Hans Goto | Interview 1 | January 19, 2022

FARRELL: This is Shanna Farrell with Hans Goto on Wednesday, January 19, 2022. This is our first session for the Japanese American Intergenerational Narratives Project and we are speaking over Zoom. Hans, can you start by telling me where and when you were born and a little bit about your early life?

GOTO: Sure. I was born in Los Angeles, California at the Japanese American Hospital. That was in 1950 in October. I think, just like any other child, if I grew up in an unusual way, I don't think I noticed anything. It was just growing up with my grandparents around, with my parents around. Both of my parents were working at that 00:01:00time. In my younger years, I believe we lived for a short while, when my parents were married, we lived in Hollywood, North Hollywood someplace. I remember my mother saying there were fifty-seven stairs to get to the front door and it was just tiresome and I think they moved very soon after that.

FARRELL: After you were in North Hollywood, do you remember where your family moved? What neighborhood?

GOTO: I don't recall. I'm not sure if my parents moved in with my grandparents. My next recollection is that I was in my grandparent's house a lot, my maternal grandparent's house a lot, which was this huge, huge 00:02:00property. Again, just being a kid, not realizing what a huge house it was, but apparently it's a historical house in Los Angeles and it actually has a European name and then my grandfather's name attached to it as a historical house. It's just amazing. We plan on revisiting it when we can get down there because it's just so unusual.

FARRELL: What's the name of that house?

GOTO: [It was the Hauerwaas-Kusayanagi House built in 1914.] But then my grandparents' name was Kusayanagi, which is a big enough mouthful for people to say.

FARRELL: What neighborhood in LA was that?

GOTO: That is on the West Adams 00:03:00area. But I always remember my parents saying, "Crenshaw is kind of near. Crenshaw," and that sort of thing.

FARRELL: Yeah. Do you remember what the property looked like?

GOTO: Oh, yes. It was rather palatial. The front lawn kind of rolled up. There was a huge driveway that we could play in. The kids, all of us kids, cousins and all, would play in. The backyard, my grandfather and grandmother had sort of a Japanese garden setup and then my grandmother did a little bit of gardening with vegetables and fruits and that sort of thing. The house was two stories tall but I want to say -- I'll look it up again but I want to say there was like six bedrooms. Like just crazy huge. Anyway, never use them 00:04:00 all.

FARRELL: Either from that area or Los Angeles in general or maybe even at that house, do you remember any sights or sounds or smells that have really stayed with you?

GOTO: Not so much in my youth, when I was really young. As I got older, I do recall other smells and sights and so on but I think one of the biggest impressions I had was the stone lion dogs guarding the house of my grandparents. When my grandparents died, all the relatives got together to divide up their property and everything was going because I was like really low on the totem pole as far as being able to point out something and 00:05:00say, "That's what I want." I said, "Well, if nobody's going to take it, I'll take those lion dogs." One cousin goes, "Oh, well, wait, wait. I want to take that." I think they literally tried to lift it and they said, "You know what? We changed our mind. You can have it." A friend and I were able to get these two lion dogs loaded into a van with a refrigerator dolly and they are now outside our house guarding the walkway. We're really happy about that.

FARRELL: Wow, that's so wonderful that that piece gets to live on with you at your house.

GOTO: Yeah. It's amazing. Otherwise it would have been sold with the property and we really don't know what would have happened to it. My grandfather also had like two or three of these huge stone lanterns in the garden. I really wanted to take some of those, too, but it's just like I had 00:06:00no idea how to get those out of there.

FARRELL: Yeah. The stone lion dogs seem like enough of a project.

GOTO: Yeah, yeah. That was a big enough task.

FARRELL: Yeah. Since we're talking about your grandparents, can you tell me their names and some of your early memories of them?

GOTO: Sure. My material grandfather was Takejiro. Takejiro Kusayanagi and my material grandmother was Matsu Kusayanagi. I remember my grandfather being kind of built stoutly and he was fairly serious, a very serious man. I don't know why, maybe just because I was hanging around their house so often or so much, that he would say, "Come in the car and we'll drive around." When 00:07:00he first started out in Los Angeles, I believe he had a small shirt and what they called a dry goods store with different kinds of materials and that sort of thing. He eventually branched out to doing real estate in Los Angeles and I guess he was really successful. I really don't know. But all I know is when we would go for a ride, I would usually get a hamburger or something because he would give me lunch. We'd go out to look at property and he would explain -- I think I was three or four years old. It was like I had no idea what he was talking about. He would point out property and say, "This is property I'm thinking of buying and this one is this good and this is not so good." "Okay, Grandpa. Okay, Grandpa." You know, that stuff. That was my grandpa. I mean that's what I remember of 00:08:00him. And then my grandmother, Matsu, she was just a sweetheart. She's just so nurturing and such a warm person. She would make great meals. As I recall now, they weren't gourmet meals or they weren't really high-end Japanese meals but they were grandma's meals so they were really good. That's what I remember about her. She would always want to take care of the kids. If the cousins were over she would always have snacks. My grandfather really liked pistachios so he always had pistachios with him so I really remember that part -- pistachios.

On my paternal grandparent's side, I remember visiting my grandmother. Her name was -- oh, 00:09:00dear. Oh, I'm going blank. I'm sorry. For some reason I don't -- I'll have to look it up.

FARRELL: That's okay. We can always add it in.

GOTO: Oh, wait. Her name is Miyo. Miyo. M-I-Y-O. It's one of those things, I think since we never called her Miyo, I don't hardly remember that. But at any rate, she was very sweet, as well. She was a largish woman, certainly compared to a little three or four year old kid. A country woman. I mean the things that I remember about her is that she and my grandfather were doing -- what do I call it? Landscaping? Raising landscaping materials, like junipers and all of 00:10:00that sort of thing. My most vivid memory of her is she had this big white hat, which had to have been at least this big, and she had white clothes on with gloves that covered her hands and her skin and even when she was in her nineties, her skin was really beautiful. All the cousins would just go, "Oh, my gosh, Grandma. How do you have such beautiful skin?" I think that's the reason why. She never really sat out in the sun. She never exposed her skin to the sun. Anyway, just such an interesting memory. When she's in the house, normal but when she's starting to go outside, she put on all of this white clothing. Very striking.

FARRELL: Also probably in the days before sunscreen, very smart.

GOTO: Yes. Yes. I guess so.

FARRELL: 00:11:00How about your parents? Can you tell me your mother's name and a little bit about her and what you remember from her in your early life?

GOTO: Sure. Ny mother's name is Masako. She has a really long name. Her unmarried name is Kusayanagi. When she was married to my father she was Goto but growing up I rarely heard her refer to herself as Goto. When I was about five, five or six years old, and my mother moved up to Monterey and then Watsonville area, she remarried and she remarried a gentleman named Kiyoshi (Kay) Miura. From that point 00:12:00on, about 1955 I would say, she was known as Dr. Miura. Everyone knows her as Miura, unless they knew her before she was married and so on. My earliest memory of mom is that she was always hardworking because she was a physician she was always busy. She was not a great cook. She struggled with that. But she really tried hard to provide food and all. It just was really hard. I don't think she ever spent time cooking and all of those things. Most of her time was spent studying so I totally understand it. I didn't understand it at the time. I do now. I mean I really, really understand 00:13:00that. We would always joke. My sister and I would always joke to say what awful food we had growing up. But it's fine. We just like, "Okay, we got used to it." That's why we went to Grandma's house, right. That was the reason. Like, "Wow, this is so good. It's really great."

