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Interview
This is an interview with Reverend Kenji Kikuchi by Arthur A. Hansen for the Honorable Stephen K. Tamura Orange County Japanese American Oral History Project, jointly sponsored by the Japanese American Council of the Bowers Museum Foundation [Historical and Cultural Foundation of Orange County] and the Japanese American Project of the California State University, Fullerton, Oral History Program. The date is August 26, 1981. The interview is being conducted at 17272 Julep, Huntington Beach, California. Also present at the interview is Mrs. Yoshi Kikuchi. Reverend Kikuchi, can we begin the interview today with you giving us a brief overview of your life, with particular attention to the years that you have spent here in Orange County as part of the Japanese American community? K Kikuchi I left Japan in 1924 for theological study in the United States. I came here to Orange County in 1926 and started work among the Japanese at the Wintersburg Presbyterian Church. At that time the Orange County Japanese American community was entirely different from nowadays. Just about fifty Japanese farmers were then farming at Talbert, now called Fountain Valley, so I began church work here, both in Japanese and English. The first-generation Issei didn't speak much English and their everyday conversation was entirely in Japanese, so I had to preach in Japanese. The parents wanted to teach Japanese to their Nisei children, so we started the Talbert Japanese School, near Talbert Street and Bushard Street. So I taught Japanese to the Nisei after their public school day was over. ― 2 ―
And the Japanese community, mostly farmers, was almost separate from the American community because of the language, so my church work was to help them to learn how to communicate with the American people in English and also to unite the family of Nisei children and Issei parents. Japanese, as a whole, were entirely different--having different ideas and customs. The Japanese Issei wanted to keep their customs, naturally. I am Issei myself, though. I was educated in Japan--grammar school, high school, college and seminary--and then came to San Francisco Theological Seminary in San Anselmo in 1924. After studying English at the seminary, I went to Princeton for postgraduate work in theology. Also, at that time, Princeton was quite different from nowadays, but I enjoyed the study of theology, mostly German and New England theology. Princeton was very orthodox, conservative, and biblical; some ideas were quite contrary to the Tubingen Theological School in Germany. So we were very interested in the study of theology at Princeton. Well, then I came to Orange County. The Japanese people or community wanted to bring in a minister who spoke English, who knew the United States. So we started. The community relation was very close, more familylike, and I had to help out the children, calling for a doctor or taking a patient to the hospital. Nobody could help but the minister, and he was in the best position to help out. From the religious point of view, most of the Japanese came here without a knowledge of Christianity, but with just the influence and tradition of Buddhism received in Japan. [At that time there were six Christian families, eleven church members.] So it was quite hard to teach them Christianity at once; it took quite a while. But on the other hand, they had no religion here, so they were eager to learn anything important for the family life and community life; they especially appreciated the teaching at the Japanese school. The parents were very interested in education, teaching Japanese to their children, and so we were very important as Japanese teachers in the community. It was different from nowadays. The Japanese people stuck together, learned together, helped together, and developed agriculture methods together. Y Kikuchi Why don't you tell him that you were supposed to go back to Japan? K Kikuchi First, I came to the United States solely to study theology at Princeton. But after I finished seminary, I found this Japanese community in California I never knew about while I was in Japan, and the Japanese people here needed some leader and minister. That's why I changed my mind and decided to stay and teach the Issei and the Nisei people. So many young people came to this small Wintersburg church in Orange County. It was the building behind the current building, very old. It was built in 1910, and my predecessor as pastor was Reverend Junzo Nakamura. He was a very good leader, and it was kind of a painstaking job for a minister because it was not a formally organized church. We had to start from nothing and we had to teach many things. First of all, most of the Japanese immigrants came from Japan as laborers, like sugar beet laborers, and before that, to do railroad work in some places. Hansen Do you mean in Orange County or outside of Orange County? K Kikuchi Outside of Orange County. They came here to begin farming. Their farming system was such that they didn't own the land but rented around and built their cottage-like homes. Every three years they had to move because the land was getting poorer. So that was the Japanese farming style here in Orange County. Some of the farmers were from Garden Grove and had moved to the Talbert area. ― 3 ―
Hansen
And then you stayed on as a minister at the church for how long? K Kikuchi Ten years. Hansen Was it still a mission while you were the minister, or had it become a church? K Kikuchi It was a mission organized into a church. Hansen Were you the reverend when it became a church? K Kikuchi Yes. Hansen About when was that? K Kikuchi I think it was in 1928. Hansen So just a couple of years after you got here. K Kikuchi We planned a new building because the number of Sunday school children increased, and we used to go around the Talbert area to get the children in my Model-T Ford (laughter)--about nineteen children in an open car, and I drove around the surrounding farm land to get the Sunday school children here. Hansen Your car was the church bus? K Kikuchi Yes. (laughter) In the very early stage of the Japanese community, they never thought of buying land, so our first pastor, Reverend Hisakichi Terasawa told them that they should buy the land, but they just made fun and nobody bought the land. [Reverend Terasawa established a mission in Wintersburg in 1904.] Hansen For the church? K Kikuchi No, their own farmland. The early Japanese in the county just came here as laborers; their goal was to make money and go back to Japan. Hansen Right. K Kikuchi But their minister, Reverend Terasawa, had foresight and told them they should buy land. But nobody obeyed the minister. Y Kikuchi At that time, Japanese couldn't buy land, could they? K Kikuchi Oh, yes. At that time, Japanese could buy land, but later [after 1913] they couldn't. Hansen Because of the alien land laws. Okay. K Kikuchi People in the Japanese community were very simple and could not foresee their community's future, so the minister was the only leader to tell them about the American community and their future. Hansen How did you happen to leave the community here in Orange County and go to San Diego [California]? How did that happen? ― 4 ―
K Kikuchi
There were no particular reasons, but among the Japanese churches, ministers used to change. It took long to get tenure. Hansen I see. K Kikuchi It is sometimes nice changing. Before going to San Diego I was called to Salt Lake City, Utah. I was about to leave Orange County, but one day the Masudas came in the nighttime and told me they were sorry to hear I was leaving for Utah. Their three daughters used to come to Sunday school. They didn't eat their meals because they thought about my departure. So, that really startled me, so I prayed and changed my plan and stayed more. Hansen Did they have a Japanese community in Salt Lake City before the war? K Kikuchi Oh, yes. Salt Lake City had a big community. Hansen Quite sizable? K Kikuchi Yes, the Japanese churches in Salt Lake City and Ogden were quite large. Hansen They had a Japanese community in Ogden as well as one in Salt Lake City? K Kikuchi Oh, yes. Salt Lake City's community was bigger. Later, after I retired, I was called to Salt Lake City, about fifteen years ago. I went there for the Japanese speaking group thinking to stay there for only a few years. Then I changed my mind and stayed there for ten years. Hansen And so, how did you get a chance to go to San Diego? K Kikuchi I also got a call from San Diego. There was no minister, so they called me. We went to San Diego in 1941. Hansen So you were in Orange County until then? Y Kikuchi No. We also went to Japan, during that period, when I became ill. K Kikuchi Then, too, we got a call from Seattle. Yes, before San Diego, we were called to Seattle, Washington. Hansen What year was that about? K Kikuchi About 1936. Y Kikuchi At that time I was in Japan. K Kikuchi Yes, my wife got sick and we went back to Japan. Hansen When? K Kikuchi After I had stayed in Orange County for ten years. Hansen Right. Okay. ― 5 ―
K Kikuchi
Then we were called to Seattle, and stayed there for three years. Then I went to San Diego. Hansen In 1941. K Kikuchi Yes. Hansen So you were in San Diego at the time of Evacuation, right? K Kikuchi Oh, yes, and counting the years after the war, we were in San Diego for twenty-one years. Hansen When the Evacuation started, you left San Diego and went to where? K Kikuchi At first, we went to Santa Anita Assembly Center near Azusa [California]. Then we were sent to Poston [War Relocation Center], Arizona, Camp III. Since we went to the camp, we were able to keep our church active among the Japanese community in that camp. Then time passed and the young people went outside from the camp to Chicago or New York. I wanted to help them out outside the camp, so I went to Chicago in 1943. Our Board asked me to be a Japanese pastor-at-large for the Japanese evacuees in Chicago. It was very interesting work. I did it for one year. Many young people, Nisei, came out of the camp to the city to seek jobs; even some Issei came out of the camp. Hansen So you helped them relocate outside of California, helped them to get jobs? Y Kikuchi Not from California. K Kikuchi From camp. Hansen Right, from camp. K Kikuchi In Chicago, candy factories or some hotels like the Stevens Hotel employed most of the Japanese. The big hotels employed Issei and Nisei. They said they would employ any Japanese without discrimination. They trusted us, so young people enjoyed working there as janitors, cleaners, and candy factory workers. Then, after the war, we came back to San Diego. Hansen And how long did you remain in San Diego? K Kikuchi Until 1962. Hansen And then you came back to Orange County in 1962? K Kikuchi No. Then I retired from the California church and became Chaplain of Christian College for Girls [Miyagi Gakuin] in northern Japan, my wife's alma mater. Hansen And how long were you there? K Kikuchi For three years. Hansen From 1962 to 1965? ― 6 ―
K Kikuchi
Yes, in Yamagata and Sendai. And at the same time, I was asked to be a principal of a Christian high school for girls in Yamagata. Hansen In northern Japan? K Kikuchi Yes. Hansen And in 1965, what happened? K Kikuchi After we came back, I was called as a Japanese speaker for several churches like the Japanese Presbyterian churches in Salt Lake City, Utah, and Hollywood, California, and the Presbyterian churches in Altadena and Long Beach. Hansen And where were you living when you did that? Did you move around? K Kikuchi We moved around, yes. Hansen When did you move back to this area here in Orange County? K Kikuchi While we were in Japan, my daughter's family was living in the next block from here. Hansen Oh, her family moved here? K Kikuchi Yes. Since this is the place of our former church, they called us here. That's why we came back. Also, many of our friends are here in Orange County. Hansen So, when would that be, that you came back to the county? K Kikuchi About 1965, we came back from Japan. Then we went around to Utah, Hollywood, and Pasadena. Hansen And you came back here to stay about when? Y Kikuchi I forget. Hansen The late 1960s? K Kikuchi Yes. Hansen Let me review what we have established so far, before going into each phase of your life and asking you for details. I didn't know you were in so many places. (laughter) Oh, first let me ask you: When were you born? K Kikuchi I was born February 28, 1898. Hansen You came to the United States in 1924 after you had completed all your schooling through seminary in Japan, and then you came to the United States and attended Princeton and studied theology. And after you got out of Princeton, you came out to Orange County. K Kikuchi Yes. ― 7 ―
Hansen
And after you took over the Wintersburg Mission, a few years later it became a full-fledged church. And you stayed with the church until about 1936, at which time you went to Seattle for about three years. Then you moved to San Diego in 1941. And you left San Diego the next year to go to the assembly center in Azusa. Thereafter, you went to Poston, Camp III, Arizona, and you left Poston about 1943 to go to Chicago. K Kikuchi Yes. Hansen And, after the war, you came back to San Diego where you stayed until about 1962. Then you went to northern Japan and you worked at both a Christian college and high school from about 1962 to 1965. Thereupon you came back to the United States and went on a series of interim ministries in different places like Seattle, Salt Lake City, and Hollywood. Then you came back to Orange County in about the late 1960s, and you have remained here since. So you have been retired mostly since the end of the 1960s? K Kikuchi Occasionally I have helped at the empty pastorates at a few places here and there in the Los Angeles area. Hansen Do you still preach occasionally? K Kikuchi Yes, before I became sick, I preached at the Long Beach Presbyterian Church. Hansen Okay. Now I would like to discuss your family origins in Japan. And when we're through with that topic, we'll move on to your personal history, both in Japan and the United States. Can you tell as much as you can recall of your family background in Japan? Maybe you can explain, first, why you happened to become a Christian and, second, how you decided to go into the ministry. K Kikuchi (Laughter) Well, my wife and I lived in the same town, and my wife's father was one of the early Christians in the northern part of Japan. Hansen Which prefecture, which ken? And which town? K Kikuchi Miyagi-ken. A small town called Watari. Sendai is a big city and the educational center for the area. Watari is a country town about fifteen miles south of Sendai. Her father was a devoted Christian, so he opened his house for meetings. A missionary came from Sendai who wanted to find a minister to run a church. Her whole family was the first Christian family in Watari. Hansen What was their family name? K Kikuchi Iwama. And I got influenced by the Church minister to go to the Christian school in Sendai. That's why I went to Tohoku Gakuin, which is now a very good university, in Sendai. It was started by the German Reformed Missionary Seminary one hundred years ago, and there was a girls' school, too. In Japan the German Reformed and the Dutch Reformed worked together with the Church of Christ of Japan. My parents were farmers. A long time ago an ancestor of mine might have been a samurai (laughter), but not a big one. Our town had a lord, but after his forces were defeated by the soliders of the new Meiji government, they emigrated to the northern island of Hokkaido. All the samurai in our town left, and very few families remained ― 8 ―
there in Watari. So my parents were farmers, and I had five brothers and mostly they were farmers or raised silkworms.
Hansen Silk culture? K Kikuchi Yes. They were taught how to raise silkworms in the town and the villages. Hansen How many were in your family altogether? K Kikuchi Fifteen in all, counting my great-grandfather, grandfather, auntie, and uncle. Usually, a Japanese family is bigger. Y Kikuchi Their religion was Shinto. K Kikuchi We were under the influence of Shinto. Most Japanese are Buddhists, but my father was devoted to Shinto. Hansen So before your wife's father introduced you to Christianity . . . K Kikuchi . . . I was influenced by Buddhism and Shinto. Hansen So you went to a Shinto church when you were a little boy? K Kikuchi There is no church in Shinto. Shinto has just the shrine and priests. Buddhists go to the temple just to visit their family graves. Hansen But you were practicing the Shinto religion? K Kikuchi Yes, I did both Shinto and Buddhism. We all tended to ancestor worship, so we went to the cemetery on the settled date called Obon in the summertime. Every family visits their family graves at that time. Hansen In northern Japan, especially in your area, was Christianity very widespread? How about Japan as a whole? If so, where were the centers of Japanese Christianity in Japan? K Kikuchi The originator of our school was Dr. Masayoshi Oshikawa, who was a great samurai who converted to Christianity. He was a great Oriental who was influenced by an American missionary, Dr. Samuel Robins Brown, in Yokohama. Many samurai came to Dr. Brown to learn something new. That's why they became Christians. Dr. Oshikawa came to the northern part of Japan from southern Japan to start an educational project. At that time, there were no Christian schools at all. He knew the situation. He believed that his mission was to build this school for the Japanese people. His Christian ambition was like that. Originally, our school had only a dozen students, but now it has an enrollment of 20,000 and is one of the biggest private universities in northern Japan. The originator's spirit is still alive. Our first president was also an American missionary, Dr. Schneider, from Ohio. Most of our teachers were from Ohio or Pennsylvania. I think they were of German origin. Hansen How was it that your father-in-law became a Christian? K Kikuchi He was a businessman in our town, but he went to Hokkaido, because he failed in his business. He was seeking something. Eventually, while he was in Hokkaido, he had a chance to attend a Christian meeting. So he became a very strong Christian, and he ― 9 ―
was also an educated man--not school study but a self-educated man. He sent his daughters to the girls' school, Miyagi Jogakuin,
run by American missionaries.
