Ruth Sasaki | Interview 1 | January 14, 2022

FARRELL: Okay, this is Shanna Farrell with Ruth Sasaki on Friday, January 14, 2022. This is our first interview for the Japanese American Intergenerational Narratives Project and we are speaking over Zoom. Ruth, can you start by telling me where and when you were born and a little bit about your early life?

SASAKI: I was born in San Francisco in 1952. That's seven years after the camps closed and the war ended. I grew up in the Richmond district, which was a very integrated neighborhood. We moved there when I was like one-and-a-half years old. I was actually born in Japantown, so the 00:01:00only world I really knew was that Richmond district neighborhood. In many ways it was a very insular existence because there were neighbors of all different types. I went to school where I had Jewish and Chinese American friends and Russian friends. I think it gave me maybe a false sense of the real world, in a sense. It was almost like a paradise. I mean it wasn't perfect. I think we were still in the melting pot mentality, where everybody aspired to be not white but sort of the Anglo-yardstick. We were friends with people from all different backgrounds and yet we didn't know a lot about their backgrounds or their family lives; we were school friends. In one sense it was 00:02:00great because my family was very stable. We didn't move around a lot. We moved from Twenty-Third Avenue to Thirty-Eighth Avenue when I was eight years old and I had to change schools. That was a big change. I had a great degree of stability. I think the advantage of that is that you grow up with the same friends. You add friends but sort of the same stable base of people who know you. There's church, there's school. Your family. And so you have a sense of identity, which has nothing to do with your racial identity or any of that stuff. I'm Ruth and people know me as Ruth. I guess leaving that world was kind of a transition but maybe we can talk about that later.

FARRELL: Yeah, and when you were growing up in the Richmond, are there any sites or sounds or 00:03:00smells that you remember from your neighborhood? Either Twenty-Third or Thirty-Eighth Avenues.

SASAKI: Fog.

FARRELL: Fog.

SASAKI: The foghorn. Having to get all bundled up in the summer because it was so cold and then if we go downtown it's like you're sweating because it's so hot. Yeah. Really it was a foggy, foggy childhood. But that was what I was used to so I didn't mind it. I think partly because of that I spent a lot of time indoors reading, which turned out to be a great thing. My mother loved the fog. She had memories of living in Topaz and she hated hot weather. She was in paradise out in the outer Richmond, so that was one sort of overriding memory. Actually, I'm skipping ahead again but when I went to 00:04:00Japan for the first time in 1975, it was, I remember taking off from San Francisco Airport. You know how you sort of break through the cloud cover and suddenly it's sunny and there's all these clouds below you? I thought, "I grew up under that. My whole existence happened under that fog blanket." It seemed very symbolic to me because going to Japan was like breaking out of that fog blanket. But, again, we can maybe talk about Japan later.

FARRELL: Yeah. I love the way you put that, as the fog as being symbolic. As a Richmond district resident myself, I certainly understand the fog and I think that the micro climates in this part of town is something that not a lot of people are aware of who 00:05:00don't live in the Bay Area. But the fog for sure. You mentioned that, so subsequently, you spent a lot of time inside reading. What were some of the books that you were reading or some of the stories that you were drawn to?

SASAKI: Well, various ones through the years as I grew up. My sister Kathy was into Nancy Drew books so of course I read them all. [I envied her independence; she was (presumably) still a teenager, yet she had her own car; she could go shopping at a department store and buy whatever she wanted; she traveled all over and stayed at inns and hotels. That takes serious money! -- probably not what most readers take away from Nancy Drew books!] I personally -- none of my other sisters were into this -- but I loved the Black Stallion books. I liked horses. I started writing when I was pretty little. In the fourth grade I would write these horse stories. Later I thought, "Now, why did I write horse stories?" I think it's because when you're choosing your protagonist it's somebody or something, some animal or something that you can identify 00:06:00with. At that time I didn't see hardly any Asian-American protagonists, so it was unthinkable to write about a Japanese American girl like myself. So a lot of my stories were horse stories.

FARRELL: Did you ever visit the horses in Golden Gate Park?

SASAKI: I did. I went riding there a couple of times.