My mother, Masako, is a really focused woman. She was one of the very first physicians or first students to graduate medical school at University of Southern California. She was one of two women in that class in the '30s, I believe. Her perspective 00:14:00in life or on life is that she tends to have a really rosy picture of things. For instance, when she was going to school, medical school, she recalled that all of her fellow students were really supportive and very nice to her. She went to USC. My father went to UCLA and he goes, "That's not true." He said, "All those guys were really mean to her. They were mean to all the women there." He says, "They were just awful." He goes, "But she really remembers them as really being helpful and nice and so on and so forth." I think that's her perspective on life. Even if it's really tough, even if it's really harsh, in her mind she can flip it around to 00:15:00being not harsh and not so bad.

FARRELL: Yeah. I was going to ask if you feel like she was an optimist and maybe that impacted her perspective.

GOTO: Yeah. Very much so. Very much so I think. And I think that perspective reoccurs in the camps, when she was incarcerated, et cetera, et cetera, so that's just the way she has been throughout her whole life.

FARRELL: Do you feel like her optimism rubbed off on you at all? Do you feel like you're optimistic?

GOTO: Yeah. I feel that I'm fairly optimistic, certainly when I look at things I don't see the downside of things. I try and look at the upside of things so I think some of that rubbed off but I also feel like some of the practicality of my father rubbed off, as well, because he was like, "This is the way it is." He wasn't 00:16:00cold. At least when I was a little kid it seemed like, "Oh, this is just like really harsh," just saying things. But no, as I got older and as he got older, I really saw the supportive side of him, as well. My father, James Goto, he was really busy. After being incarcerated he had a practice, just like my mother had a practice. But his practice was really busy. I think he called himself a surgeon. But he was also like what we would call a family practice doctor, as well. He would see all ages of people. He had an office in downtown Los Angeles in the Little Tokyo 00:17:00area. Japanese Americans would come. African Americans would come. Latinos would come. There was just a whole huge mix. Other Asians, as well, particularly Chinese Americans, would come in. He had a small staff at that time. I remember just sitting in the back rooms just playing with all the skeletal things, little skulls and things like that, plastic skulls, and just hanging out in the office there. It was a relatively good sized office. But unbeknownst to me, the soft side of my father was that -- I didn't know he didn't charge a lot of people for his 00:18:00services. I don't know what you call it but he would just go, "Pay me when you can." The first time I got a sense of that is when I was like seven or eight years old and we'd go to this one grocery store. He always liked this one grocery store And we'd go in and he'd get a bag of groceries and he'd get meat or whatever. They'd ring it up and then the owner would come over and he says, "That's okay. I've got that." I went, "What is this? I've never seen this before." I think there was that give and take. That was also the unwritten rule with his family, with his brothers and sisters. Since he was the oldest and since he was the favorite of our 00:19:00grandmother Miyo, she said, "James gets to go to medical school and all of us help support him to go to medical school." All my poor aunts and uncles had to work to the bone to help him go to medical school. Well, the flip side of that was that he gave them free medical treatment for their whole lives, including their kids, as long as he was alive.

FARRELL: Yeah, that's really interesting. Do you have a sense that he gave them free medical care because he was instructed to do that, maybe by his mother, or just something that came from him to say thank you for the support?

GOTO: I think it's a cultural thing. I think it's an obligation that the Japanese might have. My grandmother, Grandma Miyo, said, 00:20:00"You owe these people. You owe your brothers and sisters." I think he just worked it out himself. I think it's half and half, right. I'm not sure. But I found that really unusual because I didn't really learn about it until I was, I would say, graduating high school, almost college. That, wow, I think this is unusual. I think it can't be done nowadays. I think you can't treat family as a physician, like doing surgery on family. You can't do that. Like when I was eight years old, I had appendicitis and my dad did surgery. That's totally illegal. You just can't do that. But that was then and whatever.

FARRELL: What generation is he?

GOTO: He's a 00:21:00 Nisei.

FARRELL: Nisei, okay.

GOTO: Yeah. Both my grandparents were Issei, the first generation coming to the United States, and both my parents were Nisei, born here and educated.

FARRELL: Okay, great. Your father had six siblings and grew up in --

GOTO: I need to make a correction. I started writing everybody's name down and I went, "Oh, wait. I left one aunty off." So there's actually seven siblings.

FARRELL: Seven. Okay, okay.

GOTO: Sorry.

FARRELL: No, that's okay. Did you grow up around them very much?

GOTO: Well, wait. One of the siblings lived right next door to Grandma and Grandpa, my dad's parents and so I would see them quite often. One of my 00:22:00uncles had a fishing tackle shop in downtown LA, almost right next door to my dad's office. My dad's biggest hobby was deep sea fishing so they worked out a deal. "Help me get lures, help me get line, et cetera, et cetera, and you can come fishing." My uncle, I think, got seasick so he wasn't so at fishing so it was one of those funny deals. My aunts, one of my aunts, lived close by. One of my uncles owned a flower ship. My grandparents owned a nursery and then my other aunty living right across the town in Montebello owned a flower ship, as well. The two were in direct competition with each other. People loved them both. They loved both 00:23:00of the flower shops for different reasons and they were both extremely successful so there was no problem. And then one of the aunties moved up north and lived in San Leandro, I believe, and she had an artificial flower shop and then one of the other aunties lived in Watts, in Watts in Los Angeles and she had a flower shop. She was actually a city council person. I don't know when exactly but she was. She was so treasured in the neighborhood that when the Watts riots happened, the neighbors all protected her shop. Her shop was one of the few that did not get burned down. She was an interesting character but she was also the black sheep of the 00:24:00family and I don't know why. But the cousins, all of us cousins, get along well because we don't have all that history or whatever.

FARRELL: Your mother grew up in Pasadena and she has a large family, as well, five brothers and sisters?

GOTO: Correct.

FARRELL: Do you remember your aunts and uncle son her side?

GOTO: Yes. I'll compare the two sides. On my dad's side they were social. They liked getting together with people. They enjoyed having social drinks and sometimes more than social drinks. They maybe did a little too much sometimes. Whereas my aunts and uncles on my mother's side tended to be 00:25:00very restrained. They laughed. They were really wonderful people but not so social. They didn't do a whole lot of social things that I could see and they didn't drink at all. When all of us cousins got of drinking age we started talking like can we just go out and buy a bottle of wine and you guys can have some. We don't care and that sort of thing. It was very funny -- one side is we just walk up to the bar and the other side we'd go, "We'll go out and buy something for everybody."

FARRELL: Sounds a little like my family, as well. And then you have sister Denise, as well.

GOTO: Correct.

FARRELL: Can you tell me about some of your early memories of her? And is she older or younger?

GOTO: She's older by seven-and-a-half years. 00:26:00The backstory is she was born in Topaz or near Topaz in the camp. The real backstory is my mom said she didn't -- I don't know if trust is the right word -- but she didn't particularly care for, let's just say, she didn't particularly care for the physicians in Topaz Camp. At that time, she was able to leave the camp and go into Salt Lake City. She had someone that she knew somehow in Salt Lake City assist with the birth of my sister. My sister was born, what, in 1942-ish, I think, and I wasn't born until 1950. So that was a chunk of years in 00:27:00between. Every once in a while I would ask my parents like, "Why'd you wait so long? How come we don't have other siblings?" They wouldn't talk about it. I think at one point my dad just turned to me and said, "You were kind of a mistake." I just laughed and said, "Oh, okay. So you guys were fooling around or whatever," and it's like -- okay, okay, I get it. It's a very interesting backstory.

