Oral history interview with George Tsutakawa, 1983 September 8-19 Funding for the digital preservation of this interview was provided by a grant from the Save America's Treasures Program of the National Park Service. Contact Information Reference Department Archives of American Art Smithsonian Institution Washington. D.C. 20560 www.aaa.si.edu/askus Transcript Preface The following oral history transcript is the result of a tape-recorded interview with George Tsutakawa on September 8, 12, 14 & 19, 1983. The interview took place in Seattle, WA, and was conducted by Martha Kingsbury for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Interview DATE: SEPTEMBER 8, 1983 [Tape 1; Side A] [GEORGE TSUTAKAWA reviewed the transcript and added clarification, particularly about the World War II years. His added comments with his initials are in brackets--Ed.] MARTHA KINGSBURY: George, why don't we start by talking about a lot of biographical matters. I'd like to know about your personal background, your family, your growing up in Seattle and Japan also, education. GEORGE TSUTAKAWA: Uh huh. Well, let's see now. My father was a merchant who came to Seattle in 1905, and he started a small business and eventually he gets involved in fairly large company exporting and importing American goods and Japanese goods. He, as I recall, had business in Japanese food, clothing, art goods, and all sorts of things from Japan, and then in turn he was sending lumber from the Northwest to Japan. He also dealt in scrap metal and just anything. MARTHA KINGSBURY: That he sent to Japan? GEORGE TSUTAKAWA: Yeah, he sent to Japan. Well, I was born in Seattle in 1910 as a second boy and fourth child. My family was, my father had a very large family: nine children and I was a fourth child. In other words I was about in the middle of this large household of brothers and sisters. MARTHA KINGSBURY: Were your parents married in Japan? GEORGE TSUTAKAWA: Yes. MARTHA KINGSBURY: Did they come to the United States together? GEORGE TSUTAKAWA: Yes. Well, my father before coming to the United States was already married to my mother, and I had a sister (older sister), who was born in Japan. MARTHA KINGSBURY: I see. GEORGE TSUTAKAWA: However, the rest of the family, all the rest of the eight children, were born right here in Seattle. And, well it's a long, long history you know, I mean story, because this goes back 73 years. (laughs) MARTHA KINGSBURY: That's okay; I want to hear it all. GEORGE TSUTAKAWA: Well, I was told later that when I was a year and a half, my parents took me to Japan for a visit -- with the other children, my older brothers and sisters. But for some reason they brought me back to Seattle after a short visit to Japan, and again when I was seven years old my father took me to Japan with another brother and left me there for ten years. And I was raised by my grandmother on my mother's side, in a small town called Fukuyama, which [is-Ed.] in Hiroshima prefecture. A small town, about 30,000 people, with a beautiful castle in the city; it's a feudal town surrounded by mountains and a beautiful river that flowed through the city out to the inland sea, a very beautiful place. And I lived there and went to grade school and high school in Japan for ten years before returning to Seattle in 1927. MARTHA KINGSBURY: When you lived with your maternal grandmother, did your brothers gradually come over and join you? GEORGE TSUTAKAWA: Yes, they all lived together. My father was so busy with his business and my mother was so busy having children, and fortunately he was financially able to send all the kids to Japan. MARTHA KINGSBURY: The girls too? GEORGE TSUTAKAWA: Yes. Boys and girls both. MARTHA KINGSBURY: Did the girls live with the same grandmother? GEORGE TSUTAKAWA: Yes. MARTHA KINGSBURY: Oh, you lived together? GEORGE TSUTAKAWA: Same grandmother, yes. The reason for this was that the village where my father came from was way up in the mountains in a farm community, and they had no facilities for educating children. That is, my father felt that it was too backwards. MARTHA KINGSBURY: I see. GEORGE TSUTAKAWA: So he wanted us to have good education. That's why he chose this town of Fukuyama, which is, as I already mentioned, an old feudal city, but highly cultured ancient city, oh about, at least a thousand years old. MARTHA KINGSBURY: I see. GEORGE TSUTAKAWA: So it was, for him, it was an ideal place to raise his children. That was the reason for it. Besides, my grandmother comes from an old Japanese warrior, Samurai family, and she was well educated, but also very strict. So she really took charge and gave us a very good