FARRELL: That's great. You didn't grow up riding horses, right? That was just something you were drawn to?

SASAKI: No, no. It was a fantasy. [I bought my dad two packs of pipe tobacco once because the company was sponsoring a contest to name a colt. The winner would win the horse! I thought we could keep it in the garage and graze it on the lawn in the backyard. Lucky for that horse that I didn't win!]

A lot of my stories were about horses, racehorses. My classmates all thought I spent all my weekends hanging out at a racetrack. I had never been to one. It was just kind of all in my head. Yeah, so I didn't grow up riding, horseback riding.

FARRELL: I'd love to hear a little bit more about your family. Could you 00:07:00tell me your father's name and some of your early memories of your dad?

SASAKI: My father's name was Shigeru Sasaki. He was a Kibei. He was born in Berkeley and when he was eight his grandfather decided it was time to take the family back to Hiroshima. He went to school in Japan from eight to eighteen and then came back here to San Francisco. My memories with my dad, he was great. He loved the outdoors. He was very active. He had four daughters when I was growing up and we used to kid that we were like half of a softball team. He taught us how to throw a football. He took us fishing and all that stuff. It was 00:08:00great. He was very gentle and yet he could be very strict. He never hit us or spanked us but when we did something he didn't approve of he'd give us this very stern look. That was enough to like make us instantly get back in line because we were kind of scared of him in that way. But not really, you know what I mean? My sisters had a story that once he and I got into this argument and then I threw a little toy broom at him. [I was about three years old, I think.] They were like appalled because they would never think of throwing something at my dad. But we had a really good relationship so we were very close.

FARRELL: Did he 00:09:00have any siblings?

SASAKI: He had an oldest brother. There's kind of an interesting story there because the eldest brother was born in Japan before my grandparents emigrated. According to my aunt Momoko, he was left in Japan when they emigrated and came to San Francisco because their parents -- my great-grandparents -- wanted to ensure that my grandparents would return, so they kept the son there. I don't know if that's true or not but that's what she said. All the rest of the siblings, he had four sisters and my dad was the second to youngest, so he has three older sisters, [who were all born in San Francisco,] and one younger sister, [who, like my dad, was born after the Sasaki family moved to] Berkeley.

FARRELL: You might have just explained the reason but do you have a sense of why his parents, 00:10:00they moved the family back to Japan?

SASAKI: Yeah. I don't know. This is all speculation. But I have to say, another little tangent before I answer that question, is I was raised in a public school education and so I never questioned why my grandparents came to America. It was assumed everybody wants to come here, right? So when I was an adult, actually, my mother revealed to me that her parents, my grandmother, on her last trip to Japan before the war, had actually had a house built because they were planning to go back. That just shocked me because I had never imagined that they wanted to go back. It was against that whole kind of, not brainwashing but the way that you're conditioned to think everyone wants to come to 00:11:00America and they don't want to go back. In my father's parents case, the reason they came in the first place, I think, was financial. There was some kind of setback in the family and so he as the eldest son came to California to try to recover the family wealth. He did quite well. He had like a wholesale business for a while and then later, around when my dad was born and growing up, they had -- I think it was like a grocery store in Berkeley. He decided in 1926 -- and this is two years after the Exclusion Act -- that it was time to go back. I wonder if he was just feeling like, "Okay, conditions are getting 00:12:00worse here for us. People can't come over here as easily and so I don't know what our prospects are." This is all speculation. And then also, of course, their eldest son was still in Japan. Because he had done well enough, I think he decided it was time.

Of course the kids, it was terrible for the kids because they had been born here and they didn't want to leave. The eldest daughter had a boyfriend here. She was sixteen. All the kids, it was very hard for them and also hard after they went back because in Japan, if you're the slightest bit different you're ostracized and you're teased. So they had a hard adjustment.

FARRELL: Yeah. I was going to ask if your father ever talked about what it was like for him to move to Japan, what the assimilation process was like for him 00:13:00 there.