I remember my sister basically as being my babysitter. One of my earliest memories is being in a high chair and then my sister putting food and then I'd get food from her and so on and so forth. She enjoyed making dishes like scrambled eggs and that sort of 00:28:00thing. She was really great. As we got older she didn't always like that job of being the babysitter because she got very interested in boys. It was like who wants a little baby brother hanging around. She would invite her girlfriends over. One of my fondest, I think, funny memories, is that she and her girlfriend really loved Elvis. In that period of that my parents lived in North Hollywood, my sister and her friends went to an Elvis concert somewhere because they loved him so much. My sister, at one point with her girlfriends, decided to make me look like Elvis. Big long sideburns and a mustache or whatever. It's like, "Okay, what are you doing?" My parents just went, "What did you do to your 00:29:00brother?" It was really funny. To me it was really funny because it's like, "I don't know. What are you guys doing?" Most of the time that was our relationship. I would not say we had a close bonding relationship just because we didn't see each other that much. When I was younger we lived with my father but she was off at school. Even if I was home or I went to school, that was totally different. By the time I was in fourth grade, I went up to Watsonville and started going to school there so we never saw each other during the high school years, for her high school years and so on. We get along really well but I don't feel like we've bonded like normal siblings would just because of the age 00:30:00 differential.

FARRELL: I have a sister who's eight years older so there's a lot that I relate to. I know your parents had divorced and you moved up to Northern California. But that was probably right around the same time that she was out of high school or just about to be out of high school, right?

GOTO: Yes. I believe so. It was a really interesting and odd time. Like I say, I would imagine, since I don't know, but I would imagine that if two siblings are growing up there's times that you can sit down with each other and complain about how bad your parents are or how they're messing your life up, whatever. We never had that because we were really on different terms.

FARRELL: Yeah. It's almost a thing where when you're younger you don't really have those experiences but the bonding comes later in life.

GOTO: Yes, yes. Very much so. Very much 00:31:00 so.

FARRELL: Yeah. You were around four or five when your mother divorced and your mother moved to, as you mentioned, to Carmel and then to Watsonville.

GOTO: Yes, correct.

FARRELL: And your dad stayed in Southern California.

GOTO: Correct.

FARRELL: First you stayed in Southern California and you went to school there.

GOTO: Correct.

FARRELL: And then moved up to Corralitos or Watsonville after that. Is that right?

GOTO: Correct. Yes. No, no. you have it absolutely correct. In between, crazy stuff, crazy stuff. My father remarried, my mother remarried. In first grade -- this is still a puzzle to me -- my father had me move in with my 00:32:00aunty, his next oldest sibling and I lived with my aunt, her three boys and her daughter. They lived above their flower shop in Montebello. I stayed with them for one whole year. I got to have brothers and I got to have a sister. It was really fun. Since I was the youngest brother they would kind of do torturous things to me but not super mean. Like tie me up and throw me on the lawn and see if I could untie myself and then they'd forget that I was there. Aunty would go, "Well where is he?" They'd go, "Oh, we forgot he's out." I think they're funny, adventurous. I survived them. They're great guys. One of 00:33:00the brothers has passed away but the two others I still feel really close to. They're really, really great people. I'm still close with the sister. But I asked my aunt, I asked my aunt, "What happened? What did my father say to you? Why did I live with you for a whole year? Why did I go to school at this little neighborhood grammar school." She was in her eighties and she goes, "You know, I don't really remember." She said, "But it was great having you around." She goes, "I don't remember why we had you." Then I moved back with my parents, my father, and then for one year after that I went to Catholic school in Little Tokyo area and soon after that, that's when I went up to Corralitos, 00:34:00 Watsonville.

FARRELL: At the year that you were in Montebello, was your sister in LA?

GOTO: Yes. I believe living with my father. I don't understand what happened. I should ask my sister but I never thought about it.

FARRELL: I was going to ask have you ever talked to her about that.

GOTO: No. It's so funny. She's never mentioned it either. But anyway, yeah.

FARRELL: She was a kid, too, so maybe she didn't know either.

GOTO: Yeah, yeah, yeah. She would know more than I, let's just say.

FARRELL: Fair enough. What was it like for you to move up to Northern California? You had spent all of your life in Southern California, then you're in Watsonville and it's a little bit more rural.

GOTO: Yes. Moving up to the countryside, I was a little bit anxious being kind of a city kid. There was 00:35:00really that differential in those days, I think, of city kids versus country kids. But I really felt that everybody in the Corralitos/Watsonville area were just so nice. They were very, very accepting. Some of the people I'm still in contact with from grammar school. I can't believe it. They'd just go, "Oh, we're having a get together. You want to come down? We know it's a long way." Those contacts have been really solid over the years. But they were always welcoming. I never felt ostracized. But I think the things that I remember the most about going to grammar school and then high school there is the agriculture. The smell of apple blossoms and the look of the blossoms and the look of apples ripening on the trees. 00:36:00That's the positive side. The downside is seeing the sprayers spraying the pesticides on the trees and then us running away and trying to get away from them. It was just that sort of thing that we all grew up with but it was something. At that time it was in the countryside. We learned how to shoot like a little shotgun, four-ten shotgun, which is a real tiny gauge, and they said, "Yeah. You can go out into the apple orchards. There's a lot of birds that you can shoot." We were confident, us boys. Like three or four of us would go out and we'd go slogging around into the apple orchards with 00:37:00permission. I don't think we ever hit anything. We just said, "Okay, make sure we don't shoot a house or aim toward somebody's place." Pretty much straight up. It's like I think the birds just were having a good time with us flying around. Anyway, I'm sort of happy we never hit anything because I don't know what we'd do with it otherwise. But it was a thing to do.

FARRELL: One thing I did forget to ask you is: did you grow up speaking Japanese?

GOTO: No, not really. I'll reverse that and say if someone asked me in school, "Do you speak Japanese?" I'd say, "Yes, a little bit." But when I lived in Japan I realized all of the Japanese, my spoken Japanese, was baby 00:38:00Japanese. It was like the vocabulary was geared down for a little child so if you had to go to the bathroom, just like in English you would say, "I have to go to pee-pee." It's like, "Wait, you're an adult. You don't need to say that word. There's an adult word for that." That was the kind of thing I learned in Japan. I had to really learn quickly and study and get my vocabulary up. So yes and no. I spoke to speak to my grandparents, I got it, but to speak to anyone else, no, it was not adequate.

FARRELL: Did your grandparents speak English?

GOTO: Broken English. My grandfather spoke English. I think he understood English more than he spoke but he spoke English. Grandma understood English. Yeah, she spoke a 00:39:00little bit. I'll put one other weird thing, because I just thought of it, is that my paternal grandparents, Miyo and then my grandfather that I knew was Grandfather Kishiyama, which makes no sense. If I was smart at that time I would have asked, "Where's Grandpa Goto?" There was no Grandpa Goto. There was only Grandpa Kishiyama. The story behind that, that I understand, is that just before the war or just after the war Grandpa Goto left the family and went and then lived in downtown Little Tokyo and basically didn't do well and so he just 00:40:00left. Grandpa Kishiyama was this really nice man. He worked for both of my grandparents and then he and my grandmother took up and got together. Which leads to another complex story but won't go there right now unless you want to.

FARRELL: It's up to you.