Hansen So, then he was a progressive person in that he sent his daughters to a Christian school. K Kikuchi He opened his house for Christian meetings. A typical Japanese house is closed by shoji paper doors. He opened all of them and called some speaker and missionary from Sendai, a big city, at his own expense. Hansen He paid for it? K Kikuchi Yes. He would make a charcoal fire in each room of his house in the winter, like that. He was very strong against superstitious Japanese ways and sometimes against the grammar school's ideas. He was strongly against using Sundays for working. So the whole town looked on him as a Christian, both in the good and bad meaning of the term. Hansen Did you go to high school in northern Japan? K Kikuchi Yes, I went to the high school department of Tohoku Gakuin, which is a college in northern Japan. Hansen A Christian school? K Kikuchi Yes. Hansen Were your parents in favor of you going to that school or were they opposed? K Kikuchi Well, not so much in favor, but I myself wanted to go there. Y Kikuchi Tell him about Rodo-kai. K Kikuchi When we worked for Rodo-kai, a job association, in our school, they paid our food expenses and the charge for our board and lodging, which is about two yen. So my parents favored me going to Tohoku Gakuin Christian School. Hansen Were you the only one in your family who went to a Christian school? K Kikuchi Yes, I was the only one. Hansen Were you the only one in your family that ever became a Christian? K Kikuchi My elder brother was also a Christian, but he died at an early age, so practically I was the only one. Hansen Did you know your wife at the time you were going to high school? K Kikuchi We knew each other through my attending church at her house. Hansen And then you went to a Christian college, correct? K Kikuchi Yes, a college and a seminary. ― 10 ―
Hansen
And who was responsible for sending you there? K Kikuchi Partly my family helped, since they were not against me going to a Christian school. I could have become an English teacher after graduating from college, but I didn't go into teaching. Instead I was promoted to the seminary. Hansen Now, where was the seminary located? K Kikuchi It was part of the same school. Hansen And how did you happen to decide, when you got out of the seminary, to come to the United States and study at Princeton? K Kikuchi Well, our Sendai Church was called Nibancho Kyokai and was one of the biggest churches in northern Japan. After I graduated from the seminary, I was asked to be a second minister. Nibancho Kyokai was a famous church built by early Christians, so I learned about the United States there. As a young man, I had an ambition to study, especially to study theology. That was my main purpose, then, for going to Princeton. Hansen How did you get that ambition? K Kikuchi Because those of us studying in a Japanese seminary realized that a few years of attendance at a Japanese seminary was not adequate. Hansen Had you met any Americans while you were in college or in the seminary? K Kikuchi Oh, yes. Most of our teachers were Americans. Hansen Were many of them Princeton graduates? K Kikuchi No. Most were in the Reformed Church group. My two English teachers in high school and the seminary were both nice American missionaries, and also a New Testament professor was an American, so we learned more about the theology. Then I had an ambition to study more. Hansen Were Christians, at this time, looked down upon by the rest of the Japanese population? Was it something of a stigma to be a Christian in Japan in the early twentieth century? K Kikuchi Well, some Japanese people looked down at Christians, but those who understood rather admired us. Our school president, Dr. Oshikawa, came to America and learned how American people educated girls. That was important for Japan, so he was almost the pioneer of Japanese female education. Daughters of well-to-do families in the city of Sendai attended his school. Hansen In some ways, then, Christians would be viewed as being involved in the westernization process. K Kikuchi Yes, very much so. Hansen When you decided to come to Princeton, you were about twenty-six years old? K Kikuchi Twenty-five years old. ― 11 ―
Hansen
Did you have the money to come to Princeton, or did you get a scholarship? How did you manage this? K Kikuchi I scarcely had the money, but they gave me a scholarship, which almost covered my expenses. Hansen Who did, the church? K Kikuchi No, the seminary. For the foreign students it amounted to about two hundred dollars or something. And then some of my friends in this country helped me. But I was always in the same suit both in winter and in summer. (laughter) Hansen And when you came here, you landed where? K Kikuchi I landed in San Francisco. Hansen How long did it take to get here from Japan? K Kikuchi About three weeks, or eighteen days, by boat, steamship. Hansen Was it a Japanese steamship that you came over on? K Kikuchi Yes. Hansen Did you come over by yourself or did you come over with other students? K Kikuchi By myself. Then I had time until fall semester, so I went to the Imperial Valley [California] for strawberry picking. Hansen What time of year did you come over to the United States? K Kikuchi In spring. March 3, 1924. Hansen And when you got to San Francisco, who greeted you? K Kikuchi A friend of mine. Hansen From where, your village? K Kikuchi No. From my school. Hansen Hakujin [Caucasian] or Nihonjin [Japanese]? K Kikuchi A Japanese. He was a former graduate of the same school and lived in Oakland. And also he helped me to come to this country. Hansen And what did San Francisco look like to you at that time? K Kikuchi Not much, but see, we went to San Anselmo, took the ferry boat to go to Sausalito, then rode in the streetcar--they called it the electric car. The electric cars ran quietly from station to station, and San Francisco was very quiet. Hansen What was your friend doing in San Francisco? Was he a minister there? ― 12 ―
K Kikuchi
His wife was a sewing teacher. She learned sewing and taught sewing among the Japanese, and my friend said, "If you are to be a minister, you have to go to the hardest place, the Imperial Valley, to pick strawberries." (laughter) Hansen You said your friend was a graduate of the same school as you were, right? K Kikuchi Yes. Hansen Why couldn't he get a job over here with one of the Japanese communities as a minister? Y Kikuchi He never was a minister. K Kikuchi He was not a minister, but our graduates were in California: Oakland, Los Angeles, Stockton, and other such places. We were eventually finding those former graduates. Hansen And they were working as ministers? K Kikuchi No, just as farmers. Some of our students were just high school graduates or college graduates, not seminary graduates. Hansen At the time you came, in 1924, to California, there must have been Christian ministers at some of these Japanese churches, right? K Kikuchi Oh, yes. Hansen And were they usually from Japan? K Kikuchi From Japan. There was also Tokyo Seminary and Osaka Seminary in Japan. Y Kikuchi You didn't know any ministers at that time in California. K Kikuchi I didn't know any at first, but there were about ten of our graduates serving as ministers in various places. Hansen Later on you got to know them, though, like your predecessor at the Wintersburg Church. That church started in 1910, didn't it? [The mission in Wintersburg started in 1904 and a Japanese social hall was built in 1910.] K Kikuchi Yes. Hansen And I assume he was the minister there at that time? K Kikuchi Yes, I think he was from Los Angeles. Hansen So where would he have been educated, in Japan? Y Kikuchi Most of the ministers went back to Japan. K Kikuchi Yes, mostly they came to study in the United States and then went back to Japan. But later on, as the American Japanese churches in America were formed, they ― 13 ―
were invited to come here. The churches here would call a regular minister from Japan.
Hansen When you went to Princeton, was it your intention after you graduated, to go back to Japan? K Kikuchi Yes, it was. But after coming to California, I found a Japanese community I never knew existed and which very strongly needed a leader and pastor. I felt very deeply about such a mission. Y Kikuchi Excuse me. When he came to America, he promised me that after three years of study he would come back to Japan. I really did wait for him, but he never came back; so I came here. Hansen (laughter) Okay. Y Kikuchi So at that time (laughter) he thought he would finish his studies at Princeton and then come back to Japan. Hansen Then he found his calling here. Y Kikuchi Yes, he felt that they needed somebody to take care of the children and to do something. . . (laughter) Hansen Did you go to church at all when you were in San Francisco, when you first arrived in the United States? K Kikuchi Oh, yes. Hansen Was it a Japanese church? K Kikuchi Yes. There was a strong Presbyterian church in San Francisco, and several churches of other denominations. Hansen Did they have ministers who were trained in Japan? K Kikuchi Yes. Hansen Was there a Presbyterian seminary in Tokyo? K Kikuchi Not exactly. Something in the nature of that, but it started more privately than did the American missionary, and it was not a seminary where theology was systematically studied. But they were fine Christians. Hansen Were you one of the first Japanese to come over here and attend Princeton? K Kikuchi No. There were a few Japanese at Princeton and at Columbia before I came. Hansen Did most of those graduates go back to Japan, or did they take churches in the United States like you did? K Kikuchi Some went back and some stayed in this country. They were from Methodist, Episcopal, Baptist, and other denominational backgrounds. ― 14 ―
Hansen
Tell me about your summer job in the Imperial Valley picking strawberries. (laughter) Tell me about that. Was it a Japanese work gang that you worked with that summer? [There were many contract labor camps in California where Japanese migrant laborers were working. These laborers were called "blanket carriers," since they moved from one place to another carrying only a blanket. There was another group of seasonal laborers, who were mostly students working on farms only during recesses.] K Kikuchi Yes, and there were over one hundred people at the time that went down there to work. We picked strawberries in a long line about a quarter mile long. And after that we went down the other side of the field. When we reached the end of the line, there was a water bucket and we took a big drink. (laughter) Hansen A big drink of water? K Kikuchi About a three-gallon bucket. I got my shirt all wet for another time. Hansen So you would drink some of the water and throw some of the water on your body. K Kikuchi Yes. The work was so hard, but that gave me very good training. The boss said, "Most of the students who come from Japan become sick and land in bed after one week, but you are different." (laughter) Hansen You worked all summer then. K Kikuchi Yes. Hansen What did they do for worship? Did the workers in the Imperial Valley have any form of worship? Do you remember going to church? K Kikuchi No. There were strong churches--in Brawley and in Calexico. Hansen Were they Christian or Buddhist? K Kikuchi Christian. Hansen Did most of the workers go to the Buddhist Church or the Christian Church? K Kikuchi Just a very few went to either Buddhist or Christian. But in the early stage we had more Christian people who went to church. Hansen Did you go to church in the Imperial Valley? K Kikuchi Oh, yes. Hansen Which church did you go to? K Kikuchi The Methodist Church in Brawley. Hansen Tell me about it. Did they have a minister from Japan there? K Kikuchi Yes, he came from Japan. The people had never thought of religion, but those faithful Christian went to church. One of our pioneer ministers had a hard time there ― 15 ―
but he did fine work. See, boys just going to play to Mexico never thought of going to church. Making money and going back
to Japan, that was their idea.
Hansen There were no English language services at that time, were there? K Kikuchi No, not for the Japanese Issei. But later as the children grew up, Sunday school was held in English naturally. Hansen What about the Issei who were kids in the 1920s when they came to this country? Did they have any Sunday school services in English? K Kikuchi Yes, some part of their services was in English also. As for Wintersburg Church, we used the older Nisei who spoke English as Sunday school teachers. They taught their classes in English, and then there were some American teachers, also. Hansen But most of the regular church services were conducted in Japanese? K Kikuchi In Japanese, yes. Hansen And when you finished that summer as a strawberry picker, then you went to Princeton? K Kikuchi I went first to San Francisco Theological Seminary in San Anselmo. Hansen Oh, you went to San Francisco for one year. I didn't know about that. What was that like? Were there mostly Americans going to that school? K Kikuchi Yes. It was a completely American school, Presbyterian. Hansen Did you know English well by that time? K Kikuchi Halfway. But our school was a mission school and the American teachers were nice. Hansen When you came to the United States, was it your intention to go to Princeton directly or were you intending to go for one year to school in San Francisco? K Kikuchi San Francisco was partly to prepare me for the American way of living, and partly for learning English language skills. Hansen But you knew that eventually you would be going to Princeton? K Kikuchi Yes. Hansen Did you go to Princeton for just one year or for two years? K Kikuchi I did graduate work there for one year. Hansen You mentioned earlier that Princeton was theologically very conservative at that time. Did you mean by that that it was very Calvinist-oriented? K Kikuchi Not exactly Calvinist, but more orthodox. ― 16 ―
Hansen
Theologically, though, as opposed to socially conservative, right? Or was Princeton both theologically and socially conservative? K Kikuchi Mostly theologically. Hansen And what did that mean in the way of their beliefs? What made them theologically conservative? What did they believe in, like original sin, or what? K Kikuchi Oh, it followed the Calvinist teaching in principle, but partly carried on the Reformation spirit from Martin Luther and some other great thelogians, both American and British. Hansen Would it have meant that in the 1920s Princeton would have, say, been opposed to the idea of evolution? K Kikuchi No. We never opposed the theory of evolution. We accepted evolution yet still believed in the fundamental principles of the Bible. We thought that William Jennings Bryan [who defended the scriptural version of creation in the Scopes Trial] was too one-sided. We never believed that way. Evolution is evolution. We accept the theory. Hansen So where did you live when you were back there in Princeton? Did you live in a boarding house, or did you live in a dormitory? K Kikuchi There were three or four clubs where students boarded. The famous Dr. Meacham, who was a fundamentalist, was in the same club as myself. He was an interesting man who was my Greek professor. Later he led a faction that separated from Princeton and formed the Westminster Seminary, a more conservative group. A former Christian in Japan and a great leader, Dr. [Toyohiko] Kagawa [a famous Christian social reformer], went to Princeton, so we heard about him. He had no money and couldn't find an apple or any kind of fruits, so he went out in the fields to get some wild apples from the tree standing outside of the Princeton campus. When we were there, the apple tree was still standing and we found apples, also. We were the first three Japanese students there in Princeton. Hansen At the seminary, or in the whole university. K Kikuchi At the seminary. Hansen And were the other two Japanese students from different parts of Japan than you? K Kikuchi Yes, both of them were from the southern part, like around Osaka. Hansen And were they friends of yours there at Princeton? Did you do things with them? Did the three of you, all foreign students from Japan, in the same school, cook your meals together? K Kikuchi No. We all ate in the club. Hansen So what did you do for Japanese food when you were back there? K Kikuchi That was what we wanted most, so we traveled to Trenton, New Jersey, by streetcar. There was China Town there. We missed the taste of soy sauce. Sometimes we even went to Philadelphia and New York to find a Chinese restaurant. ― 17 ―
Hansen