SASAKI: My dad didn't talk about his past very much at all. Only pretty much when he came to visit me in Japan in 1976 and then like towards the end of his life he started to reveal a few things. But it was like all the time I was growing up I was more familiar with my mother's side of the family because they were here. They spoke English, they were here. We were surrounded by them at every holiday. And my dad, we occasionally met one of his sisters when they visited. But they were like strangers. They didn't speak English that well. Except for one aunt who was in 00:14:00 Hawaii.

FARRELL: Your father came back to the US when he was eighteen. Did he go on to college here? I know that he was an entrepreneur and imported goods from Japan and sold them wholesale. Did he start doing that right away? Do you have a sense of what his trajectory was?

SASAKI: Yeah. Because his older brother had actually come to the US on business. He had a business here and he was living next to my mom's family. That's how they met. Well, actually, they met in Japan once when my mom was visiting with her mother on a buying trip. They had gone to the Sasaki family house. I guess they were in Hiroshima at that 00:15:00time. Because their neighbor, that was their neighbor's mother, right, so they stopped in to say hi to her. My dad and his sister came home from school on their bicycles and hid in the kitchen and were like peeking out at the American visitors. He was too shy to come out. So I guess they didn't really meet. But the next year he went to America. I'm wondering, hmm. Anyway, he was living next door so it was like perfect. He was living with his brother and going to like night school. All I know about his pre-war occupation was at one point he was like driving around collecting subscriptions for the New World Sun. I'm not sure what else he was doing. And then he was drafted I think 00:16:00in December of '41 before Pearl Harbor.

FARRELL: What branch of the service was he in?

SASAKI: He was just in the army infantry.

FARRELL: In the army, okay. Did he ever talk about his experience in the service?

SASAKI: Very seldom. I just got a few things in the years much later about how they were treated. Because he was not in the 442. He was in the 1800, so he spent the war in various forts around the south and things like that. He was basically a driver. That's what he usually ended up doing. He remembers having to transport German prisoners of war from one place to another. He remembered some of the Kibei soldiers having to pick up trash 00:17:00along the highway under armed guard. This is the guard of their fellow soldiers. He also remembered when Roosevelt came to visit one of the forts where he was stationed. They took all the Kibei and locked them up in the guardhouse. He had that kind of memory and he didn't talk about it very much.

FARRELL: Did he and your mother marry before he was drafted?

SASAKI: No, they got married during the war.

FARRELL: Oh, that's right. That's right. Sorry. I knew that. I spaced for a second.

SASAKI: They had their first date, I think, was it the day before Pearl Harbor?

FARRELL: Oh, okay. That's a fateful day. And before we get further into your parent's marriage story, I'd love to hear a little bit more about your mom -- her name and some of your early memories of her.

SASAKI: Okay. My mom's name was Tomiko 00:18:00Takahashi. She was born in San Francisco and she had an older sister, Kiyo, and two younger brothers, Shigeharu and Edwin. By the time they got to the last, he had an Anglicized name [with a Japanese middle name]. She was, for most of the time, a housewife after I was born. She would occasionally help my dad with his business by doing secretarial work and things. She was very hard of hearing and it grew progressively worse through the years. She didn't talk that much about the war or those experiences. I found out later about the work that she did in the camps. I don't know when I should talk about 00:19:00that. She had graduated from UC Berkeley. She graduated from Commerce High School and went to UC Berkeley and majored in education. Graduated in 1939. But she couldn't get a teaching job because California was not hiring Asians at that time, so she and my aunt both helped at my grandfather's store on Grant Avenue.

FARRELL: And she was helping with the store after graduation and before she was sent to the camps?

SASAKI: Right.

FARRELL: Okay. We can talk about her camp experience anytime you want. If now feels like a good time, or we can [talk about it later].

SASAKI: Okay. Maybe I'll just say a little bit now.

FARRELL: Sure. Absolutely.

SASAKI: When she was in Tanforan a couple of Nisei women who had graduated from Mills 00:20:00College, it was Kay Uchida, Yoshiko Uchida's sister, and Grace Fujii, decided that something needed to be done for the preschool kids. They called a meeting of all the college graduates among the internees and organized preschools for the kids. My mom was teaching preschool in Tanforan. When they were transferred to Topaz, they did the same thing. They organized a preschool system. I think it was in 1943 when Kay and Grace resettled and left camp. They picked my mom to take over. From '43 to '45 she was the supervisor of Topaz preschools.