GOTO: Okay, so real quick, when I lived in Japan in 1973, '74, I get a call from one of my cousins who is one of the cousins I stayed with when I was in first grade. He said, "Grandpa Kishiyama and I are coming to Japan." He says, "Would you like to join us? We're going on a little trip." I said, "Sure. I'd love to." I said, "So what's going on?" He goes, "We're going to see his family." I went, 00:41:00"What? What family? I thought Grandma Goto was his family." He goes, "Oh, no. This is much more complicated than you can imagine." He goes, "Grandpa Kishiyama left a family in Japan. They had two kids and he took off and came to America and said, 'I'll come back for you,' and never came back." He was nervous. We were nervous. We didn't know what to expect. We went to Grandpa Kishiyama's family. They were so generous and they were so nice. The daughter was there. The son. The son apparently owned a restaurant that was really a nice restaurant. We all sat down and had a meal with him. Tears were flowing from 00:42:00everyone. But I think it was a really healing experience for my grandfather. But he was the only grandfather I ever knew, Grandpa Kishiyama on the Goto side. But as a little kid I never understood [nor really thought about the fact] why is his name not "Goto."

FARRELL: Yeah. When you're little and that's what you're used to, why would you question that.

GOTO: Yeah, right. Exactly.

FARRELL: Yeah. Well, that's a really interesting story and I appreciate you sharing that, too. One thing I also forgot to ask about that period of time is -- so when we had talked before you had mentioned that your father's mother was from the country and she would always make Japanese food.

GOTO: Yes.

FARRELL: Can you tell me about some of the dishes she would make and some of your memories about what they smelled like?

GOTO: Oh, yeah. You're right. Smell. It was very distinctive. One of the 00:43:00dishes, and it's one of the dishes I even make to this day, is called nishime. That's the fancy name because my father and my grandmother never called it that. They had a different name for it. But nishime is basically little pieces of chicken, bamboo shoots, taro root. What's it called? Gobo is like a long, skinny dark root. Carrots, onions, mushrooms and it's cooked in this savory broth but it's not like very soy sauce based. It's a little bit of soy sauce but it's just a nice country stew and then you eat it with rice. That was my 00:44:00father's favorite so whenever we would visit Grandma would always make that and I can always recall that smell. It was really fantastic. The other thing that she would make that wasn't so fantastic, at least as a kid, was natto. Natto is N-A-T-T-O, natto. Natto is fermented soy beans and it's as close to like a -- what kind of cheese is it? Like a really stinky cheese or a stinky tofu or whatever. I don't know what it is. But anyway, it doesn't smell great. Once you taste it, it's not so bad. Everybody in Japan asks, "Oh, have you ever had natto?" if you're not from Japan. Anyone who says they 00:45:00haven't they say, "Oh, you should try it." If they have had it, they go, "No, I don't really care for it," they go, "Well, you should try it in this fashion." They'll give you a half-a-dozen recipes. "You should add green onions to it. You should add egg to it. You should deep fry it." No, these people are not going to like this stuff. It's just the way it is. Me, I like it but a lot of people don't particularly care. We hated it as a kid. As a kid it's just like walking into a fermenting room of French cheese. It's like, "Oh, my God, this is really strong. Anyway, yeah, those two are the strongest memories of my grandmother. The other food memory of my grandmother's is that she had two fig trees outside of her house. One was a white fig and the other one was a dark fig. I had never had figs 00:46:00before and then to be able to walk outside and pick them and eat them was just unbelievably wonderful. So that's it.

FARRELL: Yeah. Having that right at your fingertips.

GOTO: Exactly.

FARRELL: Yeah. Going back to Watsonville when you were there, was your mom involved with or were you involved with the Japanese American community there? Was there much of one then?

GOTO: There is and there was. The Japanese American community was actually split into two groups based on religion. One was the Buddhist temple and then the other one was the Christian church. I think they're Presbyterian. I forget exactly. My mother, because her mother was 00:47:00either a Methodist or Presbyterian, went with the Christian church. We were associated with them even though a lot of my friends were Buddhist. We crossed the lines a lot. We got together a lot. But that was the social as well as religious thing. There was a religious part, Buddhist ceremonies, et cetera. There were the Christian holidays and so on but there was a lot of interchange between the two. That was where the culture was. I think it wasn't so much, oh, there was a Japanese American community, they got together per se. At that time Watsonville was such a small town, almost every Japanese American knew each other. They're mostly farmers. There were a few 00:48:00merchants but all the farmers knew each other so it didn't matter whether they went to the Christian church or the Buddhist church or whatever.

FARRELL: Yeah. I was going to ask about that. Knowing that your mom's a physician but also that it's a pretty agricultural community and there are historically a lot of Japanese Americans who kind of settled in that area, I wasn't sure if there was overlap there with the farming community that you experienced, too.

GOTO: Yeah, yeah. I must admit that was really nice in the sense that, because it was such a small community as I was growing up, my mother and my parents always encouraged me to work. Even though I was underage for certain things, at least in agriculture they didn't really care, so I would help out with trimming strawberry plants and that sort of thing with some folks that we 00:49:00knew. As I got older, one of my first jobs was to work in the fields and fix bins and then also pick produce, which was just awful to do. It's just really hard. Yeah, it was just quite amazing to be able to have that opportunity to not have to go to interviews and think about this or that or whatever. Yeah. You can have a job if you want it. I think it was like ninety-nine cents an hour or something like that.

FARRELL: Yeah. That's interesting. I know that you went to Japanese school, or at least for a period of time on Saturday.

GOTO: Yes, yes.

FARRELL: And that was at the Buddhist temple.

GOTO: Yes, correct.

FARRELL: What was that like for you to attend? How old were you and then what are your memories of that?

GOTO: I believe I was in middle 00:50:00school. The teachers were always really nice. But I must admit, I think hormones were kicking in at that time and so my focus on studying Japanese was not the best. I did try but I kind of got drifty and looked out the window a lot and was wishing that I was playing basketball with the guys right next door and so on but I must admit that something happened and I did learn some Japanese. It was mostly, I would say, more academic Japanese rather than spoken Japanese. Actually, that was very good. If I had stayed with it I probably would have learned -- so there's three alphabets, right. We talked about it a little before. 00:51:00Katakana, which is used for non-Japanese words, Hiragana, which is used for Japanese words, and then Kanji, which is the Chinese characters for different things, like in newspapers and so on. I learned the first two alphabets and then the third alphabet, Kanji, I only learned a few things. I thought I was too good for going to Japanese school anymore so I went off to high school, then that was it.

FARRELL: You had mentioned when we had first spoken that learning those two alphabets have helped you to this day.

GOTO: Yes.

FARRELL: How has that helped you?

GOTO: Up until COVID I've been able to travel to Japan almost every year for about the last ten, 00:52:00fifteen years almost. To be able to read things in train stations and to be in little towns and be able to read some things has been extremely helpful. Up until COVID I would go down to Southern Mexico almost every year. At that time the kids would want their names written in Katakana, right, so I was able to write their names in Katakana. I would have a cheat sheet because I wouldn't always remember everything but I'd write it for them and they were just like so happy that they could put their name in Japanese. I think that's the two main things. It's been really helpful to go, "Oh, I'm so glad I learned that."

FARRELL: I know that you had mentioned 00:53:00that with the Buddhist temple, it's a social aspect of things, but did religion play a role in your early life?

GOTO: I would say offhand no but it must have. For instance, one year of Catholic school was significant. I really was exposed to catechism, which I didn't know anything about and that was interesting. I thought it was very interesting. The nuns and the brothers and all of those folks who taught Catholic school in Los Angeles were basically nice. The nuns were a little less nice to me than the brothers but it was interesting. Growing 00:54:00up, before I would go down to Southern California in the summers, my mother had to work during vacations, short vacations. Since my mom worked she didn't know what to do with me so I would go to Christian bible schools in Watsonville so I would go there. Can't remember any other Japanese American there but we would put little dioramas together with the little Jesus and the manger and all that sort of thing. Yeah, it was interesting to me. The Buddhist part, it was more ceremonial. I didn't learn the religion part of it until I went to Japan and just kind of paid attention to things. But the Buddhist part in the United States was funerals or 00:55:00weddings and that sort of thing. It was so interesting and very different than the Christian weddings and funerals.