Of course, neither city is too far from Princeton, are they? K Kikuchi No. Hansen The year before, when you were in San Francisco, you didn't have any problem, did you? K Kikuchi No. Hansen So when you finished school at Princeton, you were planning then to go back to Japan, right? K Kikuchi Yes. Hansen And how did you happen to come out to California, to Orange County, and discover that here was a Japanese community needing a minister? Y Kikuchi We should talk about Sacramento. K Kikuchi In the summertime, I was called as a student pastor to Sacramento from Princeton. In Sacramento, it was very, very hot; (laughter) we drew down the shade even in the daytime. At first we didn't open the windows even if it was a hot day. So we stayed in the dark house with the closed blinds. Hansen Excuse me for a second, Reverend. How did you get out to Sacramento? Did you take a train? K Kikuchi Yes, I went to San Francisco from Princeton by train. Hansen You came by yourself? K Kikuchi Yes. Hansen Who did you stay with in Sacramento when you got there? K Kikuchi There was a parsonage, but it was empty. Until a minister came from Japan, I stayed at this place all summer. Hansen Anyway, you were talking about the heat, how hot it was. (laughter) Y Kikuchi You should talk about some stores for Japanese which already were there at that time in Sacramento. K Kikuchi So for the first time I got to know a Japanese community in Sacramento. There was a drug store, an ice store, and a shoe repair shop. All kinds of Japanese stores were in Sacramento. Hansen How come you didn't see that kind of a community when you were in the Imperial Valley at Brawley, or even more when you were in San Francisco for a year, because there is a big Japanese community in San Francisco? What was the difference between Sacramento and those two? ― 18 ―
K Kikuchi
The Japanese in Sacramento were more urbane than those down in the Imperial Valley. The Japanese quarter was close to the Chinese one, and it was located in the center of the city. And the Sacramento Japanese community was more organized than those in Brawley or the rest of the Imperial Valley towns. Hansen Not more organized, though, than San Francisco, was it? K Kikuchi The San Francisco Japanese community was the best, the biggest. There were many stores there. Hansen But you said that in Sacramento you finally started to get a sense of a real Japanese community. Why did you not get that feeling during the whole year that you lived in San Francisco, when you were around a community such as the one there? K Kikuchi In Japan I never imagined that there was that kind of huge Japanese community in San Francisco. Eventually it struck me that there were so many Japanese in the United States, especially in California around Fresno and the San Joaquin Valley towns. Hansen Did you travel to any of those communities? K Kikuchi Yes. Hansen Fresno? K Kikuchi Yes. My friend took me to the south, and we stopped at a few Japanese farming places around Fresno. So we found for the first time big ranches, a couple of hundred acres of grapes or cantaloupes, something like that. Hansen Was that when you were in San Francisco, or when you were in Sacramento that you traveled to Fresno? K Kikuchi Oh, it was between them. Since I came back to California from Princeton. Hansen Where did most of the people from your prefecture in Japan live when they came to California? K Kikuchi You mean people from Miyagi Prefecture? Hansen When you came here, where was the biggest Miyagi kenjinkai [prefectural organization] in California? K Kikuchi It was in Los Angeles. The kenjinkai for people from the northern prefectures like Miyagi-ken were rather smaller than those representing southern prefectures like Hiroshima, Wakayama, and Kyushu. Hansen Were there any people from Miyagi in Sacramento? K Kikuchi Yes, there were. But in Orange County, Kyutaro Ishii, the father of Charlie Ishii [See O.H. 1757] was from Kyushu, and most of our neighbors were from Wakayama and Hiroshima. Hansen So how long were you in Sacramento? ― 19 ―
K Kikuchi
Just one summer. Hansen And you worked there as an assistant pastor? K Kikuchi Yes. Hansen Student pastor? K Kikuchi Yes. Hansen And what about that community up there in Sacramento? How big would you say that was in terms of people? In the Japanese community, what was the number of families approximately? K Kikuchi A few thousand. Maybe a couple of thousand. Hansen A couple of thousand. And were a lot of them Christians? K Kikuchi No. Very few. Hansen They probably had a Buddhist Church there then? K Kikuchi Oh, yes. Hansen Right. And how big was the church that you worked at? K Kikuchi At that time it was rather small, but as a Japanese church it was the average size, and two of my Sunday school children, the Toriumi brothers, became outstanding ministers--one at the Union Church in Los Angeles, and one at the Altadena [Los Angeles County] First Presbyterian Church. Hansen And then how did you hear that there was a job down here at the Wintersburg Presbyterian Church in Orange County? How did you even hear about Orange County? K Kikuchi In Orange County most people were farmers, vegetable farmers, and they raised chili peppers. When I came back to California from Princeton, a minister friend of mine in Long Beach wrote me that the church in Wintersburg, though small, was open, so I came here. Hansen Did you come and visit it first, or did you just come down? K Kikuchi No, I just came. I just followed my intuition that this was the place God gave me to work at. Hansen What were your first impressions of Orange County? It certainly looked a lot different than now, didn't it? K Kikuchi Oh, yes, and the corner lot where the church was located was overgrown with dry weeds. Then about a hundred Japanese people, Issei and Nisei, came to the area so I was deeply determined to take care of them. It was a strong impression I received. So for ten years I never got tired, never became disappointed, and thoroughly enjoyed myself; most of the people enjoyed our lives with us like we were a family. Like toward the end of the year we gathered at Charlie Ishii's place and made mochi, and we celebrated Shogatsu [New Year's Day] as if we were in Japan. ― 20 ―
Hansen
Did you know anybody in Orange County when you came down here? K Kikuchi Nobody. Since I came here I found older Nisei--Charlie [Ishii] and his brother, Joe, Clarence Nishizu [See O.H. 5a, b], Henry Kanegae [See O.H. 4], and Judge [Stephen K.] Tamura. Do you know them? Hansen Yes, except for Joe Ishii. K Kikuchi They were my Sunday school boys. Most of them came to my church. Hansen What was the name of the pastor from whom you took over your duties at the Wintersburg church? K Kikuchi Junzo Nakamura. Hansen Was he here when you came? K Kikuchi No. He had already moved to San Diego. Hansen Did you ever talk to him? K Kikuchi No. There was no connection. This place was just an empty parsonage. Hansen Do you know why Reverend Nakamura left Orange County? K Kikuchi There were larger farm lands in San Diego, and so, half of the Smeltzer farmers moved to San Diego. So, practically, Reverend Nakamura took care of the same church members in San Diego as he had in Orange County. Hansen So, half of his congregation virtually moved to San Diego. K Kikuchi Yes, about half of them. Then, later, I was also asked by these people to come to San Diego. Hansen Who in this community, when you first came here, sat down with you and told you about Orange County and about the church? Did you have somebody you could talk to, one of the Issei? K Kikuchi One of the elders, Mr. [Mitsuji Charles] Furuta. He was an older Christian church member who lived next door to our church. Hansen And Mrs. [Yukiko] Furuta [See O.H. 1752] still lives there, doesn't she? Was it her husband or father? K Kikuchi Her husband. He was the one who obeyed the first minister's advice to buy the land. He bought five acres. So his son [Ray] raises sweet pea flowers even today on that land. Hansen Do you remember your first sermon at the church? (laughter) You must have been proud. It was your first experience, your first sermon ever, really, wasn't it? K Kikuchi I remember nothing. ― 21 ―
Hansen
What kinds of things did you talk about in your sermons? This was a farming community of immigrants. What subjects did you talk about? K Kikuchi I talked about practical aspects in daily life--Christian principles applied to our farmers' daily life. Hansen Give me an example of what you mean. K Kikuchi A sermon might be about father-son relations or neighbor relations, something like that. And it was also about how to act when you met some difficulty in life such as sickness, something like that. Hansen So it was a practical mission. K Kikuchi Practical, yes. Theology is very hard to explain abstractly. Hansen Did you get together with ministers from Los Angeles at all? K Kikuchi Yes, I didn't miss the meetings held in Los Angeles of the Southern California Japanese Ministers' Association. Hansen So you had an opportunity to compare your experiences with other ministers. K Kikuchi Oh, yes, always. And we Southern California ministers met together at some missionary's house in Balboa [San Diego] once a year. Hansen Did you ever exchange pastorates? K Kikuchi Oh, yes. Hansen For one Sunday or two Sundays? K Kikuchi Many times. The Ministers' Association arranged for those. And I used to go to Santa Maria [Santa Barbara County], Long Beach, and so on. Hansen You went that far away, to Santa Maria? K Kikuchi Oh, yes. Hansen Guadalupe [Santa Barbara County], up in there? K Kikuchi Yes, and in northern Salinas, Monterey, and Watsonville, where there were Presbyterians. Hansen And ministers from those places would come here? K Kikuchi Oh, yes. Hansen Did you ever minister outside of the church? For example, did you ever go over to north Orange County, to Buena Park or Yorba Linda, any place like that? ― 22 ―
K Kikuchi
There wasn't a Japanese church there, except for a Japanese Holiness one, and we met there once a month. Hansen But I was wondering if you ever met in a home somewhere in the country where there was no church for Japanese people. K Kikuchi Also, we went to a family meeting in Santa Ana, but at no other Japanese church. Hansen Were there any other Japanese Christian churches in Orange County? K Kikuchi There was one in Anaheim, the Free Methodist. So we had combined services once a month, either in Anaheim or Wintersburg. Hansen Wasn't there at one time a Japanese Baptist church in Garden Grove, or was that a lot later? K Kikuchi Later, yes, a minister came to Garden Grove. He's a close friend of mine. He came from Los Angeles to Garden Grove, and also Caucasian Baptists were living in Garden Grove. Then later, Reverend Wada came. And there was a Japanese School in Garden Grove, too. Hansen It sounds like it didn't matter much at that time whether you were Methodist or Baptist or Presbyterian. K Kikuchi No. We were all together. The Japanese Christian church in Japan was nondenominational. Hansen Ecumenical. K Kikuchi Like that. But after we came to this country, we organized into denominations. So I'm a Presbyterian. Hansen At the time that you came here was the Anaheim church about the same size, in terms of the congregation, as the Wintersburg Presbyterian church? K Kikuchi It was bigger, and they have since built a big chapel near Knott's Berry Farm. They moved there to Buena Park from the town of Anaheim. Hansen But during the time you were the pastor at Wintersburg, it was in Anaheim. The two centers of the Japanese community in Orange County corresponded to the two major churches. Anaheim was the center in north Orange County and Talbert the center of the Japanese population in south Orange County. Just why did the churches happen to get located where they did? K Kikuchi Well, a church was established wherever there lived a Japanese community group. In our case, we had a group of Japanese people living in the Talbert area, so the Wintersburg church grew up. Hansen Which one is the older church between Anaheim and Wintersburg? K Kikuchi Wintersburg. ― 23 ―
Hansen
And it was founded in 1904? K Kikuchi Yes. Hansen And when did the Anaheim church start? K Kikuchi I don't know when, but it was later. Hansen Who would you suggest that I talk to about the Anaheim church like I'm talking to you about the Wintersburg church? K Kikuchi The senior minister, Ryosei Shigekawa. He is over ninety now. And the Nisei minister in Buena Park is our close friend, Reverend Carl Yoshimine. He was a former member of our San Diego church. Hansen Is he an older Nisei or a younger one? K Kikuchi Older. Hansen Is he about sixty-five or seventy? K Kikuchi No, he is about fifty. And his wife is the daughter of the former minister of the Anaheim church. Her father, Reverend Shigekawa, is over ninety. Hansen The father was minister in Anaheim. Would he have a difficult time speaking? K Kikuchi A difficult time? Hansen Because of his age. K Kikuchi He is now retired. Hansen But could he be interviewed? Y Kikuchi I think he would be all right. He is not living here in Orange County. He is now living in Arizona, in Glendale, Arizona. Hansen Well, that's not too far. "Have tape recorder, will travel," that's my motto. Y Kikuchi Oh, that's nice. K Kikuchi He will really appreciate it. I wish I could give you better information. Hansen Oh, your information is great. So do keep going. K Kikuchi In the early years of the Japanese community in Orange County, it was the Christian group who started the church and a language school. There were not many Buddhist groups here, just the Buddhist Church in Los Angeles for taking care of the funeral in the Japanese way. Later the Buddhist group came to Orange County and they developed a lot of religious activities. ― 24 ―
Hansen
When you say later, what time period, roughly, are you talking about? K Kikuchi Oh, 1940 to 1950. Hansen So the Buddhist came in here in the 1940s. K Kikuchi As pioneers, the Christian group started to be active first; then later the Buddhist group found the same religious activities in the Japanese community. Nowadays in number there are more Buddhist groups than Christian in the Japanese community. So religious activity increased among the community. So I would say that the Christian group started to be active first, then the Buddhist came later. Hansen So the Buddhists in Orange County used to go into Los Angeles for church, until the church came here? K Kikuchi Any Japanese subject who came as a Buddhist from Japan needed a Buddhist priest in case of funeral, so Buddhists used to go to the Los Angeles headquarters. Hansen How about for just regular worship, aside from funerals and other ceremonies? Did Orange County Buddhists go to Los Angeles for church once in awhile? K Kikuchi Oh, yes, they did once in awhile on some kind of memorial date. But after the Buddhist group developed its temple and membership, it became quite active and remains so nowadays. Hansen Did you have some Buddhists attending your church services at Wintersburg? K Kikuchi Well, at first most of the members had been influenced by Buddhism in Japan. Hansen What did it mean, exactly, for them to convert from Buddhist to Christian? K Kikuchi They also came to believe in God, Christ, and what salvation meant, entirely supported by the mission. At first, Christianity was a superstitious religion for them, but later it turned out to be an ethical one. Hansen This is a difficult question to ask to a minister, but to what extent do you feel the people joined the church because they had a true religious calling and to what extent do you feel they joined the church beause it was one of the few social agencies in Orange County for Japanese at the time? K Kikuchi What do you mean, social agency? Hansen Well, the church was a social center, too. K Kikuchi Oh, yes. Hansen Where you got services and where you met people and had picnics and did different things together, and a lot of people--even today, of course--go to church because it is a . . . K Kikuchi . . . social custom. ― 25 ―
Hansen
Yes, a social custom, a focal point for social activity. K Kikuchi Oh, yes. Hansen You said earlier that the ministry was largely practical. Were the people going to church at that time moved more by religious considerations, do you feel, or more by social considerations? K Kikuchi More or less they were moved by social considerations, but eventually they were influenced by Christian teaching, doctrines and faith; but it was rather social at first. It depends on what kind of people--some people were superstitious, some people were old-fashioned, and they stuck to Japanese custom. Some people understood the Christian way quickly and some stuck to old Japanese tradition. Hansen Did you meet any resistance here as a Christian minister among the Japanese community? K Kikuchi No, they were rather favorable, especially the young people. We had so many young people from Buddhist families and Buddhist leaders. They were very cooperative as community members. After I became sick, young people came to see me from some Buddhist group. It made me so glad. Hansen In what way during your pastorate was the Wintersburg Presbyterian Church the center of the community? What did the church do within the Japanese community? Did you provide the people, say, with legal advice? K Kikuchi Just everyday living advice. The people came to see the minister in case of sickness, some school matter, or family matters. How to help them was the meaning of the church's existence as well as the minister's. I felt that I had to help the people even when I was busy. To serve them and help them socially was the minister's mission in church work. Hansen You were also the teacher at the language school, right? K Kikuchi Oh, yes. Hansen And when did that language school start? Y Kikuchi When we came to Talbert, it had already started. K Kikuchi I think it started two or three years before I came here. Y Kikuchi The former minister started the Japanese school. [The Japanese school in Talbert started in 1912.] Hansen (to Mrs. Kikuchi) And what did you do with the Japanese language school? Y Kikuchi I just taught there. K Kikuchi There were some textbooks available for teaching the Japanese in California. They were nice books. I taught them with those books according to their ages. ― 26 ―