FARRELL: Yeah, 00:21:00okay. And your mom was Nisei, is that correct?

SASAKI: Nisei, right.

FARRELL: Okay. Did she have any siblings? Oh, you mentioned that, I'm sorry. Yes, okay. In San Francisco, do you know what neighborhood she grew up in?

SASAKI: She grew up in Japantown.

FARRELL: In Japantown, okay. How old was she when Pearl Harbor happened, the day after she had her first date with your father?

SASAKI: Let's see, 1943. She was born in 1918 so --

FARRELL: Okay, so she was in her early twenties.

SASAKI: Twenty-three or something.

FARRELL: Yeah, okay. Can you tell me a little bit about what you've heard 00:22:00about when she went to Tanforan and then Topaz? Wherever you want to start with that and what you have heard or had learned about her experience.

SASAKI: Well, she didn't talk about Tanforan hardly at all. The only story from Tanforan that kind of stands out in my memory was that she had a Caucasian friend, Margaret, who came down to visit her in Tanforan and she just remembers in those days young women dressed much -- I won't say better, that's a value judgment -- dressed up a lot more than my generation. And so there was Margaret in her -- I think she was wearing gloves and she had heels and her skirt and sweater and everything -- walking over the train 00:23:00tracks to talk to my mom through the fence. She remembered that she really appreciated that Margaret came to visit, to see her. I don't remember her saying anything else about Tanforan. Topaz, of course, she talked about the dust and she talked about being worried about her parents because my grandmother had diabetes and she had to have a special diet. They would have to go and wait in line and get her food and bring it back to the barrack, that kind of thing. She remembers this friend of the family who would always sing Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree when they were standing in line waiting for meals. They're just very sort of random little memories. Most of them were about people they knew 00:24:00or funny things. Like she and Kiyo both came down with -- I can't remember what it was -- strep throat or something. Or maybe they had laryngitis -- I can't remember what it was. Tonsillitis. I forgot what it was but they were both in the hospital. They had so many visitors that they both lost their voices, that kind of thing. That's about the kind of story that she would tell us.

FARRELL: Did she ever mention if it's the hospital or the medical staff at Topaz was accommodating of your grandmother's diabetes and her needing a special diet? I've heard so much about the food at Topaz and how it was not great and so I just wondered if they made accommodations for her.

SASAKI: I don't know.

FARRELL: 00:25:00Okay. That's a very specific question -- just thought I'd ask. Did your mom ever talk about her work in the preschool and kind of what her experience was?

SASAKI: Well, she actually wrote it up and gave a little presentation to her church group. I can't remember when it was, the 1990s maybe. That's when I really sort of found out information. When she became the supervisor of preschools, then she was pretty much in charge of everything from teacher training, hiring, communication with parents, setting the schedule, all that kind of stuff. She would have to walk and visit, there were like four preschools sprinkled throughout the camp. She would have to walk to 00:26:00them even in the dust storms and in the winter ice to visit, to make sure everything was going okay. Yeah, so I think she found it rewarding because she was able to use her educational background, which she wasn't able to do before the war.

FARRELL: Your parents got married in 1943 while your dad was in the service and while your mom was at Topaz. Can you tell me a little bit about their courtship? If you know anything about their courtship in this circumstance and then their marriage. I know that you've written about that for Topaz stories but I'd love to hear it from you.

SASAKI: Well, as I mentioned, they kind of met in Hiroshima. That must have been like in 00:27:001935 or something. I don't remember exactly, '34 or '35. It was in '35 because my dad went to San Francisco in '36. I think my mom, when he was living next door, my mom thought he was cute. But he was kind of shy and he didn't like make his move. But then maybe getting drafted was motivation and he asked her out. They went to a football movie, which was not really my mom's thing, but what we do for love. I think they went to another movie and then he had to report. And then they continued to write to each other. He visited Topaz, I think, when he got 00:28:00leave. I don't know any details but I do know that when they decided to get married he got leave and he came to Topaz. They went to the Millard County Courthouse in Fillmore and got married there and then they honeymooned in Salt Lake City and spent almost the entire time visiting friends who had resettled there.