FARRELL: Yeah, that's really interesting. I definitely want to talk more about your time in Japan, too.

GOTO: Sure.

FARRELL: Yeah. Let's see. So you would also go to Southern California during your summer vacations while you're in school. Your family would get together a lot. What was that like for you to return to Southern California, spend your summers there, spend time with your family?

GOTO: It was so interesting. I don't know what it was like. It was just show up. They'd go, "Oh, we haven't seen you in a long time. What have you been doing?" And then it's like, "Oh, how do I explain a whole year's worth of school and all of 00:56:00that." But we would get together. My aunt and uncles, like I said, were really social. My fondest memories, as I was a bit older, I would say high school age or so, my uncle Clyde, the one who had the tackle shop, would have parties with, I swear, three hundred people. They would be in and out of his house and just overflow into the backyard and the front yard. It was crazy. There was food for everybody. There was entertainment. He was a hypnotist so he'd hypnotize people, mostly cousins like us, and then we'd like be out and he has us doing silly things. It was quite, quite amazing growing up. As a kid used to go, "How many uncles do you know are hypnotists?" He was quite a character. But the other part that 00:57:00was really striking to me growing up is that my father was an avid fisherman so much so that -- I don't know what year he did but he ended up buying a fishing boat. The fishing boat was no small fishing boat. It was like almost fifty-feet long. It was like a significantly large fishing boat. Every weekend since I remember being three or four years old, we would go out fishing, so like leave late Saturday because he'd work all day Saturday. Sunday was his day off and we'd be fishing all day Sunday and then we'd come home Sunday afternoon. Yeah. This is just an amazing memory. I did that from about age three or four that I recall. I mean not all the time when I was that 00:58:00young, but I'd say from about seven or eight until I was about fifteen years old. I think my dad actually wanted me to become a skipper and take a chartered cruise and stuff. I went, "Oh, I don't think I want to do that."

FARRELL: So you were mostly doing ocean fishing, right?

GOTO: Yes. It was all ocean fishing.

FARRELL: Did you learn how to drive the boat?

GOTO: Yes, everything. I was the bait boy, scrub the deck down, steer the boat. Everybody's asleep. I'm like eight or nine years old steering the boat. I'm going, "What am I doing steering this fifty-foot boat with all of my relatives on board." I don't know if I should tell this story. The only time I got out of it, I was really tired and really sleepy and 00:59:00I'm piloting the boat and I look straight ahead and I went, "Oh, my God, there's an ocean liner right in front of me." I could see the running lights and I could see the cabin lights. I went, "Oh, my God." I saw it passing from one direction to the other so I cranked the wheel and everybody fell out of their bunks. All my cousins and uncles are going, "What the hell? What is going on here? What are you doing?" I went, "Oh, my God, we almost hit this ocean liner." They go, "Well, where is it?" I looked and there was no ocean liner. They go, "Go to bed. Go to bed. Sleep and you're not going to be steering for a while." That was it.

FARRELL: Yeah, the tiredness. It's like the phantom syndrome when you see things.

GOTO: Yes. I haven't had that since and I had never had it before. But it was so vivid. It was just amazing how vivid it was. But 01:00:00anyway, at least nobody got hurt. That was the main thing.

FARRELL: Do you remember where your dock was?

GOTO: Yes. The dock was on Terminal Island. The history of Terminal Island is very significant, right. That's where the Japanese American fishing fleet was before World War II and then they kind of got cleared out after that. But my dad was able to get a spot on Terminal Island. Unfortunately, I think it was a relatively inexpensive docking place because it was right next door to the soap factory. The soap factory would cook grease, animal fat, tallow in the middle of the night. Oh, it was the worst smell I have ever 01:01:00smelt. Anyway, that's all strong in my memory. Like, oh, we can't go fast enough past this business.

FARRELL: What type of fish would you catch? Do you remember?

GOTO: If we were lucky we caught blue fin tuna. Occasionally yellow fin tuna. Albacore. Yellowtail. White sea bass. Calico bass. They're like a brown speckled bass. But my dad wasn't really happy with that. He was happier with those other fish that I mentioned.

FARRELL: The bigger fish? The tunas? Yeah. After you would come home on Saturday afternoon, would you cook together? Cook the fish together?

GOTO: That was also interesting. Usually Sunday -- so we'd leave Saturday late and then come back 01:02:00Sunday. This I didn't realize as a kid, of course, but typically of my dad, he would know people in the restaurant business or whatever. he would go by and go, "I have a fish for you." Plunk, and just hand the owner of the restaurant fish and then we'd take off, right. At home we'd fillet it out and we'd have raw fish or some other dish. My uncles would have their fish, et cetera, et cetera, so everybody just kind of split up from the docks. And then, yeah, we would just eat fish. I was so spoiled as a kid like that. It was like there's times when I'd go, "Aw, gosh, can we eat something else besides fish?" Now, as I look at it, it's like, oh, my gosh, what a luxurious life to have such fresh fish and just 01:03:00amazing products like that.

FARRELL: Yeah, and line caught like that.

GOTO: Yeah. It was just remarkable. Yeah. I think one of the other things that's not apparent to many people is the beauty of the fish when they come out of the water. They're just so beautiful and there are times when I go, "I think we have enough, Dad. Don't you think I can just shake this guy off and then let him go?" He said, "No, no. You got to take that in. Bring it in." He had that mentality. If you catch it, you keep it. I always felt let it go. How many fish are you going to eat, man?

FARRELL: Yeah, that's interesting. The fish are so beautiful and respecting them.

GOTO: It's quite amazing.

FARRELL: Yeah, 01:04:00yeah. So it sounds like the fishing on Saturday night to Sunday was a ritual that you did with your dad. Beyond that, were there any sort of rituals or big holidays or times of year that were important on either side of your family?

GOTO: I think like Thanksgiving and Christmas were important, particularly on my mother's side. I recall mostly spending time with the family on her side for those holidays. It was a traditional American food, right, and maybe a little bit of sushi or something but not a whole extensive Japanese courses of food. It was primarily American. Mashed potatoes and turkey and that 01:05:00sort of thing. Getting together was just really, really fun. Seeing all the cousins and finding out what they're doing and eating and then getting up and running around the house or whatever. Yes, so that was really great. Not so much on my dad's side. It was just the timing thing more than anything else. At least I don't recall it so much. My sister must have but she doesn't really talk about that either so I don't know.

FARRELL: Well, in an effort to back up a little bit, when you were growing up did either of your parents ever talk about incarceration?

GOTO: Yes. My dad. My father more than my mother. He spoke about helping get the infirmary set up at 01:06:00Manzanar. He talked about getting driven there by the military and looking at the facility or looking at the possible facility and them asking what does he need and give us a list of things and we'll try and provide it for you. He talked about how cold it was. He talked about when he tried to do surgery there was sand blowing everywhere and they had to cover the cracks in the wall. He said it was just so cold that he could barely feel his fingers while he was doing surgery so it was really hard. But the upside is, I think, it was so cold that they didn't really have as much anesthetic as they wanted. I think the cold was actually good for the patients, that it may have helped a bit. There were still 01:07:00issues and problems. There were infections. People got very sick and possibly died. But yeah. He talked a little bit about it. Like I said before, he also said how the Catholic priests were very supportive in bringing in food and black market sugar and meat and stuff to the camp and also the Quakers being very supportive and helping out. They didn't do so much black market things as the Catholic priests but they were very supportive of the Japanese in the camps. Actually, if you don't mind I'm going to take a short break.