Hansen
Would a Christian-taught Japanese language school be different from a Buddhist one? Y Kikuchi No, they were the same. K Kikuchi Language is language. Hansen A lot of Nisei have claimed that they didn't pay too much attention to learning the Japanese language when they went to language school. Was that true or not? K Kikuchi (laughter) Yes, it was partly true because they were just kids and they were not interested in learning a foreign language. Hansen So what did they learn at the language school if they didn't learn the foreign language? Their parents wanted them to go to learn something about their Japanese heritage and tradition, right? And what did they end up learning there? If they didn't learn the language, what kinds of tradition did they pick up? K Kikuchi They didn't learn tradition directly from language but language helped them to understand tradition. Hansen Did they learn some Japanese history? K Kikuchi Not much. They learned a few simple expressions and also the practical facts of life. They wanted to know what their parents said. Without Japanese they didn't know what their parents were talking about. Hansen So you helped them to bridge the language gap and the generation gap. K Kikuchi Yes. Hansen And sometimes you helped the parents, too. K Kikuchi Yes. Hansen To explain to them what the Nisei were saying. K Kikuchi And their thinking, too. We Issei, all of us, have our old-fashioned ways of thinking. So for the family's sake, we had to help both generations understand the other. Hansen Did that ever put you in an awkward position where you had to get in between a father and son or mother and daughter to explain things? K Kikuchi Not particularly, because they always had a good will spirit. (laughter) Hansen In what way did you, as a minister, act as a mediator between the Japanese community and the hakujin community? What did you do in the way of a go-between for the two communities? K Kikuchi I made them explain themselves so as to understand each other: American is like this and Japanese is like this. ― 27 ―
Hansen
How did you do that? Could you give me an example in which you would do that. Let's suppose, say, that a Japanese farmer wanted to lease some land from a hakujin owner, and a contract was drawn up. Did you help draw up the contract? Or did you explain the contract to the Japanese? K Kikuchi I didn't have that kind of experience. I didn't help in such business. The Japanese had some business advisers or lawyers. Hansen But did you ever contact the lawyer for them? K Kikuchi No, not myself. Among the farmers they already knew customarily whose lawyer was better, which way was better. Hansen So is it fair to say that you didn't play much of a part in legal or economic matters? K Kikuchi Yes. Hansen So then, where was your role? Give me an example of something that you would do to explain the one community to the other. K Kikuchi Japanese and American? Hansen Right. Let's suppose that one of the Nisei children were having a difficult time in school and that you were aware of the situation because you knew that this child had to work so many hours for the family. Did you ever then go and talk to the teacher or to the principal at school and explain why this situation was occurring? Or let's suppose a Nisei child was getting into some trouble or something with the legal officials, did you ever have to go and explain this situation to the authorities? K Kikuchi Not exactly, but once in awhile I acted as a go-between. For instance, a Japanese high school graduate was chosen as a valedictorian one year, and the American parents opposed it. As it happened, the principal asked me to give the benediction during the commencement exercises. So on that occasion, I had a chance to talk to the principal and explain about the boy, tell the principal that he was a bright boy. At that time there were so many difficulties coming from the anti-Japanese spirit all over. We always faced discrimination. As a minister I stood in the front line and faced many difficulties, and in the church I tried to explain the situation to the Japanese people. When there were anti-Japanese opinions expressed in the Santa Ana Register, I called and talked to the chief editor's daughter, and explained ourselves to her. But nobody understood our position. After General [Joseph] Stillwell came to the Masuda farm [to present the Masuda's son with a posthumous Congressional Medal of Honor] then the Santa Ana Register's opinion changed. Y Kikuchi But nowadays, there is no anti-Japanese feeling. (laughter) K Kikuchi Nowadays it's all political. All Americans welcome Japanese products too much. (laughter) ― 28 ―
Hansen
Did you at that time, before the war, go and speak at some non-Japanese Christian churches? K Kikuchi No. I felt I was not welcome there. I was more backward in speaking the English speech. It was hard for me to speak it in public. Hansen So you never gave a sermon at another Presbyterian church? K Kikuchi Oh, I gave a sermon on some occasions. Hansen Oh, you did. K Kikuchi To English-speaking Nisei groups. Y Kikuchi But he didn't speak to hakujin congregations. (In Japanese) K Kikuchi I didn't speak especially, but on many occasions I made English speeches at conferences or annual Presbyterian meetings, et cetera. Hansen Were you in contact with hakujin Presbyterian ministers in Orange County? K Kikuchi Yes, in Orange County there were five Presbyterian ministers, I think--Santa Ana, Anaheim, Placentia, Laguna Beach, and Westminster--and I attended the ministers' meeting with these other Presbyterian ministers. Hansen So you could influence them a little bit in the way of explaining the Japanese community to them so that they in turn could explain it to their congregations. K Kikuchi Yes, I especially explained our church situation at the ministers' meetings many times. Hansen Was this community different from some of the other ones you lived in, in the sense that there doesn't seem to have been a Little Tokyo area in Orange County, like there was in Sacramento or Los Angeles or San Diego before the war. They had a few stores in Talbert and a few other places, but there was no Japanese town. K Kikuchi At Talbert, the Japanese rather melted into the American community. Mr. Talbert was a nice leader and most of the Japanese farmers honored him and followed him and had a business together with him. Hansen You said that before the war--and, of course, this is very well-documented--there was a lot of anti-Japanese feeling in California. You yourself were in a lot of different communities. Was there less of that in Orange County? Was there less anti-Japanese feeling and behavior in Orange County? Was there less anti-Japanese feeling in Orange County than in, say, the Los Angeles, Sacramento, or San Diego areas? K Kikuchi I don't know exactly. As for anti-Japanese feeling in Orange County, I can't say if it was strong or weak. But there were certain political elements in Orange County which were anti-Japanese. ― 29 ―
Hansen
How did anti-Japanese feeling manifest itself here in Orange County? In what ways did the community feel it, aside from land laws which were imposed across the state. In terms of not being able to live in certain areas or to enter certain professions? What kinds of discrimination did the Japanese people face in Orange County? K Kikuchi No particular ways but the feeling was there. Y Kikuchi Fear. K Kikuchi For example, as I mentioned before, in high school American parents did not favor a Japanese boy being the class valedictorian. Some kind of anti-Japanese feeling always came up. For instance, Mrs. Furuta and I went to Long Beach--this didn't happen in Orange County--when my wife had a baby at Seaside Hospital. When we went to a restaurant for lunch, they wouldn't serve us. The restaurant was on Anaheim Street in downtown Long Beach. I was thinking about other things, but she thought this store was anti-Japanese. She said, "Let's go to another restaurant." I felt anti-Japanese feeling like that in many cases. Y Kikuchi Now there is nothing like that. (in Japanese) K Kikuchi Not nowadays. Y Kikuchi But there was for a long time. Hansen If, before the war, there wasn't a Japanese town as such here in Orange County, what did the Japanese people have available in the way of Japanese services? Did they have to go into Little Tokyo in Los Angeles for things or did they have some Japanese stores here? Were there some cemeteries here in which to bury Japanese? K Kikuchi There was the Noguchi Grocery at Talbert, so mostly we bought from the Noguchi store. But some of the customers bought too much merchandise. Since the store also sold merchandise by credit, it made the store man worried. Hansen The Noguchi store extended credit? K Kikuchi Yes. But sometimes people went to Los Angeles and bought bigger sacks of rice. Hansen Were there any Japanese restaurants in Orange County? Y Kikuchi No, we didn't have any Japanese restaurants here. Hansen What other kinds of Japanese services were here, aside from the store? What other things do you remember? Was there a Japanese doctor and lawyer? Was there a Japanese drugstore? Y Kikuchi No doctors or drugstores. Hansen What sort of things could you get done for you by the Japanese community here in Orange County? In what case did Japanese provide you with the services you needed in your daily life? ― 30 ―
K Kikuchi
There were no Japanese stores in Orange County. Y Kikuchi So we had to go to Los Angeles. Hansen And you didn't have any vernacular newspaper, no Japanese language newspaper, in Orange County either, did you? K Kikuchi No, we didn't. Hansen You just subscribed to the Rafu Shimpo [a Los Angeles based Japanese language newspaper]? Y Kikuchi Yes, we did. Hansen But there was nothing in the way of a paper from here that you can remember being published? K Kikuchi No. Hansen Did the church put out any kind of newsletter in Japanese? Y Kikuchi Oh, yes we did. K Kikuchi Yes, it was a kind of weekly newsletter or bulletin. Hansen What was the name of that, do you remember? Did you have a name for your bulletin? Y Kikuchi Every church had a newsletter. K Kikuchi But we didn't have any special name for our newsletter. Y Kikuchi When we were here, no, we didn't. Hansen Did you ever visit the other Japanese communities in Orange County? Did you ever, for example, go over to Anaheim? K Kikuchi Oh, yes. Hansen Did they have any stores there? K Kikuchi Yes, they had stores in Anaheim, too. Hansen Just the one store? K Kikuchi I don't know, it was Okamoto's store. Y Kikuchi I don't know either. Hansen But there was no Japanese town in Anaheim, was there? Y Kikuchi No. ― 31 ―
K Kikuchi
There was no Japanese town in Orange County, because the Japanese people lived all over the county. But there was a Japanese store and a barbershop [Oda barbershop] around Talbert and also a Japanese school. Hansen So you could go get a haircut at a Japanese barber? K Kikuchi Yes, from a Japanese barber. Hansen What about for burial services? Where did the Japanese people who died here in Orange County get buried? K Kikuchi At the church, and some of the enthusiastic Buddhists went to Los Angeles. Hansen But they would go mostly for cremation, right? Y Kikuchi I don't think so. It was for a Buddhist priest. K Kikuchi They also could call a Buddhist priest and a mortician from Los Angeles, like they did once at the funeral of a farm family in Huntington Beach. Hansen What I'm trying to get at is this, Reverend. When I was up in the Guadalupe area recently in northern Santa Barbara County, I visited a cemetery where most of the Japanese in that area were buried. Now when somebody died here, was there a particular cemetery where most Japanese families would bury their deceased family members? K Kikuchi Here in Huntington Beach, at the corner of Beach Boulevard and Talbert Street, there was a cemetery. It was a small cemetery and some farmers were buried there, like Charles Ishii's brother. Y Kikuchi When babies died, they also were transferred there. K Kikuchi And later we had Westminster Cemetery. Hansen Are those cemeteries segregated, so that Japanese are buried in one section and hakujin in another section? Y Kikuchi No. K Kikuchi Not necessarily separated. At the cemetery on the corner of Beach Boulevard and Talbert, there was no segregation. We could buy plots anywhere in that cemetery from the office. Y Kikuchi Yes. Hansen So you would preside at many ceremonies there. What about marriage ceremonies? Could you tell me something about marriage ceremonies held at the Wintersburg Presbyterian Church while you were a minister there? How was the ceremony Japanese in character, as well as American? ― 32 ―
K Kikuchi
In case a minister presided, it was entirely done in an American way. Also, we had the Presbyterian worship book which was used for the ceremony, so it was the same as an English royal wedding. (laughter) Hansen But were there customs that the family followed after the wedding. For example, in Los Angeles, a lot of Japanese families, after a wedding, would go to eat a meal at a Chinese restaurant. Y Kikuchi Yes. Hansen Did they do that here in Orange County? K Kikuchi Well, it depended on each family. Hansen Was there a Chinese restaurant in Orange County that people could go to? Y Kikuchi Oh, yes. K Kikuchi There was a big eating place in Los Angeles. Hansen How big would you say the Japanese community was in Orange County when you first came here in 1926? K Kikuchi There were about fifty families in Talbert and about thirty to fifty families were in Garden Grove. Hansen What about the rest of Orange County? K Kikuchi They were all scattered. Hansen Tell me about those other Japanese settlements in the county, could you? Where were they? K Kikuchi In Buena Park, near where Knott's Berry Farm is today. The parents of Clarence Nishizu built their house in that area. Hansen And about how big was the Japanese settlement over there--very small, just a few families? K Kikuchi They were scattered over there. Some of our friends also lived down there. Y Kikuchi He is asking how many. K Kikuchi They lived here and there. Y Kikuchi Like in Laguna Beach. K Kikuchi About a dozen families were doing dry farming in Laguna Beach. Hansen Did they ever come all the way to your church, the ones in Laguna Beach? K Kikuchi Some of them were members of the Wintersburg church. Hansen What about San Clemente? ― 33 ―
K Kikuchi
No Japanese lived there. Hansen What about in the Irvine area? Y Kikuchi No Japanese were living there, neh? K Kikuchi At that time, there was merely a dirt road to Irvine. Hansen What kinds of things did the church do to meet the social needs of the community? You sponsored the language school. Did you have some young people's organizations? K Kikuchi Yes, we did. Many people came to this organization, even some of the Buddhist group. Like Clarence Nishizu or [Kozo] Fujimura, they were Buddhists at first. We didn't have any special activities. We had a language school students' picnic. Hansen Did the church run the picnics? K Kikuchi No, the Japanese community did. Hansen Who sponsored it, the Japanese school? Y Kikuchi Yes. K Kikuchi They sponsored it. So we had it in Huntington Beach on Sunday and people who lived within a five-mile area joined. Hansen Once a year you had a picnic? K Kikuchi Yes, every year. Hansen And when was that held, in the summer? K Kikuchi Yes, in summer. And in Costa Mesa they had a Japanese school and a Sunday school so they also had a picnic once a year. Hansen Who had the school and church in Costa Mesa? Y Kikuchi Oh, we did. K Kikuchi I think the parents did. But the Methodist Church of Costa Mesa said that if a minister taught classes there, they could use the church facility for a school. If not, they couldn't. So my wife and I taught in Costa Mesa. The people there were too poor to afford any tuition fee. Hansen On this same vein, I was wondering if your church here could afford to pay you much of a salary? K Kikuchi At first we were paid $70 a month. Hansen Did that include your house, too? Did you get a house, too? K Kikuchi Yes, it did. Funds were always short for us. ― 34 ―
Hansen
Who paid for your salary and house, the congregation? K Kikuchi The Conference of Los Angeles paid $25 and the "Mother Church" in United States paid $17. But they sometimes collected offerings from the Japanese community. Y Kikuchi Well, I guess they thought they should support the church and the school of the Japanese community then. So they promised to pay a certain amount of money in advance, and then they went to collect it. K Kikuchi The church members of the community. Y Kikuchi To support the church. K Kikuchi The congregation of the church went to collect money after a harvest once a year. But the treasurer of the church was always suffering from a shortage of money. And we had five children--seven in all in the family--and we were just paid $70 a month. Y Kikuchi At first it was $60. Hansen Did you get any extra money for teaching the language school? K Kikuchi Teaching at a language school was not a job. Y Kikuchi At first they hired somebody else for teaching at the language school. K Kikuchi They paid us for a very short time. I wonder how much that was. Y Kikuchi I don't know. K Kikuchi But they hired another teacher besides me. Hansen And who was he? K Kikuchi The teacher who just taught language . . . his name was Kazekuma. Hansen Was he an educated man? K Kikuchi Yes. Hansen And where was he educated? K Kikuchi In Japan. Hansen And I know one of the people who later became a prime minister of Japan used to be a language teacher over here in Los Angeles. [It seems that Dr. Hansen refers to Susumu Nikaido, a Liberal Democratic Party's diet member, who came to the United States in 1931 to study at University of Southern California. While studying he worked for a fruit stand and taught in Japanese school, and he received a B.A. and a M.A. from USC.] K Kikuchi I don't know. ― 35 ―
