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 […]
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Tag: San Francisco history
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 […]
“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 […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]