FARRELL: Yeah, absolutely. I'll pause the recording. Okay, we are back. You were talking a little bit about how your father would talk about his time in 01:08:00Topaz. I'm wondering how that would come up in conversation, how he would bring that up?

GOTO: I think as I got older, certainly as a small kid, I think we mentioned conversations would crop up with friends and relatives, my uncles and aunties, when they would say, "Oh, yeah. Yeah, what camp was so-and-so in?" They would mention somebody. They'd go, "Oh, I think they were in Minidoka or maybe in Topaz or wherever." Then some conversation would happen. But it was really light and not very detailed as to how difficult life was to be in those camps. I think I said 01:09:00before, it almost sounded like they were in a summer camp, which they obviously were not. But my father, as I got older, would just go, "Well, let me tell you certain stories." I think maybe some of it came up because he was thinking about the inquiry from the reformation of the Japanese Americans. He did a presentation in 1983 and I think he was thinking about things like that. I'm surprised he didn't mention it in his presentation.

But one of the things that he was very adamant about was that there was a riot, a so-called riot in the camps. There was an insurrection, if you will. I guess a 01:10:00riot is the best description. There were different factions. There was the Nisei faction and then there was the Kibeis, the people who are born here but educated in Japan and there was a lot of friction going on. One person was in the center of it, and that person they felt was stealing or black marketing sugar and meat, which was in short supply in camps. They wanted to kill him, basically. Then there was a certain amount of back and forth. I think approximately two thousand people came out for this riot, if you will. There was shouting, there was chanting. They were very 01:11:00angry. The details aren't really clear. There are versions, different versions, but the details don't seem to be really clear what occurred. But suddenly the military police opened fire, which they weren't supposed to do. Two people were instantly killed and nine people were wounded and that sort of dispersed the crowd. They brought the people in to the infirmary where my father was and the whole staff was on duty at that time. They hid the fellow who they wanted to kill under one of the beds. The staff really helped him escape.

The controversy was whether 01:12:00they shot from the front or were they shot from the side and back? The controversy was they were shot from the front, that means they were charging the guards. If they're shot from the side and back, that meant they weren't charging the guards. The military held an inquiry within a few days of the actual event and they highly encouraged my dad, according to him -- this is all according to him -- highly encouraged him to report that they were all shot from the front. Because he was also the coroner. He was the physician coroner. He said, "No, I'm not going to do that." They said, "Well, you have to do this." He goes, "No, they were shot from the side." The next day he was relieved of all his duties. He was the head physician. He was relieved of being 01:13:00that from the hospital at Manzanar and then he was told that he and his family and whoever wanted to go with him had one week to transfer to any camp that they wanted outside of Manzanar. So that's the story. The official military report says that they were all shot from the front. But the thing that I would still like to find out about, still am sort of dug in on this, is I don't think there's an autopsy report. No physician signed off on it and said that's the case. It is a controversy. I say that because two years ago -- no, it has to be more. 01:14:00Pre-COVID we went to the Manzanar pilgrimage and a little paragraph I wrote was saying exactly what I just told you. The park rangers there were very unhappy with my statement and they just said, "You're incorrect. This is not correct. You should not keep telling lies about this incident." It's a controversy. The Manzanar pilgrimage committee is like, "No, no, no. Stick to your guns. This is what your father said," I don't know why the folks in Manzanar themselves are so adamant about sticking to the official version.

FARRELL: Yeah. It's really 01:15:00interesting. It says a lot that there's no autopsy report, so no physician signed off on it.

GOTO: Yes.

FARRELL: That's kind of a glaring contradiction to the official narrative there. It's also interesting because your family in particular has a really interesting story because they started in Manzanar and then went to Topaz. Unless a family was answering, "No, no," on the loyalty oath and getting sent to Tule Lake, there wasn't a lot of migration between camps.

GOTO: Correct.

FARRELL: There's a lot of things that point in the direction.

GOTO: Yeah. It's so interesting. The only other person who went with my parents was my father's youngest brother, my Uncle Ray. Everybody else 01:16:00said, "Hey, we're good. We're happy here in Manzanar. We're with all the relatives, our friends, et cetera. We don't know what it's like in Topaz. We're good here." Yeah. So different.

FARRELL: Yeah, absolutely. I'd like to talk about specifics with your parents' story. So were they first at the Santa Anita Racetrack before they went to Manzanar?

GOTO: Yes. Yes, they were.

FARRELL: Okay and they got married in 1942 while there were travel restrictions in place. Is that right?

GOTO: Correct. Right after all those orders came down they decided, "We should probably get married. It's better that we're married rather than two single people." And yes, they stayed in the racetracks. My mother more than my 01:17:00father described how awful it was to be in a horse stall and the smell, the horsehair, the mud on the bottom. She just said it was just awful. And then they were, of course, moved to Manzanar. It was cold, dusty, et cetera, et cetera.

FARRELL: Yes. It's also interesting because they got married they were able to go together.

GOTO: Correct.

FARRELL: They were at Santa Anita and then do you know how long they were at Manzanar for?

GOTO: That's a really good question. Since my father helped set up the infirmary and that was really important -- they were one of the first people to be there. They might have been there before almost everybody else because they had to set up the 01:18:00infirmary, so I would say at the beginning of 1942. The riot, if my memory serves, happened in the summer of '42, somewhere around there. I think that's about right. So they weren't there that long. It's not difficult but an interesting thing is that this gentleman who was the hospital administrator, Japanese American man who's since passed away unfortunately, named Frank Chuman, wrote a book. He says clearly in the book that my father told him that these people were shot in the 01:19:00side and back. It's like, I don't know, I don't understand the controversy. There is no controversy, but anyway.

FARRELL: It doesn't seem like there is much controversy there. When the rangers told you that, that they gave you pushback, how did you respond to that?

GOTO: I didn't really say anything. This story gets more complicated. My cousin's son works for the National Park Service in Manzanar. He's the person that got the pushback. It was not directed directly to me. He got the pushback and we had dinner and he said, "Uncle Hans, you can't. Zip it." Yeah.

FARRELL: Wow.

GOTO: Yeah, 01:20:00so I'm just kind of at a low level right now.

FARRELL: And this was a couple of years ago?

GOTO: Yeah.

FARRELL: Yeah, so pretty recent. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I appreciate you sharing that.

GOTO: It's not over yet, I guess.

FARRELL: It doesn't seem like it. Yeah. Unfolding. Your parents were both physicians they worked in the infirmary and your mom was a dermatologist who then became a general physician at camp. Is that correct?

GOTO: Correct, yes. Since they really didn't need a dermatologist on staff. They were so short staffed. I believe they had nine physicians for ten thousand people there. Of course, there was the nursing staff. I don't know how many nursing. But I believe there was only eight or nine people, eight or nine nurses, and then there were like three or four 01:21:00dentists for ten thousand people. They were quite stressed.

FARRELL: Yeah. It's a lot of pressure to put on a handful of people. Do you know if your father was a general surgeon before he got to camp?

GOTO: Yes, I believe he was. He did his residency in surgery before he got to camp.

FARRELL: Okay, okay. One thing we did briefly touch on a few minutes ago was that a lot of the medical supplies were in pretty short supply. Anesthesia, antibiotics and a lot of Catholic priests and Quakers would bring in supplies. Do you have a sense of how your father or the other physicians were able to make connections with the priests or the Quakers that were coming in?