Hansen
So were most of these fellows that were given the job as a language teacher quite intelligent? K Kikuchi You know better than we do. Y Kikuchi Oh, yes, I remember. It was he. K Kikuchi He was an educated man and a Christian. Hansen And who paid the teachers when they would come over here to teach at the language schools? Who paid for that? K Kikuchi The parents. Hansen If you didn't pay, then, your children couldn't go to the language school? What if you were poor? If you didn't have a lot of money and your crop didn't come in or what? K Kikuchi Some of the parents couldn't pay the tuition fee. But the school policy was not so firm. For instance, at the school in Costa Mesa, we taught the children without any payment because their parents couldn't raise money for the tuition fee. Hansen So you just did it for free, pretty much. Y Kikuchi Yes. Hansen What about the man who came over here and was hired by the Wintersburg group to be the teacher? What did you say his name was? K Kikuchi Kazekuma. Y Kikuchi Kazekuma? He was not. He came later. K Kikuchi Yes, after me. He was Kazekuma. Hansen Was he a young man? K Kikuchi Yes, he was younger than I. Hansen Like in his twenties? K Kikuchi Older than that, about thirty-five. Y Kikuchi He was a student from USC [University of Southern California]. Hansen He was going to school at USC when he was teaching? So he lived in Los Angeles. K Kikuchi Yes, he came to teach on Saturdays. Y Kikuchi In most cases they had Japanese school after school of each weekday and a whole day on Saturdays. ― 36 ―
Hansen
Were there some other educated people in the community aside from yourself and this language teacher? Were there other people that you remember who you used to have some conversations with? K Kikuchi Mr. [Zen'ichi] Iwamoto, who was a teacher at the Garden Grove Japanese language school. Y Kikuchi He taught at the Garden Grove school for a longer time than anyone else. K Kikuchi He was a graduate of the University of California. Mr. Iwamoto was one of the educated leaders. He was a respected man of the community for a long time. Hansen When you wanted to get books to read in Japanese, where did you go to get them? K Kikuchi We bought them through the Japanese Association of Los Angeles. They had advertisements for them in the magazines. Hansen Was there anything culturally for you here in Orange County--you know, like talks, speeches, plays, or movies? Did you ever have a Japanese movie theater here in the county? K Kikuchi No, we didn't have any Japanese cinema. Hansen Did you ever have movies shown at the church? K Kikuchi Sometimes the church or the community sponsored them. Y Kikuchi A bukkyokai [a Buddhist church] or a church in the community. K Kikuchi Even the Japanese school sponsored Japanese movies to raise a fund. Hansen On what occasions did the Japanese community get together? They went to church, they attended language school, they had picnics. What other things did people come together to do? Did they ever go to watch baseball games or judo matches? K Kikuchi Oh, yes. Many of us went if there was a judo match. Hansen Where would those judo matches be held? K Kikuchi They were held in places like high school gyms, and also there was a judo instructor living in Talbert. Hansen That was his full-time job? K Kikuchi Yes. He came from Japan. Hansen And who paid for him? K Kikuchi Parents. They would contribute to pay for a language instructor or for a judo one. Hansen Were there any other people like that who were paid for by the community, aside from the language instructor and the judo instructor? ― 37 ―
K Kikuchi
Later there was an instructor of flower arrangement. Y Kikuchi It was just for those who wanted to learn? K Kikuchi It was more private, not a community event. I think the people here liked Japanese movies. So whenever they had Japanese movies in Talbert, a lot of people came to see them. Hansen And would you ever show the movies at the church? K Kikuchi The church was too small, so we borrowed some other places. Hansen Can you remember the place where you would usually go to watch the movies? What I'm trying to do is to recreate the community the way it was before the war, so, the more specific information you can give me on something like this the more it will help. Let's suppose there was going to be a movie. It usually would be a Japanese language movie, wouldn't it? Y Kikuchi Yes. Hansen And where would you be likely to hold it? K Kikuchi At the Japanese school. Hansen Okay and where was that building? Y Kikuchi In Talbert. K Kikuchi At the corner of Talbert and Bushard. Hansen Was that building constructed as a language school? K Kikuchi Yes, the community purchased a couple of acres near the Japanese town for that purpose. Hansen So the language school didn't belong to the Wintersburg Church? Y Kikuchi It belonged to the Japanese community. K Kikuchi The parents of the school children. Hansen But whose name was on the deed? Who owned something like the language school, the Japanese Association? K Kikuchi I think there was some kind of committee. Hansen Certain people in the community? Y Kikuchi Yes. I guess so. K Kikuchi Like Mr. [Hisamatsu] Tamura. Y Kikuchi But it's not like that now. ― 38 ―
Hansen
Was there a Japanese Association in Orange County? K Kikuchi Japanese Association--Nihonjin-kai. Yes, Mr. [Zentaro] Sato was a chairman of that. It was not so active, though. It seemed that the Nihonjin-kai of Los Angeles was more like a headquarters. [The Smeltzer Japanese Association was organized in 1904 and was approved in 1910 as a branch organization of the Central Japanese Association based in San Francisco.] Hansen Did the Japanese Association here have a building? K Kikuchi No. Hansen Where did they meet? K Kikuchi At their homes. I don't think they met at the church, but mostly at homes. Hansen What did the Association do to help the community? Like the church had its role to play with the community. What did the Japanese Association do? K Kikuchi It was merely a name. Hansen More of a name than anything else? Y Kikuchi They must have had some kind of roles. Hansen Did they help in economic matters? K Kikuchi No, but it seemed to be connected with the Japanese Consul. Hansen In Los Angeles. K Kikuchi Yes, so they had some privileges. Hansen Would the Japanese Association be helpful, say, if you wanted to take a trip or something, in getting you a visa and everything? K Kikuchi No, people did that individually. Hansen What would the Association do, then? K Kikuchi They sponsored activities for Japanese. Hansen Did they try to get legislation favorable toward the Japanese passed like the Japanese American Citizens League does now. Didn't they act as a lobbying group at all for the community against the discriminatory land laws and things that were passed? K Kikuchi Yes. I think they exchanged their opinion in those cases. Although it was not particularly organized, the farmers got together and talked to each other. Hansen What about prefectural organizations? In Los Angeles they had a lot of kenjin-kai. Did they have any in Orange County? ― 39 ―
K Kikuchi
Not in Orange County. Hansen Not at all? K Kikuchi Picnics were held once a year in Los Angeles, but that was it. Hansen You would attend those. K Kikuchi We attended picnics of our prefectural organization. Hansen So you went to some picnics in Los Angeles? K Kikuchi Yes, we got together and greeted each other in dialect. Hansen What else did you go into Los Angeles for? You bought books there and you went in there for prefectural picnics. What other things did you go to Los Angeles for? K Kikuchi Just usual things. The ladies wanted to go to department stores like May Company or Bullocks. Hansen Did the farmers have more occasions to go into Los Angeles than you did as a minister? K Kikuchi No. Hansen They didn't take their produce to Los Angeles to the market? K Kikuchi Yes, they took most of the produce to Los Angeles. Y Kikuchi But they didn't take it individually. Certain people took care of this for them, right? K Kikuchi It used to be done wholesale. Hansen Who would you consider to be the individuals, when you were here during the mid-1920s to the mid-1930s, who were the leaders of the Japanese American community, people who tended to take a leading role--maybe helped out in the church or in other matters in the community. Can you think of certain families, certain names, et cetera which come to mind when I say "the leadership"? Y Kikuchi You mean in Orange County? Hansen Yes. K Kikuchi There were people who were connected with the Japanese school; for example, Mr. Hisamatsu Tamura, Judge Tamura's father. His children came to our Sunday school. Mr. Yanai was also one of the leaders of the Japanese American community and later Mr. Isojiro Oka and Mr. Hisataro Ishii were the leaders as well. Hansen What about the family [the Furutas] who lived right next to the church? K Kikuchi He [Mr. Mitsuji Charles Furuta] was a senior member who lived there a long time, but he did not participate in the community activities very much. He didn't seem to have much interest in the activities. ― 40 ―
Hansen
How did the leadership make itself felt, as far as you could see? What, say, would constitute a leader? What kinds of things do you remember such people doing to give them a leadership role? Y Kikuchi I would say their personalities made them leaders. Hansen Did they just live here a long time, or did they hold important positions in different groups, or what, exactly, made them leaders? K Kikuchi There was no class or rank in the Japanese American community. So they became leaders for various reasons. For example, some of them were good at making a speech or some had financial power. Hansen Now, of course, you weren't here in Orange County at the time that World War II broke out, but, as you know, when the war broke out, the FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation] came around and collected all of the leaders of the Japanese American communities. When they went to collect such people, they would have to pick those who they felt were leaders of the community, so I was wondering who some of those leaders were then, and why they were leaders. Were they heads of the Japanese Association, heads of church groups, prominent farmers, or what? K Kikuchi They were people who were connected with the Japanese Diet financially or through business. The members of the minister committee of the Christian Church in Los Angeles assumed their leadership after the Buddhist Church stopped their activities. Hansen Were there any financial people in Orange County--I mean, there was no Japanese bank here, was there? K Kikuchi There was no bank, but there was an efficient leader, Mr. Masami Sasaki. He was a big farmer and had friends assisting his farm management. Later he moved to Little Tokyo in Los Angeles, but still he was a leader. First, he was a member of our church but later he left the church and favored the Buddhist church because of his wife. There was a large chili drying firm at the corner of Beach Boulevard and Adams and he was the head of the chili drying farmers. He rented farmland later and shipped pepper grown and dried there like Charlie's [Ishii] father. Hansen Right. K Kikuchi Also he was one of the big pepper raising farmers. Hansen You were here when they built the new Wintersburg church, weren't you? I don't mean the real new one that's there now [dedicated in 1966] but the one on Warner Avenue that is located in front of the original building that was built in 1910. About when was that second church built? That was when you were still here, wasn't it? K Kikuchi Yes, we built it. It was about 1930, during the Great Depression. Hansen Okay. When you conducted the campaign to have that church built, who did you pick in the community to raise the construction funds? K Kikuchi We collected donations little by little. First, we deposited the money in the Huntington Beach Bank, a state bank. But in the prime of the Depression, the deposits were frozen. Charlie's [Ishii] father and I ran to the Huntington Beach Bank but the ― 41 ―
bank was closed. We almost felt like crying. But, later, when we fixed pews in the church, we could draw our deposit from
the bank after the arrangement by the government. In this way, we collected small amounts of money little by little.
Hansen But you didn't appoint any one or two people to be in charge of raising the funds? K Kikuchi No, just church members. They worked hard to raise money. Y Kikuchi The members of the committee at that time took the responsibilities of raising the funds, didn't they? K Kikuchi Yes, the committee at that time took the responsibilities, but practically everyone worked to raise the funds. I also appealed to the ministers of the Presbyterian churches in Orange County. Hansen What kinds of fund raising events did you have? Did you do anything to raise funds whereby you got the community to come and, when they were there, appeal for funds? K Kikuchi We made a lot of individual house-to-house calls in the campaign. Hansen Since this was a farming community, did the people ever give you a part of their crop? K Kikuchi Oh, yes, many farmers used to bring crates of vegetables. Y Kikuchi They donated by such crops. K Kikuchi Yes, they used to donate vegetables . . . Hansen But not for the building of the church. K Kikuchi No. Hansen Was that part of your income, the vegetables you received? K Kikuchi That helped the minister's family quite a lot. Hansen Did your parishioners also make clothes and things for you or not? Y Kikuchi No. Hansen Would they repair things for you? Like if, say, your roof was leaking, would somebody come over and fix your roof for you? K Kikuchi Oh, yes. Hansen One of the people in the church? K Kikuchi It was one of our neighbors, Mr. Furuta. He was almost one of the originators of the church, and he always came to help us. ― 42 ―
Hansen
How did the community handle something like the birth of a child? When a child was born, was it by a midwife or was it delivered by a doctor usually, or how did that work? K Kikuchi Maybe they used to go to a midwife in the early days, but when I came here, there was a famous German doctor in Garden Grove. He took care of many Japanese. Hansen What was this doctor's name? K Kikuchi Dr. [Charles Connley] Violette. Hansen He was in which town? Y Kikuchi In Garden Grove. K Kikuchi Garden Grove, and another famous doctor, Dr. Jesse Burlew, was in Santa Ana. [Among the Japanese, he was called "Dr. Blue."] I think there was a library or something named after him. Hansen Did any of the families here go to Los Angeles to have a Japanese doctor deliver the child? K Kikuchi Only in some special cases. Usually Dr. Violette took care of the deliveries. Hansen Why did people pick Dr. Violette? K Kikuchi Because he was very kind to the Japanese. Hansen In what ways? K Kikuchi He made no discrimination, and when he passed by my church, he dropped in without special business and asked, "Is anybody sick?" Hansen Really? Did he also charge a very reasonable price? Y Kikuchi He never charged us. K Kikuchi He never charged us, and I think he made only very minimum charges for other Japanese, too. So all the Japanese visited Dr. Violette. Hansen And then did the people in the Japanese American community go to Dr. Violette for other than the delivery of their children? Did they go there for all kinds of things? K Kikuchi Yes, also he was . . . Hansen He was a general practitioner? Y Kikuchi Yes, he was. Hansen So Dr. Violette was somebody, then, that gained the trust and respect of the people in the community. Y Kikuchi Once he was praised in an article in the Santa Ana Register. ― 43 ―
K Kikuchi
Yes, the Santa Ana Register once had a big write-up on Dr. Violette. Hansen What if you were going to get your eyes examined or if you wanted to get some glasses made for you, where would you go in Orange County before the war? K Kikuchi There was no optometrist around here. We went to an optometrist in Long Beach. Hansen Did you go to a Japanese doctor in Long Beach? Y Kikuchi Yes. Hansen How come you didn't go to a hakujin doctor in Santa Ana or Garden Grove? K Kikuchi We didn't . . . Hansen Didn't know any? K Kikuchi No, we didn't. Hansen But you went to Long Beach for something like that. K Kikuchi Our neighbors go to Long Beach even today. The doctors there can speak in Japanese and they charge reasonably. Hansen When people got married, they probably came to you a lot, didn't they? K Kikuchi Yes, but there were not so many marriages in those days because most of the Issei had already got married and the Nisei were still young. Hansen In Orange County, during the time you were here, were most of those marriages arranged by families or were they mostly marriages that came about just through the Nisei meeting one another? In other words, in Japan there would be a lot more arranged marriages, but I am wondering about here, if there were arranged marriages, also. K Kikuchi Maybe most of the Issei got married through an arranged marriage, because it was a Japanese custom that a go-between would arrange the marriage. Hansen What's the Japanese word for go-between? K Kikuchi Nakodo. Y Kikuchi Nakodo or baishakunin. Hansen Yes. Did they have any go-betweens in Orange County? Were there any people who did that sort of thing here? Y Kikuchi They were not special people here. K Kikuchi Some wives came from Japan by an arrangement made through Japanese relatives or through the Japanese people here in America. But the arrangement made in Japan seemed a little bit more. ― 44 ―