education. Now. MARTHA KINGSBURY: But you went to the village school with all the other Japanese children. GEORGE TSUTAKAWA: Oh yes, oh yes. That's right, oh yes. Many interesting experiences. When I was seven years in 1917, my father took me to Japan and immediately put me in the Japanese grade school, second grade. And I couldn't speak a word of Japanese. MARTHA KINGSBURY: Not a word? GEORGE TSUTAKAWA: And I had already gone to Lowell School grade school here on Federal Avenue, just right by Volunteer Park where I was born. So I spoke fluent English just like all the neighborhood kids. So when I went to Japan, I had to just forget my English and learn Japanese in a great hurry. Although it was kind of interesting because all the kids in the neighborhood in Japan called me a foreign pig because I was well fed, had a lot of milk and butter, I had a light complexion, I guess, and [was--Ed.] real plump. And so they all teased me and they really gave me a bad time for a while. Until I, I just learned to speak Japanese and forget English. (chuckles) MARTHA KINGSBURY: All your brothers and sisters were the same; they spoke no Japanese in Seattle. GEORGE TSUTAKAWA: Yeah. They all went through the same experience. But it was interesting, then in 1927 when I came back to Seattle at the age of 17, I couldn't speak any English. MARTHA KINGSBURY: Right. GEORGE TSUTAKAWA: So I had to go to grade school -- the old Pacific School, on Jefferson -- to learn English. MARTHA KINGSBURY: For how long? A year? GEORGE TSUTAKAWA: Well, actually, you see, I was already 17 years old, but I was put in first or second grade to learn from ABC. MARTHA KINGSBURY: With the small children? GEORGE TSUTAKAWA: Yes. But that didn't work very well. MARTHA KINGSBURY: No. GEORGE TSUTAKAWA: So they created special class for grownups, for foreign students, which was a little better. Although the problem was all the Japanese and all the Chinese and all the Philipinos always got together, they spoke their own language, didn't make very good progress in learning English. (chuckles) But anyway, my teacher, Miss Thomas, was a very fine teacher, very understanding. She decided that I shouldn't be wasting any more time there, and she sent me to Broadway High School after one year. MARTHA KINGSBURY: I see. GEORGE TSUTAKAWA: So when I was 18 years [old], when I became a freshman at Broadway High School, sitting with the, you know, freshmen. MARTHA KINGSBURY: Thirteen-year-olds. GEORGE TSUTAKAWA: Yeah. MARTHA KINGSBURY: But you had already had high-school subjects, mathematics and science, in Japan? GEORGE TSUTAKAWA: Yes. Yes, I did. I had four years of high school in Japan. So all the subjects except English and civics and history or something like that I had no problem. MARTHA KINGSBURY: Right. GEORGE TSUTAKAWA: Because I had all the science, math, and botany, zoology and all that. So anyway, that's all right. MARTHA KINGSBURY: So now I'll turn it off? It's on! [Break in taping] GEORGE TSUTAKAWA: I just wondered. I suppose we could go back and talk more about my childhood in Japan, though, later, maybe; I don't know. MARTHA KINGSBURY: Well, I would like to, sooner or later, hear more about your childhood in Japan. One thing I was going to ask in relation to the high-school education we're just talking about: Do I understand that the curriculum in Japan included no English instruction then? GEORGE TSUTAKAWA: Yes. This is very true. It's very strange, though, because the English instruction then, all the Japanese children, even today, more so today, consists mostly of reading and writing and grammar and memorizing words, but when it comes to conversation they're just absolutely helpless in many cases. And that's why I think today there's more effort on their part to invite American teachers to come and teach English and other subjects in English. MARTHA KINGSBURY: But when you were a child in Japan, you did not learn English reading, even? GEORGE TSUTAKAWA: No, no. MARTHA KINGSBURY: None at all. GEORGE TSUTAKAWA: See, in this little town, Fukuyama, there was one English missionary. MARTHA KINGSBURY: Oh, and that's all! GEORGE TSUTAKAWA: Only foreigner in the whole city. MARTHA KINGSBURY: I see. GEORGE TSUTAKAWA: So you can imagine. But English was taught in high schools by Japanese teachers who learned from Japanese teachers, you see. And so, it was interesting. And maybe that's the reason why after I returned to the United States the English language came to me very easily, quickly, because I already had the basics in English grammar, and not so much in diction and word usage and expression and all that, which I had to learn.