GOTO: No. I don't know. I feel 01:22:00so badly that I don't remember his name. My father would always mention this priest, this Catholic priest. He would always say, "Father so-and-so. We'd stop by and see him and we'd drop off things to him. He was always just a really nice, sweet man." I believe he was the connection my father had. I think because he was in the Japanese American community he knew a lot of the people and the names. They were very grateful because it was not so much medical supplies because I think all the medical supplies were really stressed because of the war. The primary need is for the military and so the secondary need is for these camps. 01:23:00My dad would describe using -- I don't know if it was standard procedure or not -- using chloroform to give anesthesia." I said, "So wait. How do you do that? You don't just put a mask on?" He goes, "Oh, no." He would describe to me how they used to do it and it's like, oh my God, this is scary.

FARRELL: Yeah. Was it like a rag?

GOTO: Yes and there was like something over him and then to put the rag. But then I go, "But how do you control the amount?" He says, "Well, that's up to the anesthesiologist." It's like, "Oh, my God. That's scary."

FARRELL: Yeah. It's a very interesting illustration of having to be resourceful with what you have. Like your mom was a dermatologist who had to then be a general physician and using chloroform as a form of anesthesia and then somebody having to figure out how to control that.

GOTO: Right, right. Isn't that? It's just like -- yeah.

FARRELL: Yeah. 01:24:00As you mentioned, your dad was the medical examiner, so he was responsible for signing death certificates.

GOTO: Correct.

FARRELL: And this comes up again when your family moves to Topaz, I believe, right?

GOTO: Correct. The Topaz time is a little blurrier as far as what my parents tell me. Were they just on the staff in Topaz? I would think they would be because Topaz would already have their hierarchy in place, right. The chief medical officer, et cetera, et cetera. I just can't imagine my father transferring from Manzanar to Topaz and moving into that position. I don't know if there was some clashing or whatever. 01:25:00That was never talked about by my parents.

FARRELL: That's interesting. Did he sign the death certificate for [James Hatsuaki] Wakasa?

GOTO: I don't know. That's a really good question. I don't know how to look those things up but I would really like to.

FARRELL: Yeah. I'll try to do some digging for the next session.

GOTO: Oh, thank you.

FARRELL: Yeah. I feel like I've heard that before so I have to figure out where my source was but I can find that out. Did your dad ever talk about that?

GOTO: No, no. Remind me who Wakasa was?

FARRELL: He was in Topaz and ended up getting shot and killed. There's a memorial for him where he died. It was a very sad, very controversial thing that happened in Topaz. Some of that is coming up now with the memorial.

GOTO: That's right. I remember that. And then 01:26:00they dug up the memorial improperly or whatever. Oh, boy.

FARRELL: Yeah. The Wakasa Memorial is a big topic right now.

GOTO: I see.

FARRELL: It's possible that that came up. I wonder if maybe either Bruce Embrey or Nancy Ukai mentioned that maybe it was your dad who signed the death certificate.

GOTO: Oh. Bruce Embrey would know. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

FARRELL: Yeah. I'll find out. That'd be interesting. Yeah, so when your dad was forced to -- well, he was demoted, I guess, and had to move camps, do you know why he chose Topaz?

GOTO: No, I do not. Like I said, that whole part of their stay in the camps is really low key. The only thing 01:27:00I can say, which seems like totally left field, is that my mother received these incredible gifts from the people in Topaz. I'm almost positive they're not from Manzanar even though there's no labels. She received a painting, which I have. She received this beautiful, what is it, like a painting but it's made out of arrowheads and has the Topaz Mountain in the background. She has like two trays of beautiful shell jewelry that was made from the desert things. Just crazy. I'll see if I can take photos of it and just send them to you. I'm not sure what to do with them 01:28:00actually. I tried donating them to some of the museums and then they go, "Oh, well, we have too many things right now." It's like, "Oh, okay. You should take a look at it before you reject it."

FARRELL: Yeah, I agree. So she was gifted with those things?

GOTO: Yes.

FARRELL: Do you have a sense of why she was honored in that way?

GOTO: I don't know except that I feel that many of the Japanese Americans in the camps were so grateful if my parents did something for them or helped them heal or whatever, that they wanted to give them something, right. One of the other complaints that my father had and that he actually tried to get compensation for, is that the lowest 01:29:00paid person in camps were paid fourteen dollars a month and the highest paid person in the camp was paid nineteen dollars a month. My parents were paid nineteen dollars a month and he was saying to the War Relocation Authority, "As a physician I would be getting X number of dollars, not nineteen dollars a month. You owe me. You guys owe me this back pay." He never got it.

FARRELL: Yeah. I know there was a period of time before the redress movement where there were some, like very, very meager reparations were paid. It sounds like your dad didn't get those then.

GOTO: No. He didn't get any. He told me, he goes now, he says, "I was really mad," ba-ra-ra-, you know.

FARRELL: It's lost wages.

GOTO: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

FARRELL: Did your mom ever talk about being pregnant at Topaz?

GOTO: She did and she said it was really tough. It was really 01:30:00tough. The food was terrible. We can't blame the cooks and all. Excuse me. She said the food was terrible. It smelled terrible and because she was pregnant, of course, it just was even worse. She was sick a lot. The nutrition was not good, I believe, and she said that in so many words. My sister was born and she was really tiny when she was born, so she was undersized. Throughout her life she's had various health issues, like bone issues and dental things and so on and so forth. She does to this day. It's just theory but I think it relates to 01:31:00the not very good nutritional values both from when my mother was pregnant and when she was a baby. She basically had, what do you call it, canned milk or whatever from that time. I don't think it was very nutritious or whatever and she didn't have enough of it.

FARRELL: Yeah. The formula, it sounds like.

GOTO: Formulas, yeah.

FARRELL: Yeah. That's a big issue and I'm sure people were not very receptive to people being pregnant and the nutrition needs of a new mother, pregnant mother, yeah. Did your mom ever talk about having a newborn, a young child in the camps?

GOTO: No. She never did. She never did. I'm sorry to say I never asked her about it, what was it like, who took care of the baby. I 01:32:00think if she was in Manzanar, the aunties and grandparents would have been taking care of my sister. But I really don't know who or what happened.

FARRELL: Were all of your relatives in Manzanar or was anyone in Topaz or elsewhere?

GOTO: No. They were all in Manzanar. Except for one. One uncle. One uncle. He had heard that if he went past the Rocky Mountains he wouldn't have to go into camp so he said, "That's what I'm going to do." For most of the war, if not all of the war, he worked in Minnesota or Wisconsin, one of those two places. Yeah. He basically just stayed there.

FARRELL: Were your grandparents incarcerated as well?

GOTO: 01:33:00 Yes.

FARRELL: And was everyone there until the camps closed?

GOTO: Yes.

FARRELL: Okay. Do you have a sense of what it was like for them to return to Southern California after the camps were closed?

GOTO: The difference between the two families was significant. For my grandparents on my father's side, paternal grandparents, their return, everything that they had was gone because the laws at the time were that they could not own property. They had to lease property. All of that leased property was gone so it took them a while to reestablish themselves. But that's what they did. They ended up developing their own lands, like a nursery for landscape. On my mother's side, 01:34:00my maternal grandparents, my grandfather, I don't know where he got his smarts, but he was a very smart man apparently. He didn't have a high education. I think the highest grade he went to was middle school in Japan and then he came over and worked as a house boy. But he had worked with somebody and gave that person power of attorney over the property, the house that he had, and said, "You can pay the bills and use this account and use this account but you can't sell it without my permission." He and my mother's family were able to go right back to my grandfather's house right after the war. Which is unheard of. Just unheard of. It was just like, wow, I was totally 01:35:00shocked when I understood that.

FARRELL: Did anyone else face any housing discrimination that you're aware of?