Y Kikuchi
But there were not so many marriages during our time in Orange County. K Kikuchi I think there was very few. Hansen But when you came here, there were still a lot of single Issei men, weren't there? Y Kikuchi Not many. K Kikuchi Very few. Hansen Most were married? But if an Issei, when you were here, was a single person, and he wanted to get married, did he generally go back to Japan? K Kikuchi Oh, yes, it was a quick way. First, they wrote to their native town and then they returned to Japan and got married. Hansen What if they married a picture bride? Did the minister like yourself have anything to do with the picture bride system, or not? K Kikuchi There was no such case when I came here. The picture bride system operated in the earlier days, but it had been abolished before I came to Orange County. [Because there was criticisms by the Americans against the "picture marriage" practice among the Japanese, the Japanese Association headquartered in San Francisco voluntarily declared the abolishment of this practice.] Y Kikuchi Ministers did not arrange the marriages, the relatives arranged them. K Kikuchi In case of a picture bride, mostly the bride's family arranged the marriage. Y Kikuchi Not a minister. K Kikuchi Most of the ministers just took care of the ceremony. Hansen Were there any marriages outside the community while you were here? Did you every marry a Japanese to a Mexican or to a hakujin or to a black? K Kikuchi No. Hansen Because about half of the marriages now, of the Japanese Americans, are outside the ethnic group, I was wondering if in Orange County before World War II there were any marriages outside? K Kikuchi Not one case. Hansen Did you conduct the marriage ceremony in Japanese even if it were a Nisei you were marrying, or would you do it in English? K Kikuchi In English, mostly. Hansen For the Nisei. K Kikuchi Yes. ― 45 ―
Hansen
But when you were here there weren't too many Nisei getting married, right? They were just too young. Y Kikuchi Yes, too young. Hansen Did the Japanese people have any kind of marketing cooperatives here in Orange County when you were a minister? K Kikuchi No, they didn't at that time. Hansen Just in Los Angeles, I suppose. What kinds of educational arrangements, aside from the language school here, were there that were special for the Japanese? Mr. [Charles] Ishii told me he was talking to somebody--perhaps Clarence Nishizu--and this person told Mr. Ishii that when he was small, they had, for the grade schools, separate schools in Garden Grove for the Japanese, for the Mexicans, and for the whites. Is that right? Do you remember that? Y Kikuchi There might have been, but we don't know. Hansen It was probably before you came to Orange County. Y Kikuchi We don't recall. Hansen I would now like to talk about the period just before the war. You moved out of here in the middle 1930s and then you spent three years up in Seattle, right? Now how did you happen to go to Seattle? K Kikuchi Well, my wife got sick, so we were going back to Japan. First I was called from the Los Angeles Union Church, but this arrangement was changed. I was then asked to go to the Seattle Presbyterian Church instead. So I went. I went there by myself first, and my wife and family joined me the next year. They stayed in Sendai, Japan, one year, and then they came to Seattle. Hansen You were the pastor for the Japanese Presbyterian Church in Seattle? K Kikuchi Yes. Hansen And was that near Jackson Street? Y Kikuchi Yes. K Kikuchi I think it was on the corner of Jackson and Ninth Streets. Hansen I know where it is now. I believe I have seen that church. K Kikuchi Have you been to Seattle? Hansen Yes, I went up there a few years ago [1973] with a Nisei who teaches with me, Professor Kinji Yada. When he was stationed up at Fort Lewis [Army base] after World War II, he used to date the daughter of the minister of the church there. So we went back to see the church. As you go on up the hill, it is right off of Jackson, isn't it? K Kikuchi Just at the foot of Logan Hill. I remember that it was up the hill from downtown. ― 46 ―
Hansen
That hill used to be called skid row, wasn't it. Because they used to skid the logs down the hill to the harbor for shipment, right? Y Kikuchi Yes. K Kikuchi Our church was at the foot of the factory area. Hansen Tell me about the differences between Orange County and Seattle. You were here where there were a lot of farmers and all of a sudden you moved to Seattle, one of the biggest Japanese American communities on the whole West Coast. What kind of change was that for you; what did that mean for you as a minister? K Kikuchi The Japanese were more integrated into the American community in Seattle. There were ten-cent stores, shoe repair shops, hotels--so many hotels. Customers were not only Japanese but also Caucasians or Mexicans. Hansen There were laundry businesses, too, right? And restaurants, newspapers, and everything. K Kikuchi Yes. Hansen Did more Issei in the Japanese community up in Seattle speak English than down here in Orange County? Y Kikuchi I'm not sure. K Kikuchi I think more people spoke English than here in Orange County because people here were farmers, while people in Seattle had to deal with some hakujin customers. Hansen So they learned some English, huh? K Kikuchi Yes. Y Kikuchi I think they were more intelligent people in Seattle. K Kikuchi People in a downtown area might be smarter than farmers. (laughter) Hansen What did that mean for you as an individual? Since there were more educated people in the community up there in Seattle, you probably also received a more substantial income, too, didn't you? K Kikuchi No, it made no difference with my pay, but I think it is true that people here were poor farmers. Y Kikuchi Yes. K Kikuchi Farmers were poor, but hotel business and restaurants enjoyed good business. The Japanese people bought the poor hotels and sold them after cleaning and refurbishing them. Even in Los Angeles, the Japanese were successful in the hotel business. Hansen What I meant was, when you took your job up there, you received a larger income than you got down here, didn't you? ― 47 ―
K Kikuchi
Yes. Hansen And a nicer place to live in? K Kikuchi Not quite. Hansen No? K Kikuchi We belong to the First Presbyterian Church. So the First Presbyterian Church half supported us. Hansen Uh, huh. K Kikuchi Our Japanese Church raised about half of my salary. Hansen But didn't you have a nicer parsonage? I think your wife was telling me earlier that your home in Orange County didn't have a bathroom inside the house. You probably had an inside bathroom in your Seattle house, didn't you? K Kikuchi Oh, yes. They had a bigger parsonage. We had a basement but in the wintertime the wind would come and go, so we burned the wood in the parlor--but warm clothes were much more help. Hansen Did you miss Orange County a lot when you were up there in Seattle? K Kikuchi Yes. Y Kikuchi We always missed California. K Kikuchi Living there in Seattle was more conservative. Having lived in Southern California with its open air and freedom, we missed this when we moved away. Hansen When you were up there, did you get a lot of visitors from your Orange County parishioners? K Kikuchi No, Seattle was too far away. Hansen Did you hear from them by letters? K Kikuchi Yes, some of them. Hansen How large was your family at that time? Y Kikuchi We had five children. Hansen When did you have those? About what years were they born? K Kikuchi We had five children for five years after 1927. Hansen So by the time you were up in Seattle, you had five children. K Kikuchi Now we have five children and fourteen grandchildren. Hansen And they attended language school up there in Seattle? ― 48 ―
Y Kikuchi
Oh, yes. Hansen And what was the difference between the language school up in Seattle, say, and the one down here in Orange County? K Kikuchi Oh, it was very strict and old-fashioned there. Y Kikuchi School there in Seattle was very special. K Kikuchi She went to Japan and learned the Japanese way. It was strict like a military school. Y Kikuchi In Seattle, the children learned in the Japanese way. I came back from Japan to Seattle and the children were complaining. They learned at Bailey Gatzert School, which was only for Japanese Americans, but they didn't like to go to school because it was very strict. K Kikuchi The inspection was so strict. If their hands or handkerchiefs were dirty, or they forgot to bring their handkerchiefs with them, the principal scolded them. Y Kikuchi It was a very special school. Hansen Were all your children delivered by the same doctor here? K Kikuchi Mostly. Hansen When you went up to Seattle, did you use more Japanese services--doctors and dentists and things like that--than you had in Orange County? Y Kikuchi Yes. K Kikuchi Mostly we went to Japanese doctors in Seattle. There were Japanese doctors and dentists. Hansen And did they have a Japanese movie theater in Seattle which you attended? Y Kikuchi No, I never went to the movies. K Kikuchi One Japanese owned a theater, but not particularly for Japanese movies. Hansen So in some ways they were more integrated because they dealt with the outside world but, in other ways, as a group they didn't have to go outside their community for their services. So the Japanese American community in Seattle was partly more integrated and partly not, right? K Kikuchi Yes. Hansen Between the Orange County community and between the Seattle community, then, which community would you say was more Japanese? K Kikuchi I would say the Seattle community. Hansen The Seattle one. ― 49 ―
K Kikuchi
Yes, it was very much Japanese. Hansen Now you were up there for three years and then you left from there and went to San Diego, right? K Kikuchi Yes. Hansen And how did that come about? Your wife came back after a year, right, from Japan? K Kikuchi Yes. Hansen She lived with you for two years and your family all moved to San Diego. Now what caused that move? K Kikuchi Well, we missed Southern California. It was too cold for the children in Seattle. In the fall, it was almost dark at four o'clock and rainy and cold . . . I didn't like that weather. (laughter) Y Kikuchi We came to San Diego, didn't we, because people in Los Angeles called you? K Kikuchi Yes, I came because . . . Y Kikuchi We came not directly from Seattle to San Diego. First, we came to Los Angeles. K Kikuchi Before we came to San Diego, a friend of mine arranged it so that the Presbyterian Church called me to work in Los Angeles. That was at the Christian Center on Evergreen Street. Y Kikuchi Yes, it was the Christian Center. Hansen Was it a church then? Y Kikuchi No, it wasn't. K Kikuchi They had only the Japanese language school and no Christian activity group. They called me as a director of the Christian Center, but that didn't succeed because they didn't know how to manage and the board didn't give the financial support we expected. So, only the tuition from the language school was our income; it paid for a part-time bus driver and myself. My pay was always delayed. Hansen How long were you there? K Kikuchi Two years. Hansen Oh, really. So you were two years in Los Angeles? K Kikuchi Yes. Hansen Well, that's interesting. How did the Los Angeles Japanese American community differ from the Seattle one? ― 50 ―
K Kikuchi
Oh, it was more open and more aggressive. There was more of a direct relationship to Japan, so the people in Los Angeles learned some from Japan . . . and the whole community seemed free. Hansen Less conservative than Seattle, huh? K Kikuchi Yes. Hansen And less Japanese, too? K Kikuchi They were more integrated in a way, but they were not as conservative as the people in Seattle. They were rather progressive. Hansen Where precisely were you living during that time you were in Los Angeles? K Kikuchi That institute was on Evergreen Street, to the east of a park between the Japanese community and the Mexicans. Hansen In Boyle Heights? K Kikuchi Yes, Boyle Heights. Y Kikuchi It was a big building, so we lived there. K Kikuchi It used to be a Presbyterian Spanish College for Spanish girls, so the building was old but big. Hansen And when you were in Los Angeles, did you stay in contact with your friends from Orange County? Y Kikuchi Oh, yes. Most of the time. K Kikuchi Oh, yes. Most of the time. Hansen And did you come out here once in awhile to Orange County? K Kikuchi Oh, yes. Hansen And how was it changing? How did you notice it was changing, if at all, at that time? K Kikuchi The Japanese had better housing, and they had begun raising oranges. Hansen Were more of the people in the community starting to do things other than farm or was the community still at that time almost all farmers? K Kikuchi Farmers. But the population increased and there was less space for farming. The Ishiis, for example, gave up farming and moved to central California. Hansen Did you visit the Wintersburg Church when you were living in Los Angeles? K Kikuchi Oh, yes, many times. ― 51 ―
Hansen
And how was it changing from the time you left to go up to Seattle? Was it a bigger congregation, or just how was it changing? K Kikuchi I heard it was sometimes very quiet or inactive. But eventually, more young people [Nisei] came to Sunday school after I left and they grew up to build a church. Hansen Who was your successor as minister, who took your place? K Kikuchi Oh, some Issei ministers. After I left, there were, Reverend Takayama, Sohei Koda, and my cousin, Kiyoshi Noji, and then there was Reverend Takamasa Ikeda before Reverend [Abraham] Dohi came. Y Kikuchi Reverend Dohi is a Nisei [See O.H. 1477]. K Kikuchi So there were two Issei ministers, but they were followed by Nisei ministers. These are the main ministers I'm referring to. Hansen Did you meet your immediate successor, Reverend Takayama? Did you know him, the person that took your place. K Kikuchi Oh, yes. Hansen Were you responsible for getting him here to take your place? When you went to Seattle, did you arrange to have a specific minister replace you? K Kikuchi No, I didn't arrange for them myself. It was arranged by the Presbyterian annual meeting. Hansen But you didn't recommend anybody. K Kikuchi No, members of the meeting got together and they discussed the arrangement of ministers. Hansen So you were in Los Angeles for about two years, and then you went down to San Diego. K Kikuchi Yes. Hansen And was your job in San Diego with a church rather than with a community center? K Kikuchi Yes. Hansen And where was the church located? K Kikuchi It was on Thirteenth, near downtown. Hansen In what used to be the Japanese town in San Diego--the old Japanese town there? K Kikuchi Oh, yes. Hansen Uh, huh. And what street was that on about, do you remember? ― 52 ―
K Kikuchi
Yes, it was near the intersection of Thirteenth and Market, one block from Market. Hansen And what was your church called? K Kikuchi San Diego Congregational Church. Hansen So, it wasn't a Presbyterian church? K Kikuchi No, it was a Congregational church. Hansen Was there a Presbyterian church down there for the Japanese in San Diego, or not? K Kikuchi See, as I told you earlier, half of the members were those who moved from the Presbyterian church in Orange County. Hansen And they went to that Congregational Church? K Kikuchi Yes. Hansen Who, for instance, were some of the families who you knew from Orange County that then went down to San Diego? K Kikuchi I remember quite a few names . . . the Kushinos, Mr. Ohyama, Mr. [Takichi] Hirai, and . . . oh, quite a few. Hansen Was that the same church that your predecessor at the Wintersburg Church went to? K Kikuchi Yes. Hansen So you were the second minister from Orange County to go to San Diego. K Kikuchi Yes, that is right. Hansen Did you take his place in San Diego, or did somebody else serve in between? K Kikuchi No, there was another pastor in between. He was Reverend Kiyozo Abe, an elderly man, who came from Japan. Y Kikuchi Was that so? K Kikuchi Or, maybe he was from Seattle. Y Kikuchi Oh, yes, he was from Seattle. K Kikuchi Seattle. He stayed only a couple of years in San Diego. Hansen And tell me a little bit about the San Diego Japanese American community, and this is important because the Evacuation, as I understand it, pretty much changed the whole nature of that community in San Diego. I was wondering what it was like before the war: how big was it, where was it located, and what was it like living in that community? ― 53 ―
K Kikuchi
