…and next thing you know we pull into the campground. And these men are milling around and we're looking around to see which one is Papa and then I hear my sister saying, “There he is. There he is,” and I'm looking around, and I see nobody that looks like this distinguished man in this picture. And when he finally comes to the window and he talks to my sisters and I'm thinking, “This is my father?” I was so disappointed. [Laughs] I do not recognize him and my kid sister was scared of him, ran away from him. I was too big to run away from him. I wish I could have. I didn't like this man. [Laughs] He looked dirty and he looked kind of disheveled and I was expecting this handsome, distinguished, well-dressed, groomed man.
And this man was a disappointment, but my sisters were hugging him and they were so happy to see him, and my mom looked pretty happy. And I tried to pretend like I was happy. I wasn't. It took me a while to really get used to him, and he was, he really was, he was very different from what I hear from my friends. He was a gentle person. He was a loving person. I guess later on when I took his story, the fact that the baby ran away from him just hurt him really bad. He said, “My own daughter, my own daughter is running away from me.”
Date: May 27, 1998
Location: Washington, US
Interviewer: Lori Hoshino
Contributed by: Denshō: The Japanese American Legacy Project.
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