FARRELL: Do you know how long a period of time they had before your mom had to return to Topaz?

SASAKI: I don't know how long the leave was, no.

FARRELL: Okay. Did they continue writing letters to each other after?

SASAKI: Yeah. They continued writing. I think he may have visited again sometime. I don't know how often people got leave from the 00:29:00military but at any chance he would visit to see her.

FARRELL: Was your mom and her family at Topaz until it closed?

SASAKI: My Aunt Kiyo resettled in 1944 and went to Chicago, which is where my Uncle Shig was -- he was never in camp. He was a university student at UC and was kicked out with all the other Nisei. So he managed at that time to transfer to Ohio. I think it was Ohio State. And then he got his degree and then he went into a graduate program at -- my mind blanked. What's the big university in Chicago?

FARRELL: The University of Chicago or Northwestern?

SASAKI: Yeah. It was probably the University of Chicago.

FARRELL: There's a couple.

SASAKI: Because the University of Chicago, he was doing his 00:30:00graduate work there, so she resettled in Chicago and they shared an apartment until he got drafted. When he got drafted -- I guess in those days young women didn't live by themselves and so Edwin, who was about thirteen or something at the time -- no, maybe he was sixteen by that time -- went out to spend the summer with her. He had a part-time job at the International House at the University of Chicago, helping with the morning shift, breakfast shift. He remembered that the ladies there, there were several Black ladies and a Japanese American lady, just kind of adopted him because he was there without his parents and he was this tall, skinny cute kid. They would like save food for him and things. He stayed for the summer and then he went 00:31:00back to Topaz. Aside from Kiyo and my Uncle Edwin briefly, the rest of them were all in Topaz until it closed or until they left. I can't remember if it was September or October. I think it was September of 1945.

FARRELL: How long was your father in the service for?

SASAKI: Well, as I said, he was drafted --

FARRELL: In '41?

SASAKI: Reported in January, I think, 1942 and then he didn't get out until 1946.

FARRELL: Go ahead, please.

SASAKI: But he never got his GI Bill of Rights because a group of Kibei from the 1800 were given blue discharges because they complained about their treatment. They were court martialed and given blue discharges. That's something I didn't find out 00:32:00until the year he died. [One of the 1800 members, Kiyoshi Kawashima, organized an appeal starting in 1982 and with the help of Hyman Bravin, the lawyer who had represented them at their original court-martial, managed to get most of the blue discharges overturned. My dad got notice of his honorable discharge shortly before he died, in 1984.]

FARRELL: Oh. He didn't talk about that? No. Yeah. It's, I feel like, a pretty glaring example of the structural racism. Yeah. Yeah. I know that your parents eventually come back to San Francisco, but did your mom end up anywhere else before she came back to the Bay Area or her parents?

SASAKI: No. She came with her parents back to San Francisco and worked for maybe nine months or something as a preschool teacher in San Francisco.

FARRELL: Oh, interesting. So she was able to get a job after she came back?

SASAKI: She had recommendations from some of the Topaz school administrators.

FARRELL: Okay. Did you ever hear about what their experiences were like when they came back? Were they able to find 00:33:00housing? You mentioned your mom was able to find a job but --

SASAKI: They were quite lucky because the Victorian on Pine Street that they rented before the war, they had a very good relationship with their landlord, who was Greek. His name was Tom Spilios. Tom let them store things in the basement and when they came back he was happy to see them and he rented the place back to them. Unfortunately, in the interim it had been rented by itinerant workers who left the place just absolutely filthy. It was a mess. My mom told me she remembered just going through and cloroxing the whole place to make it livable. But they were fortunate because so many Japanese Americans had nowhere to live and, in fact, friends who had got out of camp, were leaving camp would come back to San Francisco and many of them would stay at my grandparents' house until they could 00:34:00find lodging. My mother remembers going to work as a preschool teacher, coming back in the evening and helping my grandmother serve dinner in three shifts because there were so many people.

