A005  Through the Generations 

     This is the story about my great grand-parents, who both came from Japan to Hawaii ah to live and work. My great-grand father came first, ahm and ah went to the Pineapple fields in Hawaii, and began working.  After a little brief time about a year and a half my grand-mother was sent ah my great-grand mother was sent.  She was ah considered the war bride because it was during the war time she had not met my grand-father yet, but she came over and got married to him.
     He was several years older and very serious and my great-grand mother was a little bit younger and ah not as serious.  They got married and had many children.  The first child born to them was my grand-mother.  My grand-mother had ah several brothers and several sisters and they all lived in a very tiny little house ah, at the in the cane area and they lived with the Japanese workers at the time.  Ahm, many years after that, the houses were moved and they were moved.  My grand-mother ah insisted that she traveled in the house as it was being moved to another area. Ah, so it was, it was a well known that she was the woman who was in the house when they went down the street to another area. When I was nine years old my mother ah was telling me a story about my great-grand mother and my grand-mother.     
     I interviewed stories about my great-grand mother and grand-father and my grand- mother and grand-father before. But I hadn�ft heard this one.
     I was nine years old I was washing the dishes and my mother sat down of the table and began to tell me this story of, of their lives.  Ah, when my mother when my grand-mother and my grand-father decided to get married, my great great-grand parents were very upset.
     It was during the war and my and they were Japanese my grand-father was Filipino and it was unusual and not acceptable for a Japanese woman at that time to be marrying a Filipino man.
     My great-grand parents were very upset and they ah, didn�ft want to have anything to do with my grand-mother their first born. And my ah grand-father so they ah, didn�ft talk to them any-more. My grand-parents moved away, and had their child, their first child. My grand-mother would come by periodically to visit my great-grand mother.                 But it was always my great-grand father was not at home. Ah she would                       sometimes see her brothers and sisters. But at that time it was common for the parents of somebody who�fs marrying somebody outside of their race to not see their child any more not talk to their child and also not talk about their child to the other children and the family. So, my grand-mother didn�ft�f have very much contact with her brothers and her sisters after she got married to my grand-father. Ah, my mother re remembers hearing about times where they would have little parties at the house. And ah, at my great-grand parents�f houses.  And one night my mother and my fa ah my mother and her parents were at the house. They had to go onto a back room and be very quiet for ah two or three hours until the party was done. And my mother wa was very young then and she didn�ft understand and she was very upset that she couldn�ft be part of the party ah, so for, for many years my grand-mother was ah basically excommunicated from her family.  That was very hard and very sad. 
     Many many years later when my mother ah, had her family of three children and including myself, she decided that she wanted to meet all of her aunts and uncles, and she wanted to meet all of her cousins. They all were living in Hawaii at the time and my mother was living in California. So my mother started checking on family information and started finding out of her all of her cousins and her aunts and uncles lived. And she went back to Hawaii and proceeded to meet each one of them. I was it was very sad  she was relaying the story to them. Because she was part of the family that was basically not part of the family. And it was very difficult for her to relay the story. She found out that many of her cousins did not know the story about my g g, ah my grand-mother. She did they did not know the story ah about how she was excommunicated from the family they just remember that she was there one day and not there after.  And because they were a b culturally they were not a ask any questions they didn�ft ask questions.  So they did not know about them. The story ends very nicely though because now ah my mother ah is very close to the ah siblings of grand-mother, and she also was very close to most of her cousins, and I also have gotten to know many of my co, my mother�fs cousins and their children and it�fs a very interesting story of cultures and how things are changed in the world, and how people are much more acceptable of ah marrying outside of their culture.  And I�fm very proud of peoples Japanese and Filipino.