As the holiday season approaches, there’s always a lot of talk about “the best gifts.” My family was always into giving presents, even in the 1950s when nobody had much money. Every December, my dad would give each of us $2 for our Christmas shopping. One of my favorite places to shop was the jyugose-mise […]
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Category: San Francisco Stories
On Mothers’ Day
I must have been about six years old when I had this nightmare: My mother was leaving us, going “back East,” and we were going to see her off. Perhaps we were at the airport. She was dressed for traveling, wearing a hat, and we had her suitcases. To this day, I don’t know where […]
Wrong then; wrong now
[Originally published on February 16, 2017 during the Trump administration. Republished to commemorate February 19, the “Day of Remembrance” marking the date on which President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066.] This Sunday marks the 75th anniversary of the signing of Executive Order 9066. On February 19, 1942, in the wake of the bombing of Pearl […]
Letting go
(Written in 2017) On Tuesday, I dropped the key to my childhood home into an envelope and slipped it into my sister’s mail slot. She was signing the final papers to close the sale, and by the end of the week, our parents’ house in the Richmond District would belong to someone else. Without my […]
Over the moon
Fifty years ago, the U.S. landed men on the moon. It was summer on Earth, and I was taking a physics class at Lowell High School’s summer session. The previous semester, I had been introduced to chemistry by a fabulous teacher at George Washington High School (Mr. Jones), and I, a lifelong avid reader and […]
Sakaye’s story
In 1935, the Takahashis’ next-door neighbor on Pine Street brought one of his younger sisters to San Francisco from the family home in Hiroshima. Sakaye was nineteen. Like her three sisters (Momoko, Misao, and Masako) and younger brother, Shigeru (my dad), Sakaye had been born in Berkeley, where her parents ran a grocery store on […]
Kiyo’s Story: Introduction
My aunt Kiyo died three years ago at the age of 102. For most of the last few years of her life, she was no longer herself. It was hard to reconcile the frail, somewhat vacant woman who seldom spoke with the incessantly verbal, independent, and rather bossy dynamo who had presided over the Takahashi […]
O-josan
Kiyo’s story (1913-1924) My aunt Kiyo was 29 years old when her family was interned in Topaz, Utah during the war. In those days, 29 was an age at which most Nisei women were expected to be married. Kiyo, despite having had a number of admirers through the years, had steadfastly resisted, perhaps influenced by […]
Hardship
(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 […]
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 […]