FARRELL: That's an incredible service to the community, though, to help out with that. Do you have a sense of how long they lived in that house on Pine Street before moving out to the Avenues?

SASAKI: Well, so they came back in '45 and my family moved to the Avenues in 1954, so that period. After they moved out my grandparents and my Aunt Kiyo continued to live on Pine Street until my grandparents passed away. My grandfather died in '54. Was it 00:35:00'55? Maybe '55. My grandmother died in '57. At that point my Aunt Kiyo moved out to California Street. The Victorian was torn down and something else got built there.

FARRELL: Was that because of urban renewal that it was torn down?

SASAKI: It wasn't part of the Japantown makeover but they built like a senior living center or something, rest home there.

FARRELL: Okay. Having read your book, The Loom and Other Stories, in I think the story First Love, there's a house on Pine Street that shows up and I think there's a mention of it being torn down because of urban renewal so I didn't know if that was something your family had experienced, that house was a product of that.

SASAKI: That happened 00:36:00after my family had moved out so I don't really know what the circumstances were.

FARRELL: Okay. I didn't know if that was maybe something from your real life that made it into the book. So yeah, your parents started a family then, it sounds like, on Pine Street. Is that correct?

SASAKI: Yes.

FARRELL: Okay. Can you tell me a little bit about your siblings? I know you're one of five and one of four sisters.

SASAKI: Yeah. The eldest is my sister Joan. She was born in 1946. The second child was a boy, the only boy of the family, but he only lived a week. That must have been just devastating for them. And then I had a sister Kathy, then a sister Susan and then 00:37:00me. I kind of feel that because we moved out of Japantown to the Richmond district when I was so little -- the others remember Japantown and they remember living in a situation where they were surrounded by the Japanese community. They even spoke a little Japanese when they were little, that they learned from the grandparents and the parents. I had none of that. By the time I was speaking and doing that, we were in a very isolated, integrated Richmond district. I've always felt sort of -- not excluded -- but like I missed out on something, you know. In part, I think that's what drives me to find out so much about the past.

FARRELL: So you didn't grow up speaking Japanese?

SASAKI: Just words, isolated 00:38:00words. Actually, a lot of them I discovered later, much to my chagrin, were like baby words that parents use with their kids.

FARRELL: Do you have memories of your parents speaking Japanese to each other?

SASAKI: Yes. They usually did it when they didn't want us to understand what they were talking about. I think subconsciously that was a signal, like, "Okay, you're not supposed to be listening." That was a real barrier when I started studying Japanese because as soon as people start speaking Japanese I sort of tune out.

FARRELL: That's really interesting. You were conditioned.

SASAKI: I had to really fight to overcome that.

FARRELL: I'm curious if you could just tell me a little bit about your sisters and some of your early memories of them?

SASAKI: Well, let's see. Joan, because she's the eldest and she 00:39:00had the parents' generation to herself for a couple of years, she was always very responsible and always very much the big sister. After we grew up and the age differences weren't as important, I would tease her that she was like the little otona, meaning adult. Kathy, I think everyone was close to Kathy. She was very outgoing and athletic. It was really devastating for my family when she died in a rock climbing accident when she was twenty. That was probably the biggest loss that we've experienced. Susan and I were two years apart and so we played with each other a lot and we were very 00:40:00 close.

FARRELL: Let's see. With Joan, was she out of the house, because she was older than you? I have an older sister and she went away to college when I was in fifth grade, so I'm wondering if that was sort of a similar experience, where she left home when you were growing up.

SASAKI: Yeah. She left home in '64 and I got her room. Yes. She only lived in that house for three or something years. All the time that I was going to high school and junior high school she was in college already. She would come back for the summers.

FARRELL: I relate to that, as well. I got my sister's room when she went to college, too. And after your parents moved to the Avenues, did they maintain a 00:41:00connection to Japantown?

