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 […]
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Category: San Francisco Stories
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 […]
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 […]
Freedom
Kiyo’s story, part 10: 1945 In December of 1944, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Mitsuye Endo, declaring that the United States could not detain loyal citizens. The internment order was rescinded by FDR and Japanese Americans were allowed to go home beginning in January, 1945. (The last camp didn’t close until the end […]
The fork in the road
Kiyo’s story, part 11: 1945 Professor Nimoy, Kiyo’s boss, was Russian Jewish, but had come to the US as a child with his parents. He was a full professor at the University of Chicago and highly respected in his field. He had a wife and three children, two girls and a boy. In exchange for […]
Letters to Tanforan: Good Friends
Imagine what it must have been like to be a San Franciscan in 1942 who suddenly had friends and acquaintances rounded up en masse and removed to prison camps. Unfortunately, in the current Trumpian nightmare, it is all too imaginable as law-abiding neighbors, coworkers, and other community members are seized, detained, and often deported. But […]