hasegawa family, who had one daughter. They used to stand inside our gate and listen to us laughing while our father played with us. We made a lot of noise."
My mother was very aware that her family had limited resources. When her mother offered to pay for her to have piano lessons, she refused, because the family hadn't been able to pay for her older sisters to have them. She didn't go to college because she wanted her older brother Ed (who had missed the first couple of years of school due to illnesses and so became her classmate) to have the opportunity. Later, Ed persuaded their parents to send their youngest brother Tom to St. Louis Academy on Oahu because it was a better school than the ones on Kauai. Instead of attending college, my mother went to business school, which she never completed. Firms would call her school asking who the best students were and take them on for temporary assignments. She worked temp jobs with labor unions and the local chamber of commerce. After World War II, she worked for the Hawaii Visitors Bureau, when Hawaii was being developed as a tourist destination for all the demobilized GIs who'd come there during the war.
My mother's older sisters all studied sewing in the Japanese way in Hilo. My grandfather knew tatting and taught them to make lace. When my grandmother "tried to make [my mother] Japanese," her sisters told their mother, "Leave her alone. She's American." (to be continued)
posted by stashdauber at 9:24 AM
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