SASAKI: Yeah. They would go shopping there. They didn't go to church back then. I'm actually the one that kind of got people going to church because my best friend, who I met in kindergarten, went to Sunday school every Sunday. I used to go to her house to play and I was kind of mischievous. It was really a change to be in someone else's house. I would do all these things that I wouldn't dare do at home. I think her parents probably decided, I think, this kid needs church so they invited me to join Joanne and it was the S.F. Independent Church, which was in Japantown on the south side of Geary. I think later I learned that it was sort 00:42:00of an incarnation of what before the war had been called the Reformed Church. So anyway, yeah, it was a mixture of like Japanese. The sermons were all in Japanese so we would sort of snooze during them. But the Sunday school was in English. I forgot why I'm talking about church. What was your question?

FARRELL: If they maintained a connection to Japantown.

SASAKI: Yeah, so we would go to church every Sunday. I think my mom was very happy to get us all out of the house because my sisters started going, too. We would shop in Japantown and go to eat there. That was pretty much it. [I forgot to mention the funerals. As the Issei generation passed, we would go to funerals in the Buddhist Church. It was only at funerals, New Year's, and other death anniversaries that we would get a glimpse of the vestiges of a community that was no longer part of our everyday Richmond district existence.]

FARRELL: So you did not grow up Buddhist and the church that you were going 00:43:00to, what denomination was that?

SASAKI: I have no idea. It was small and for me it was just a chance to see Joanne on Sunday. By the time I was in junior high my sisters had started and then they sort of transferred to Pine Methodist Church, which had moved out to 33rd Avenue. I think it's on 33rd Avenue, so we all started going there.

FARRELL: And you didn't attend Japanese school?

SASAKI: I didn't. None of my sisters did. I know during the summer my mom would make an effort to teach us hiragana, the simple Japanese character, by taping the chart on the inside of the bathroom door. I kind of learned a few, I 00:44:00guess. But we didn't go. I think some of my friends did go. I kind of regretted it later.

FARRELL: I think when we had talked during our pre-interview you mentioned that your mother grew up with the YMCA. Are you aware of her connection with the Y, how that started?

SASAKI: Well, all I know is that my grandparents were Buddhist and a lot of the young Nisei in Japantown kind of gravitated to the Y because it was more of an English speaking social thing. The Y would have dances and trips and things and so they all started participating in those. I think initially my grandparents were not happy about it. But I think they got over it.

FARRELL: Do you 00:45:00remember if there were any family holidays that were really special or rituals or different celebrations? This is a broad question, too. It can be specifically Japanese but not necessarily. Just in general.

SASAKI: Well, the biggest holiday -- [break in audio]

FARRELL: Okay, we're back.

SASAKI: For us, the biggest holiday was always New Year's, Oshogatsu. My grandmother used to do it every year in Japantown before the war and it was like an open house. Friends of my aunt's always remembered that. This one friend of hers came up to me maybe ten, fifteen years ago at the New Year's and she would 00:46:00always say it was literally an open house. Everybody could go. Can you hear me?

FARRELL: Yes, I can hear you. The audio was good the whole time.

SASAKI: Okay. Yeah, the video was freezing. She would, like all the single young Japanese guys like my dad before the war, would be invited to come over and eat. It was like a big deal. After my grandmother was no longer able to do it, my mother started to host it, first on 23rd Avenue. Of course, it shrank a bit. A lot of the people were dying and some people were having their own Oshogatsu celebrations. We continued it when we moved to 38th Avenue. When my mom died, my sister Joan started doing 00:47:00it, kind of a version of it. And, of course, during lockdown it stopped.

FARRELL: What were some of the foods or the decorations or the music that you had during those celebrations?

SASAKI: The new year's celebrations?

FARRELL: Yeah, sorry. During the open houses.

SASAKI: Music was never a part of it. It was all about food. I think in the old days there were more traditional Japanese dishes, things like the black beans. My mom would make garbanzo beans the way my grandmother made them. There were these little fishes that were like kind of fried and crispy and lotus root and all these things. And sushi. A lot of different kinds of sushi. Over the years it became 00:48:00more and more eclectic and some of the things that are more Japanese that people were not eating as much would fall off the menu. Over the years we would incorporate things like Chinese chicken salad and tabbouli and lemon chiffon pie. Lemon meringue pie rather. Chicken nuggets, whatever. There was really no ritual about it. It was just basically an open house where we would invite friends and relatives would come over. It was always fun because you never knew who was going to be there at any given time, so people would meet, people who didn't know each other. We would drink ozoni, the New Year's soup, with mochi.