The Japanese in San Diego were mostly fishermen. Hansen So was it more like the Terminal Island community in the Los Angeles area? K Kikuchi Not like Terminal Island community, but some of the Japanese were engaged in the fishing industry. Hansen You say that there were quite a few fishermen in San Diego, but these people who came from Orange County, they must have been farmers, weren't they? K Kikuchi Yes, farmers. Hansen So the San Diego area had a lot of farmers, too. K Kikuchi Yes, they were mostly in the Chula Vista area, between Mexico and San Diego. Hansen What was that Chula Vista area like? What kinds of crops did they grow down there? K Kikuchi Mostly they grew celery to sell to Chicago and New York. Like in the Los Angeles area, the Japanese farmers raised vegetables. Yes. At the very beginning of the San Diego community, it was fishermen who were there. They came from Japan, and were experts in the fishing industry. First, they came to Mexico, and they were engaged in the abalone business. In the abalone business and any fishing business, the Japanese fishermen were more advanced [in their skills] than Mexican fishermen. Hansen Were these fishermen mostly from Wakayama Prefecture in Japan? K Kikuchi No. That was way before. Mr. Abe and some outstanding men came to Mexico and developed the fishing business there. Then they moved to San Diego. Many of them were from northern Japan, near our prefecture, Iwate-ken. Hansen So the fishermen in San Diego largely came from northern Japan? K Kikuchi Yes. Hansen And then they went to Mexico? K Kikuchi They were educated men and some of them came from places near Osaka. They were very capable men who wanted to establish a big fishing business in Mexico, but they weren't successful. So they moved to San Diego and organized a fishing company. That was one group. Another group, farmers, came to San Diego, also. Their fields were mostly in Chula Vista, and these Chula Vista farmers had a connection with our church. So our church in Chula Vista had both farmers and fishermen. Later, many young people went into fishing as boat captains. Boats were owned by Caucasians, but the Japanese were hired as boat masters, because they were technically very advanced. So, many went out as fishermen and were successful in fishing. But they didn't make much money, because the boat owners were Caucasians, like Portuguese. There was an American tuna company, a canning business, there and quite a few Japanese wives were employed in this cannery. ― 54 ―
Hansen
Where were those canneries in San Diego located? K Kikuchi Near the downtown, in the southern end of the town. Y Kikuchi I have never been there. K Kikuchi The name of the company was Van Kamp [Van de Kamp], I think. The Japanese community in San Diego was like that. Hansen Did you have more farmers than fishermen in your church, do you think? K Kikuchi Half and half. The fishermen lived closer to the town, while those farmers were from the areas like San Diego, Chula Vista, National City, and San Ysidro, near Mexico. Hansen Did the fishermen seem different to you from the farming families? A number of people I've talked with have commented that, when the families went to the evacuation camps to Poston and Manzanar and other places, the fishing groups seemed different than the farming groups. The fishermen, for example, tended more toward being single men and they apparently lived rougher, talked rougher, and things like that. K Kikuchi Not in San Diego. Hansen Not San Diego. Y Kikuchi People there were more the family type. K Kikuchi Families. Terminal Island was quite different. When we went to the camp at Poston, though, in our Sunday school, children from farmers and fishermen would get together very nicely. Hansen Who were some of the people from that church you have stayed in touch with, some of the families in the San Diego church? K Kikuchi Now? Hansen Yes. K Kikuchi Most of them died. Mrs. [Tsutae] Sato is the only one. Hansen What family names do you remember in San Diego that were quite prominent in your church? K Kikuchi There are ladies still alive, such as Mrs. Koume Sogo. Her husband was also an elder in our church, and her son is a professor at the University of Hawaii. And another person was Mrs. Sato. She was famous in our church. Her husband had a stroke, but Mrs. Sato is still active in the Chula Vista area. Hansen Was the Asakawa family in your church? Y Kikuchi Oh, yes. ― 55 ―
K Kikuchi
The Asakawas, too. The parents passed away, but their son, Moto Asakawa, is there. Hansen Do you remember him? K Kikuchi Oh, yes. Very well. Hansen What do you remember about him? K Kikuchi He started a nursery business but it didn't go well and so he moved to Yellow Springs, Ohio. I advised him to stay in San Diego and to start another business, but in vain. He never returned to San Diego. I hear that his children and his youngest brother [George] are still in Yellow Springs. What is the name of the famous soap company that George was working for? Hansen Proctor and Gamble? K Kikuchi Their parents were also outstanding people, the Asakawas. Hansen Were they leaders-of-a-community type of family? K Kikuchi Yes, and they later became our church members; the whole family belonged to our church. Y Kikuchi Mr. Asakawa was a fine gentleman. K Kikuchi Asakawa was a nice man, a leader of San Diego community. Hansen What was Moto Asakawa's father's name? K Kikuchi Hachisaku Asakawa. Hansen And did the Asakawas live out in the Chula Vista area? K Kikuchi They lived right in San Diego. Hansen Now there must have been, aside from farmers and fishermen, some merchants in the San Diego area, too, because there was a big enough Japanese community. Didn't they have people who were barbers and ran stores and did different things? K Kikuchi Oh, yes. There were also Japanese in downtown--in restaurants, grocery shops and so on. Y Kikuchi Hotel. K Kikuchi Hotel business and tofu. Hansen Tofu factory. K Kikuchi Yes. Hansen How many Japanese churches were there in San Diego? K Kikuchi Two. Our Congregational Church and the Holiness Church. ― 56 ―
Hansen
Was it a Catholic church? K Kikuchi It was Protestant, but a kind of fundamentalist church. Hansen Was there a Buddhist church, too, when you were there? K Kikuchi Yes, a Buddhist church, too. Hansen So there was a Buddhist church and two Christian churches? K Kikuchi Oh, yes. Hansen And did you ever go out to surrounding communities like the town of Vista? They had a pretty big Japanese population. K Kikuchi Yes, Vista, we know. Hansen Did they have a church out there, too? K Kikuchi No, no church. Hansen Did they come into your church? K Kikuchi Yes, Hirai-san and some farmers around Vista would come to our church, but not many. Hansen Now you weren't there very long, though, before the war broke out, were you? K Kikuchi No. Hansen When did you get down to San Diego . . . what time of year was that? K Kikuchi What time? Hansen What part of 1941, during the winter, during the spring? K Kikuchi Summer. I think the war broke out pretty soon [after we went there]. So I think it was summer. Hansen And tell me a little bit about what it meant for you when the war broke out, since there had been a big build-up before Pearl Harbor in tension between Japan and the United States. K Kikuchi At first, we felt scared at everything, like the FBI and Caucasians. And when the war broke out, a few key men were taken by the FBI and my wife was taken by one of them, because Japanese was taught in our church. Hansen How was it that you weren't picked up by the FBI? K Kikuchi I was not on the list of teachers, and ministers were not picked up. But my wife was teaching. Hansen You weren't arrested, though. Your wife wasn't . . . ― 57 ―
K Kikuchi
She was arrested and sent to the jail for awhile. Hansen For how long? Y Kikuchi Just one day. K Kikuchi The FBI agent himself sent a petition to release my wife. Hansen Were you the only woman that was arrested there in the San Diego area? K Kikuchi No, some other people, too. Y Kikuchi Some other ladies. Hansen But not for being teachers? Y Kikuchi No, one . . . K Kikuchi Mrs. Katsu Yokoi was not arrested, and Miss Nakamura wasn't, either, for she was in San Francisco with her family. Some of the church members were put in the jail. Hansen Now tell me what your job was as a minister during this crisis. What did you have to do in terms of . . . you were a pretty new minister, so you might not have known all of the families that well yet. K Kikuchi I visited the jail and asked the people for what they needed and comforted them. Hansen Were they at the San Diego City Jail? Y Kikuchi Yes. They were sent to North Dakota. That's why they had to have winter clothes. That's why he went back for the people waiting for the clothes. Hansen How long did they [Department of Justice] keep them in San Diego before they sent them to Bismarck, North Dakota; how long was that? Y Kikuchi Not long. A few days, I think. Hansen Just a few days. Y Kikuchi So the family had to bring some winter clothes. Hansen You would bring the clothes and things. K Kikuchi Our church treasurer was also interned. When I would go to see him, the FBI would joke, saying, "How many treasures do you have today?" (laughter) Anyway, we were in a panic. When the black FBI car with the E number would come to our area and parked, the people were scared and would gather around the farms in Chula Vista. Everyone was afraid. On the day when the war broke out, the church had a women's meeting. I said to the women to call their children and not to go out of the church building and stay. I told them that a war had broken out and that they might be caught by FBI. We were in a great confusion at that time. We didn't know what was happening, and quite a few people were put in the jail. ― 58 ―
Hansen
Did you get questioned by the FBI or by the local police? K Kikuchi Oh, yes. They came to the church and to my study room. The agent took some of the papers and ... My son and myself belonged to the fencing club. Hansen Kendo? K Kikuchi Yes, kendo. So the FBI caught most of the kendo club members. But, fortunately, one of the FBI inspectors employed a Japanese, and he found a receipt of the monthly fee for the kendo club in my papers. He later told me that he threw it away in a waste basket. Y Kikuchi Looking back now, it all looks as if it was nothing ... K Kikuchi Just scared. Y Kikuchi Just scared, that was all. K Kikuchi It was like a turmoil. I visited each family before Evacuation, and I was the last one to close the church door. They brought their furniture to the church. Hansen Did you store it in the church? Y Kikuchi Yes. Hansen And when did most of the people leave San Diego for Poston [War Relocation Center], you know, for the assembly centers? When did San Diego people get evacuated, those from your church? K Kikuchi Ours was early, because of the navy station. Y Kikuchi We all relocated at the same time. Nobody remained. K Kikuchi It was April 2, 1942. Hansen And did you keep the church open between Pearl Harbor and April? Y Kikuchi Yes. K Kikuchi Yes. Hansen You did. And nobody tried to close the church, did they? K Kikuchi No. Hansen And what was happening in the church during this time? K Kikuchi One of our Sunday school teachers, a retired minister, Reverend Rummel--he was a Caucasian--would check my sermon and sometimes would come to the church. Y Kikuchi Later, he stayed in the church. K Kikuchi In the church? Yes, that was right. ― 59 ―
Hansen
But during the time between Pearl Harbor and the Evacuation, when you had church services, did you hold church services on Sundays? K Kikuchi Yes, we did. Hansen Were the services different from what they had been before? Y Kikuchi The same. K Kikuchi There were some men who would bring a suitcase to the services. So they would be ready whenever the FBI would come to catch them. They would have an overcoat or something in the suitcase. Y Kikuchi Nothing particularly changed. Only young people's activities were stopped. Hansen Did you lose most of your elders? Didn't people get sent to North Dakota? K Kikuchi Yes. Most of the important men were sent to North Dakota. Hansen You must have had your income taken away, too. Did you still get your pay? Y Kikuchi (laughter) K Kikuchi At the end, we had only a few dollars left. Y Kikuchi And he took my son when he went to sell his car. K Kikuchi We sold our car. Y Kikuchi For forty dollars. Hansen What kind of car was it? K Kikuchi It was an Essex. Hansen Did you get your car as a gift, or not? Did you buy that? K Kikuchi I bought it for $75 and put new $40 tires on. When our son was going to sell it, he asked me the price and I told him to sell it for $40. He said, "Daddy, he sure has made lots of money." (laughter) Hansen Since you dealt with people as a spiritual counselor, how did the Evacuation crisis, right there at the very beginning, test your parishioners' religious strength? Do you understand what I'm asking? This was a time of trials and you were an important person at that time, because this was when you could provide a lot of spiritual guidance, a lot of solace. K Kikuchi From the beginning, we said to obey the government orders absolutely. I told them to obey the government orders. And we thought this is a time of emergency and a wartime, so the government sent us to the war camp. There were some good aspects in the camp, too. Hansen You went to Poston III. ― 60 ―
K Kikuchi
Poston, yes. Hansen And you went in April. Is that when you got there? K Kikuchi Yes, to the [Santa Anita] assembly center in Azusa [southern California]. Hansen Oh, yeah. How long did you stay at the assembly center? K Kikuchi A few months. Y Kikuchi We went to Azusa in April and moved to Poston on July 26. K Kikuchi We were in the assembly center from April to July. Hansen And were most of the people at that assembly center in Azusa from San Diego? K Kikuchi No, from all over southern California; there were about twenty thousand people there. Hansen And there were no Orange County people there, were there? K Kikuchi Oh, yes. In our group. Hansen At Azusa? K Kikuchi Yes, at the Azusa [Santa Anita] Assembly Center. Hansen There were some Orange County people there? K Kikuchi For instance, at general meetings . . . Hansen So you saw some people from Orange County that you knew? Y Kikuchi Yes. Hansen Did you get a chance to conduct services there? K Kikuchi We had union services. Since we had many ministers there, we would get about one thousand people in the grandstand of the racetrack, and would have services there. Hansen Is it true that the Buddhists weren't allowed to practice? K Kikuchi I think they were prohibited to practice because the Buddhists had more nationalistic tendencies. Hansen Did a lot of Buddhists, then, go to your worships services? K Kikuchi Oh, yes, naturally, they would come to the . . . Y Kikuchi Was that right? K Kikuchi There were no Buddhist services. ― 61 ―
Hansen
And then you went from Santa Anita to Poston. Did you go to Poston III right away? Y Kikuchi Yes. Hansen And what kind of provision was made for a minister that was different from that made for anybody else--anything? K Kikuchi Also, we kept some church group activities, like Sunday school. Oh, and especially the youth group conducted by the Nisei leaders was very active. There were two chapels in Camp III. Y Kikuchi Yes. K Kikuchi There was the central California group and the San Diego group. Hansen Now most of the Orange County people were in Poston I, right? Y Kikuchi Yes. Hansen And did you see them? K Kikuchi Oh, yes. Hansen And how did you do that? Would you just go there and see them? K Kikuchi Yes. Hansen Did you conduct services in Poston I? K Kikuchi No, they had their own ministers. Hansen They had their own minister. K Kikuchi Like the mother and father of Charlie Ishii, and other former members of the church, I saw them at Camp I. Hansen And then those who were in Camp III, they were mostly people from San Diego. K Kikuchi Some San Diego people and some from central California. Hansen Central California? Y Kikuchi Yes. K Kikuchi Orosi, Reedley, Dinuba . . . Hansen And so you continued as a minister in camp. K Kikuchi Yes. Hansen And what did you do during the camp period, Mrs. Kikuchi? ― 62 ―
Y Kikuchi
Me? K Kikuchi She would help at the church meetings. Y Kikuchi Yes, and sometimes I worked in the factory, too. K Kikuchi It was the factory run by the federal government. Hansen Camouflage net [factory]? Y Kikuchi No, people were making blouses at the factory where I worked. Hansen Blouses . . . oh, you worked at the garment factory. K Kikuchi We were paid sixteen dollars a month. Hansen Is that what you got or is that what your wife got? K Kikuchi Myself. Y Kikuchi No, you were paid nineteen dollars because they paid nineteen dollars to professionals, didn't they? Hansen Oh, nineteen dollars. Y Kikuchi I was never paid. K Kikuchi Everybody in the family could get a job and be paid in the camp. Y Kikuchi We were fed three meals every day, and we did not need any money. K Kikuchi But in the San Diego group, there were many who had been engaged in the restaurant business before they were evacuated. So we had very good meals every day. I heard that at some other camps meals were of poor quality because people did not know how to cook. Y Kikuchi Yes, we had very good--and big--meals. Hansen I know at one point, in Poston I, there was a riot of sorts. Was there anything like that in Poston III? K Kikuchi No, there was no real riot, though we heard of the rumors. [There was a major strike in Poston I during late November 1942.] Y Kikuchi No, there was not any riot that I know of. Hansen Did you ever have to counsel people, younger people, who were getting very mad at the government and wanted to do something? K Kikuchi There were no such people in the San Diego group. They were sensible and did not oppose the Army. But the central California group had an explicit anti-military feeling. So when Nisei soldiers visited the camp, they were, so to speak, hiding themselves while we were having a welcoming party for them. This is just one incident of that sort. ― 63 ―
