(Kiyo’s story, 1924-1929) When the lease on the family’s store expired around 1924, Jichan’s partners returned to Japan. Jichan and his younger brother next went into a wholesale business on Sacramento St. with a non-Japanese employee who turned out to be dishonest; they lost the store and Jichan was left with debts that would take […]
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Author: Ruth Sasaki
R. A. Sasaki is the author of The Loom and Other Stories (Graywolf Press, 1991). She is a third-generation San Franciscan (although she now lives in the East Bay).
Grant Avenue
Kiyo’s story: 1930s Because of the Depression, retail stores were not buying much from wholesalers. Jichan still had inventory from his old store and when a commercial property on Grant Avenue opened up in 1931, he leased it and opened the (new) Kisen Company with his younger brother, Yonezo, whom everyone called “Yone-yan.” Bachan and […]
“Captain of the Land Ship”
Kiyo’s story: 1930s Once the family reestablished itself, Kiyo embraced life as if to make up for the hardship that had impacted her teenage years. She became the family driver when the family bought its first car, an Oldsmobile, from Mr. Hudson, who gave her driving lessons as part of the deal. Kiyo drove mostly […]
Diva
Kiyo’s story: 1930s Kiyo was ladylike and proper throughout her life, but she occasionally let her inner diva out. In her 20s, she enjoyed acting in “shibai” at the Y. Many of the plays were written by Suzuki-sensei, the principal of Kinmon Gakuen, San Francisco’s Japanese language school). She took a major part in a […]
V-mails to Topaz
(This is Part 2 of “The Oda Boys”) V-mails (Victory mail) slowly made their way to barrack 4-5-E in Topaz from my mother’s foster brother Harry in the 442 in Italy: June 30, 1944 To Eddie (Harry’s brother), 4-5-D, Topaz, Utah From: Harry, Co. L, 442 I haven’t heard from you in so […]
Everything must go
Kiyo’s story: 1942 Mr. Hudson, the Oldsmobile salesman who sold Kiyo her first car and taught her to drive, had continued to check in with her every three years, and she loyally followed him to Plymouth when he changed companies. The Takahashis’ third car was a Dodge, bought from Mr. Hudson. In October of 1941, […]
The Oda Boys
(From a few photos, a few letters, and a few stories told over lunch with my mom and aunt, I have pieced together the story of the Oda boys. If at times my imagination ventures into the realm of fiction, please forgive me.) Sometime around 1932, Bachan went to the funeral of a family friend […]
Topaz
Kiyo’s story, part 8: 1942-1944 In Topaz, the Takahashi family consisted of nine people: Jichan, Bachan, Kiyo, Tomi, and Edwin (the youngest child); Yone-yan (Jichan’s younger brother) and his son, Kaz; Eddie Oda (an orphan informally adopted by my grandparents); and Yokoyama-san, a family friend and contemporary of Kiyo’s other brother Shig (who was a […]
Chicago
Kiyo’s story, part 9: 1944-45 Kiyo, though by that time 31 years of age, had never before lived away from her family. She had never lived outside of San Francisco, except for Tanforan and Topaz. Arriving in Chicago in the late fall of 1944 must have been both thrilling and a bit frightening. Her brother […]
Topaz Letters: LIfe Goes On
The stories you hear from camp are often stories of what kept people going — the humorous incidents, baseball, dances, poetry clubs; love and dreams for a better, shared future; the everyday, human things that people clung to to keep from being consumed by the yawning abyss that had opened under their lives: My mother […]