FARRELL: Those sound like pretty great 00:49:00 memories.

SASAKI: Yeah. We would spend the whole day before cooking.

FARRELL: Yeah. I was going to ask if it was potluck style or your family did all the food preparation.

SASAKI: People would bring things like dessert or candy or something. We provided most of the food [with some exceptions. My friend Sue always brought char siu bao, and her husband, Mike, made his famous crunchy cabbage salad. It's not like we wouldn't eat those things at other times during the year, but we would look forward to Sue's char siu bao and Mike's cabbage salad on New Year's Day because they had become part of the tradition.]

FARRELL: Any other important family holidays or celebrations?

SASAKI: Just the usual birthdays, Christmas, Thanksgiving. I can't think of anything unusual.

FARRELL: Yeah, yeah. So kind of continuing with the food theme, did you [grow up with your] parents cooking Japanese food or did you eat other things? What was the role of food in your early life?

SASAKI: Well, my 00:50:00grandmother was a great cook. She would like always cook a lot of food and feed everybody. As a result my mother never learned to cook. When she got married she bought a Betty Crocker's cookbook and learned a few things, like how to make biscuits and things like that. She had some dishes that she learned from her mother. But we had a combination. Sometimes Japanese food. But the most Japanese that my mother cooked was like an occasional tempura, which is a lot of work. But she would make other things, too, like spaghetti and things like that.

FARRELL: Did you grow up enjoying cooking? No. 00:51:00 Okay.

SASAKI: I did learn to bake and I liked baking.

FARRELL: I also relate to those two things, as well. We talked a little bit about your early interest in reading and writing. Were there any other hobbies or pastimes that you enjoyed when you were growing up?

SASAKI: When I was growing up. That's a hard one. Yeah. I liked to read. Hmm. Well, I always liked being outdoors. I liked sports, too. I wasn't great but I always enjoyed volleyball and softball, kickball, all that kind of stuff. I liked going fishing with my dad. I always wanted to learn how to ride a 00:52:00horse but didn't have enough opportunities. Yeah. I can't think of anything in particular.

FARRELL: Where would you go fishing with your father?

SASAKI: He used to go just anywhere. I wouldn't go fishing with him when he did surf fishing at Ocean Beach and all along the coast. He was fishing for striped bass. But we would sometimes follow along after him just for the walk. And then he would go trout fishing. Rivers, like the American River. He would also go to places like Lake Davis or Lake Berryessa. We actually went in Marin County once. It's right around Belvedere. I remember we were like casting from the shore and my sister Joan got this huge 00:53:00bite and her pole's like bending and it had hooked to a passing rowboat. It was not a fish. We would just go wherever. Oh, and then when we went to Yosemite, most summers he would fish in the Merced. I don't think he ever caught anything there though.

FARRELL: Aside from Yosemite, did your family go on many vacations or out of town?

SASAKI: Well, Yosemite was the big one because everybody loved going there and my dad would take five days off from his work. Sometimes we would go to Lake Tahoe around the Fourth of July weekend. We didn't take a whole lot of trips but 00:54:00in 1959 he took us all to Oregon for the centennial there and that was a very memorable trip. We stopped at Crater Lake, which was gorgeous and went to Portland, Oregon and came back. Most of our vacations were car trips, family car trips. We did go to the Grand Canyon much later, like in the 1970s. Not all of us. Joan was off at college. No, wait, was she still in college? No. She must have been working. But yeah, it was mostly car trips.

FARRELL: Okay. I do want to talk a little bit about your education in both grade school and high school. It seems like you attended for elementary school, 00:55:00Cabrillo and Lafayette starting in 1957. Can you tell me a little bit about what you remember? I mean it's so long ago. Your grade school, your elementary school, middle school, that time period.

SASAKI: Okay. Cabrillo. I pronounce it like, I guess, a San Francisco native.