Hansen
And where did you live in the camp? Do you remember your block number and your apartment number? K Kikuchi Well, it was Block 30, 30 or 29, wasn't it? I think it was Camp III, Block 30. Y Kikuchi And the last barrack was 4, wasn't it? Hansen And were most of the people in your block from San Diego? Y Kikuchi Yes, they were. K Kikuchi Yes, they were. Hansen And even from where you lived in San Diego in your area? K Kikuchi Yes. Hansen So you knew a lot of the people there. K Kikuchi Yes. So we could meet many of our friends every morning, every day . . . we were very happy, in a sense. Hansen And how long did you stay there, until 1943? And then you went to Chicago? Y Kikuchi No. K Kikuchi It was just myself that went to Chicago the next year [1943], and I came back from there after one year. Hansen (to Mrs. Kikuchi) Oh, you stayed in Poston? Y Kikuchi Yes. He went there by himself. He wanted to study at the University of Chicago. So he went, but we stayed at the camp. K Kikuchi While we were at Poston III, we learned about the rock collection. Hansen In the Arizona area? K Kikuchi Yes. Hansen I visited the Poston camp [in 1978]. I went out to the camp site and I went into the town of Parker [Arizona]. I brought a class from the university out there and we did some interviewing. We went around the three campsites and took a lot of photographs. Y Kikuchi Oh . . . (surprise) K Kikuchi Oh . . . (surprise) Hansen Poston I had about 10,000 people interned there and Poston II and Poston III each held about 5,000, right? When did you leave the Poston camp with your family? ― 64 ―
K Kikuchi
(To Mrs. Kikuchi) When did we return here? . . . Dillon Myer [Director of the War Relocation Authority] gave the order that the Japanese could go back to their own home town, but most of the people were resentful of that order. Most of the Buddhists and some intellectual people said, "We don't want to go home. We want to stay here longer." But we understood the situation we were in, so we were the first group to return home. I left the camp for San Diego with five men, including Moto Asakawa. People said to us, "If you go back to San Diego, the Navy town, you will be killed right away." We were frightened at first, but anyway we returned to San Diego and walked around the town. And nothing happened to us. So we returned to the camp and told them there was no danger at all. In this way, San Diego people left the camp and resettled on the West Coast first. The FBI agent told us that we were the first group to complete the resettlement. They came to welcome us from the Race Relation Society in San Diego, as I was a member of that society. In that way we returned to San Diego. Hansen But then, what happened to the San Diego community during the war, because from what I understand not very many people were able to come back to San Diego, were they? K Kikuchi Yes, most of the Japanese did. Some left the camp for other states before the order was issued. Like Moto, he went to Ohio. Some went to Chicago or Cleveland. Hansen But wasn't it true that fishermen weren't allowed to come back there very much? K Kikuchi What had become of the fishermen? . . . Maybe the spokesmen for them had a hard time, but if they went to Mexico . . . it might not have been difficult. Hansen But what happened to the Japanese town in San Diego during the war? In Los Angeles a lot of black defense workers moved into Little Tokyo [which was renamed Bronzeville] and that was also true in San Francisco. What about San Diego? K Kikuchi It was the same in San Diego, and the Japanese town recovered quickly, I think. Other minority groups occupied the town, but the Japanese came back and started a tofu store, a grocery store and . . . Hansen You mean that there was a Japan town in San Diego after the war? K Kikuchi Yes, a small Japan town. Y Kikuchi But before the war, there was no Japan town there. K Kikuchi It was not a Japan town perhaps, but Japanese businesses occupied the entire block. Y Kikuchi Oh, you mean that area, I see. Hansen But, it was a different Japanese American community after the war than before the war in San Diego, wasn't it? K Kikuchi Oh, yes. Hansen What was the main difference, less people? ― 65 ―
K Kikuchi
After the war, the Japanese people did not flock together, but these farmers scattered and . . . Hansen Well, how was your church different, because you came back to the same church. How did your vocation seem to be different? K Kikuchi One clear difference was that the church location became irrelevant because other minority groups moved into that area. It was not safe to walk in that neighborhod at night. So I decided to move the church to a safer area. And thus we moved the church to the corner of Thirty-fifth and Oceanview, and changed its name to the Oceanview Japanese Congregational Church. It took a few years, but after all it was better for the Japanese community since by that time they were not only living in downtown but all over the San Diego area. Hansen So your church was a sign of the times, really. Your church used to be located down in Japanese town and then after the war you moved it someplace else. K Kikuchi Yes. Hansen And a lot of people probably moved to other places. K Kikuchi Yes, they did, to the avenues around our church. Hansen And so you were in San Diego after the war until what year? K Kikuchi 1962. Hansen Then you went to Japan. K Kikuchi Yes. Hansen And how did you happen to get the opportunity to go to Japan? K Kikuchi I got an invitation from Japan. The president of my wife's college came to visit San Diego. As we were close friends, he asked me to be the chaplain of his college and high school of about 4,000 students. After a year, I was offered another position as principal of a girls' Christian high school in Yamagata, so I accepted the two offers. Hansen So you were a chaplain and then a principal. K Kikuchi Yes, first I was a chaplain, and then later I became a principal. Hansen I know that your wife had gone to Japan at the time you went up to Seattle, but had you been back to Japan since you had emigrated here in 1924? K Kikuchi Yes. I had, but I was there for a short time. Once I went back to attend the ninetieth anniversary of our university [Tohoku Gakuin University which used to be a men's university]. Hansen But you hadn't gone back for a long time before, just for visits? Y Kikuchi Yes, they were just short visits. ― 66 ―
Hansen
How was it different for you living in Japan in 1962 than it had been up until 1924? K Kikuchi Oh, it was quite different. City life had changed greatly; the small town was about the same, though it went through a little change. The way people lived changed a lot. They drank more milk than before, and ate butter and bread. Younger people ate more bread than rice. Hansen Did you feel comfortable working in Japan after being in the United States for so long? K Kikuchi Yes, I was because we knew the school and the people very well. I really enjoyed working there. Hansen But all your kids were here in the United States. K Kikuchi Oh, yes. Y Kikuchi We left them here as they were all grown up. K Kikuchi When she was in Japan for the first time, she took all the children with her and stayed there for a year. When I was in Seattle, Washington. Hansen That was in 1936. But this time none of the children went with you, did they? K Kikuchi No. Hansen Because they were all grown up and married and . . . Y Kikuchi Our first son [Thomas Atsushi] was already married, so . . . Hansen So, then, what were the conditions that brought you back to the United States from Japan in 1965? Why did you have to come back? Because you missed the children, or . . . K Kikuchi No, it was not because of that. I am an Issei myself, so I could understand what the old Issei were feeling. They badly needed a minister, so I volunteered myself to be their minister and help the Issei community. That is why I came back to America. Hansen To where did you come, directly, when you left Japan? To which town in California? K Kikuchi To Pasadena. Y Kikuchi We came back here as we used to live here, and later we went to Pasadena, didn't we? K Kikuchi That was the second time. Y Kikuchi Oh, yes, it was. K Kikuchi The first time we came back directly to Pasadena, and we settled in an apartment near our second son [David Kenshin]. ― 67 ―
Hansen
And what did you do in Pasadena? What was your job in Pasadena? K Kikuchi I didn't have a job there, but soon I was invited to work for a Japanese church in Salt Lake City. Y Kikuchi Yes, we went to Salt Lake City. K Kikuchi We were there for three years. Hansen Three years in Salt Lake City? K Kikuchi Yes. Hansen How did the Japanese get along with the Mormons there? K Kikuchi What? Y Kikuchi (To Rev. Kikuchi, in Japanese) How did the Japanese get along with the Mormons there? K Kikuchi Some of the Japanese children went to the Mormon Sunday school, although their parents belonged to our church. Also, the Mormons helped the Japanese establish their businesses in Salt Lake City. Hansen Did the Japanese that lived in Utah have close connections with the Mormons? Y Kikuchi We were not very close. K Kikuchi There was not very close connections. Either Christians or Buddhists there were very isolated from the Mormons. Hansen But aside from joining the Mormon Church, did the Japanese people have close relations with the Mormons? About half of the population of Salt Lake City is non-Mormon, but the other half is Mormon. Would you say that Japanese Americans had more business activity and everything with non-Mormons than Mormons? K Kikuchi The Japanese? Hansen Yes. K Kikuchi There were very few Japanese who were Mormons. Hansen What I'm asking is this; did the Japanese tend to have more connections with the Mormons than the non-Mormons, or was there no such distinction? K Kikuchi There was no such distinction. We even went to a Mormon department store, as it was close by and things were cheaper there. Other than that, the Japanese had little connection with the Mormons. As a matter of fact, we couldn't tell Mormons from Caucasians. Hansen I have always felt that perhaps the Japanese and the Mormons must have had a lot of respect for one another because both groups have gone through similar experiences. You faced the Evacuation, while the Mormons were pushed across the United States in the nineteenth century. Both people, also, believe in hard work. Both ― 68 ―
believe in education. Both have farming backgrounds. I would have thought that the Mormons and the Japanese might have understood
each other pretty well.
K Kikuchi In one way, Salt Lake City is the Place for them as the words, "This is the Place," says. It is their sacred place. We were very much impressed with the city. So when I preached in the church, I sometimes talked about the Mormons and the Place. Y Kikuchi Mormons didn't speak Japanese, the Japanese [Issei] didn't speak English. That's why the two communities didn't have very much contact. But as Nisei and Sansei grew, their relation changed. K Kikuchi The main reason the Japanese were isolated from Mormons is because of the language. The Issei didn't speak English, and the Mormons did not have the leaders who spoke Japanese. After the Nisei grew up, some of them made friends with Mormons. Hansen So there was a language barrier. Y Kikuchi Not right now. K Kikuchi There is no distinction now. Years ago, the Chinese and the Japanese didn't mix with the Mormons. Y Kikuchi But nowadays, there is no distinction. Lots of young people do mix with them. Hansen The community that you served over there in Salt Lake City, the Japanese American community, was it made up largely of people who had moved there after the Evacuation or before? K Kikuchi Before. Hansen So there were quite a few Japanese farmers in Utah before the war? K Kikuchi Oh, yes. Hansen And then they went back there... K Kikuchi And some of them had their own businesses in Salt Lake City, like laundry stores. Hansen And florists, too? K Kikuchi Yes. Hansen So tell me about your work among the Issei in Salt Lake City. What exactly did you do? What was your job there in Salt Lake City? K Kikuchi My job is the same wherever I go. Besides the regular church work, I taught and visited families. On many occasions, like Memorial Day, we went to the cemetery and gave services there. Hansen You found it kind of wet in Seattle, but what did you think about Utah as a place to live? How did you like Utah? ― 69 ―
K Kikuchi
Oh, Utah ... It [Salt Lake City] is a cold, but beautiful city, located in a high altitude like the Alps. Ogden, especially, is the city we really liked. Hansen So you felt at home there in Utah. K Kikuchi Oh, yes. Hansen And were you sad to leave it? K Kikuchi Not quite. But we didn't get to like Seattle very much as it was so damp for us. (laughter) Hansen Where did you go from Utah? Hollywood? K Kikuchi Yes, we went to Hollywood. Hansen And what did you do in Hollywood? K Kikuchi I gave services in Japanese. I helped out there as an intern pastor for about a year. Hansen And so you had the congregation. What church was that? K Kikuchi Presbyterian Church. Hansen Was it the Hollywood Japanese Presbyterian Church? K Kikuchi Yes, it was. Hansen And then after Hollywood, where did you go? K Kikuchi After Hollywood, we went to Altadena [California]. But in between we went to Japan for the second time, didn't we? Hansen And what did you do in Japan when you went back there? K Kikuchi We went to Japan twice, and I was with the same school. Hansen Oh, you went ... Y Kikuchi (To Rev. Kikuchi) For the second time, you were asked to be principal of a school in Yamagata, weren't you? K Kikuchi Yes. Hansen And then when you came back you went to Orange County? Y Kikuchi Yes, we came back here and went to Altadena Church every Sunday to preach. Hansen But you lived in Orange County? K Kikuchi Yes, here in Orange County. Hansen And then you would just drive over to Altadena? ― 70 ―
K Kikuchi
Yes. Y Kikuchi Yes. Hansen And did you, when you were here, ever go to the Wintersburg Church? Y Kikuchi No. Hansen Did you ever have anything to do with the Wintersburg Church when you lived here in Orange County? Y Kikuchi No. K Kikuchi No. I had another church that I helped out, and I could not make myself too much involved with the church that I used to work for, simply because I was the minister once. Hansen But did you ever visit the Wintersburg Church? K Kikuchi Oh, yes, because we knew the members. Hansen Do you go there now? Is that where you go to church? Y Kikuchi No. K Kikuchi No, I can't go to church anymore, but I liked the dedication service they held there about a month ago. Y Kikuchi (In Japanese) It was not a dedication, but a ground breaking ceremony. K Kikuchi Oh, yes. It was ground breaking. Hansen What are all your children doing right now? K Kikuchi Oh, they go to different churches. Hansen What are they doing in their lives, what kind of jobs, where do they live? Y Kikuchi Our first son is a doctor, and he's working . . . K Kikuchi For Kaiser. Y Kikuchi In Kaiser Hospital. Hansen In where? Y Kikuchi In Panorama City. Hansen Okay. What's his name? K Kikuchi Thomas Atsushi Kikuchi. Hansen Is he your oldest son? ― 71 ―
Y Kikuchi
Yes, he is. Hansen And then, what's the second son? Y Kikuchi Our second one [David Kenshin Kikuchi] lives in Pasadena, and he is an architect. Hansen Architect. And then your third? Y Kikuchi We have just two sons. K Kikuchi And the eldest daughter [Marian Reiko Oyama] is in Tennessee. Y Kikuchi Yes, in Tennessee. And the second daughter [Elizabeth Yuko Yamada], her husband is a landscape architect. Hansen And then you have one more, don't you? Y Kikuchi She lives in Woodland. Hansen And what's her name? Y Kikuchi Ann Fusako Yamauchi. Her husband is a doctor and . . . K Kikuchi He is a professor at Davis [University of California]. Hansen So all of your children, then, were quite accomplished in their school work. K Kikuchi Yes, they were pretty good. Y Kikuchi All of them went to Berkeley [University of California]. K Kikuchi Yes, UC Berkeley. Y Kikuchi All of them are UC grads. K Kikuchi And their spouses are mostly UC grads, too. Hansen Reverend Kikuchi, I think we've now reached the end of my questions, but I must tell you how much I enjoyed this interview and how much I learned about the experiences of the Orange County Japanese American community. I know that everybody connected with the Honorable Stephen K. Tamura Orange County Japanese American Oral History Project appreciates your contribution today and your services on behalf of the Japanese American community and the larger Orange County community over all those years. Thank you very, very much. K Kikuchi Thank you. |