GOTO: Not that I'm aware of. But my family, they didn't end up talking about that kind of stuff. Even if they were partying and a little bit inebriated, they'd talk about other things, but not that certain thing.

FARRELL: Yeah and it's understandable trying to put that behind you.

GOTO: I think that's pretty much it.

FARRELL: Yeah. Well, it sounds like both of your parents were able to return to work when they were back. But the rest of your family as well? On your father's side, with the flower shops, the nursery, that kind of thing?

GOTO: Right. I think they ended up having to rent property and there were people in Southern California who were 01:36:00really nice folks and gave them a chance. I think both my aunt and uncle were able to slowly build up their business. But they were people who worked seven days a week since they were in the flower business. I was a little kid, they'd get up at 3:00 in the morning to go to the flower market. It's just like, "Oh, I'd like to go with you but I can't even get up. I can't move." They did it for years and years and years. They were amazing people. Just really amazing.

FARRELL: Lot of resilience it sounds like.

GOTO: Oh, yeah. Just hard work and resilience. But I think that's why my uncles, in particular, they partied a lot afterwards, because it's like kind of just relax and unwind.

FARRELL: Yeah, that's interesting. Sort of coping with that 01:37:00 trauma.

GOTO: Yeah. Exactly, exactly.

FARRELL: Yeah. We had talked about the conversations that you had with your family or overheard growing up, but one thing we didn't talk about was the camping experience you had when you were eleven with one of your father's brothers. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

GOTO: Sure, sure. It happened a couple of times. Oh, the one in particular. I'm sorry, I was thinking of something else. This was my Uncle Ray, who is the youngest of the siblings. He was my father's favorite sibling and he just really liked Uncle Ray. Uncle Ray, just out of the blue, it seemed to me, said, "Let's go camping." He took three of us cousins camping. He says, "I want to show you 01:38:00something," basically. I had no idea where we were going. It ended up we went to Manzanar. When we got to Manzanar he said, "This is where we had to stay." We all looked. His son looked and my cousin and I looked. We don't see anything. We just see like a corporate yard for the County of Inyo or wherever that is and they had tractors there. They had a fence around it and then one sort of portable building. It was literally right on top of the camp, in the middle of the camp. It was like, "Oh, wow." We couldn't imagine. We couldn't picture what it was like. He goes, "Oh, yeah. It was one square mile around here." He said, "This is where we lived for three years." 01:39:00Basically, he said, "Let's go camp up in the hills." We drove up this dirt road and then sat and we actually lucked out and caught a couple trout and had trout for dinner and yeah. It was just a really nice experience. But the first time I'd ever seen Manzanar. The next time I saw Manzanar was just a few years ago actually and it was the museum and the whole thing was built up. It's very special now. It just is very impressive how they put it together.

FARRELL: Yeah and we'll talk more about that, too, about your experience on the pilgrimage. When we talked last time about that camping trip that you went on and ended up at Manzanar, you mentioned that it felt revelatory. What about that felt like a revelation for you?

GOTO: I think that revelation part was 01:40:00like, oh, there was actually a physical place. This is where my parents were. This is where my family was. Even though my uncle didn't say, "Oh, yeah, this is where Grandma and Grandpa were and al the aunts and uncles." But yeah. It's just amazing to think the whole family was here in the middle of the desert, here, and nobody talks about it. I mean even Uncle Ray, he never talked about it. "Oh, yeah, I don't like to talk about those kind of things." It's like, "Well, wait. What is this? What's the story behind it?" So yeah. It was like a part of our family history that was closed off before.

FARRELL: Did that pique some of your curiosity to learn about your family's history?

GOTO: A little bit. A little bit. 01:41:00I hate to say it. My sense of it is that I was -- I don't know if I'd say lazy but I think I'd call myself lazy since I was never really that motivated to be thinking about justice and the righteousness of correcting wrongs and so on. That wasn't really in my thinking at that time. Not until later in life. In between was that whole thing, traveling to Japan, understanding the Japanese culture for me and language things. It eased into that. Like, okay, what is going on with the Japanese American experience? What was that? Like I 01:42:00said before, the main way that I was able to explore it was because of the social studies teachers at the local high school. They were incredible. They were very supportive. I've gone through at least six versions of PowerPoint presentations and the first versions I got rid of, they were so bad. It's like, "Oh, my gosh, I'm embarrassed to say." But the teachers liked them, students liked it. They were so interested. They go, "We've never heard this before." I went, "I'm learning, too. It's not just you guys. But I'm learning." Over time it got to be more and more interesting. And then, like I say, my cousin Joyce Okazaki contacted me and said, "We'd like you to do more things." Her 01:43:00contact actually stimulated more things for me, as well.

FARRELL: Yeah, I know a lot of that came later on for you.

GOTO: Yes.

FARRELL: Also, too, because you didn't really learn about this in high school either, right?

GOTO: No. Not at all. Never heard about it. What's ironic, just for a little tidbit, is that one of my high school history teachers was a fellow named Mas Hashimoto and he was a little kid in one of the camps. I forget what camp right now. He never mentioned it, ever, in history, US history. He taught US history. It was just a sign of the times. That usually we were lucky to get to World War I for US history or whatever and never past 01:44:00 that.

FARRELL: Yeah. We'll talk more about some of the stuff in depth next time. But before we wrap up today, I'm wondering if you could tell me a little bit about what it meant for you to grow up knowing so many of your relatives and having this big family around you at different times in your life?

GOTO: I think it was a great feeling. I feel very lucky and very supported by the family. Family is family and it was like they're not necessarily all heavy communicators. They're not really whatever, the soft and fuzzy. They're a little abrasive at times but it's just everybody's personality working together. Just me, personally, I loved 01:45:00it. I loved the fact that there were like twenty-five cousins on one side, on my father's side, and then there weren't quite as many on my mother's side but they were fun, too. Fifteen, twenty cousins to get together. Yeah. It was a really wonderful thing and I feel really lucky that I was able to get together with one side and then another side. Never the whole gathering of everybody, unfortunately, but that would have been an interesting thing.

FARRELL: When you look back on that, what have you taken with you into your adult life from your childhood, from that time, from the time spent with your family?

GOTO: Yeah. I think one of the main things is that I've learned not to be too 01:46:00judgmental because there's so many different types of people, including so many different types of people in my own family even. To be a little bit open to hearing what people have to say. I think I learned a whole lot from listening to my aunts and uncles and even though I wasn't smart enough to ask them detailed history about this and that, what little they volunteered was always interesting. I would be one of the few kids sitting around in front of an aunt or uncle listening to them talk about whatever they wanted to talk about. I just found it fascinating, including just some crazy stories about my uncles and how they would get mad at my dad and all these things. It was just hilarious. Hilarious.

FARRELL: Is there anything else that you want to add to 01:47:00this session or this part of the interview before we wrap up?

GOTO: I don't think so. I just feel like we touched on the camp a little bit, my parents camp experience. That's pretty much, I think, a good thing to have touched upon at this point. It seems to be in the forefront of my thinking, so that was really good so thank you. But it's interesting to think all these different names, dates, and all of these other things that were easily accessible to me mentally, that I now have to kind of review things because it's like, "Oh, wait. What date was that? What happened when?" Even to review, because my aunts and uncles have passed away, to 01:48:00review the names of my aunts and uncles. Because it's like I haven't called that name in twenty years. But I appreciate this experience because that helps me think about it and express some of the feelings going back.

FARRELL: Yeah. Absolutely. Well, I really appreciate it and I also understand. I'm asking you to recall dates that you weren't necessarily alive for so it's very understandable. Thank you so much for everything that you've shared. This was a really great interview and I really appreciate it.

GOTO: Oh, of course, of course.