gotohealth's Blog

"Uni" is kind of short for Unique and that is each of us. We are all unique individual humans. The podcast world is big on helping us find our "unique selves" and most research says: we are 50% our genetic ancestry; 25% our early growing up and subsequent environment; as well as 25% the daily habits we have and practice over the years.

 

Fifty five years ago spring of 1970, I was a stay-at-home mom with two girls, five and two. I answered my white wall-phone hanging in our kitchen as I was making dinner.

 

The person on the other end introduced himself as Min Masuda. I had no idea who he was because I was new to Seattle. Later, I learned that he was a professor of Psychiatry at the U of WA. Masuda asked, "I got your name from your neighbor Mariko Hayashi. I'm wondering if you might be willing to take a part time job with our Suzzallo Library Archives to help start the "Japanese Collection"?

 

Number one, I had a degree in Public Health Nursing and had never thought of history or literature. Therefore, I answered, "No!" and hung up. But, my husband, Sam, was in the living room entertaining the girls and wondered what the call was about.

 

Sam had started his own GOTO DENTAL LAB business at 423 Medical Dental Building on 5th Avenue. He was always laden with deadlines, and we were mostly busy raising kids. We had very little knowlege about our Japanese heritage, just that our Japanese community elders still wanted us to marry "our own kind!" But a couple days later, he had talked me into calling Masuda back and agree to take the job with Rich Berner who had created the archives at the U of WA in the 1940s.

 

As I went through the two boxes, already in Special Collections, I read the 1925 Nishinori Master's thesis. I learned that about 100 Japanese Dairy farmers in the first two decades of the 1900s had supplied as much as one-half of Seattle's milk supply. 

 

I also learned, almost 10 years after Sam and I married, in starting to talk with my Grandpa Tsukamaki that he had stayed the night at the bedside of Sam's Grandpa Nakanish as he died in 1934. They had been leaders in the Dairy business and were best friends. That answered our questions of why we had gotten so many well wishers and presents from strangers when we got married. Sam and I thought we had found each other on our own because no one talked about their hard times as we were growing up - typical of most immigrants.

 

As my Grandpa told me his story, his words came out slowly and with anquish as he recalled the difficult times Japanese heritage farmers had faced with discrimination and being run out of the business. They knew they could not buy land because they could not become American citizens as Asians. But when Washington State legislators passed the 1921 Alien Land, they were no longer able to rent land. 

 

Many a doG have come and gone, but Sam's cartoon strip INU has shared many stories as he kept gathering, sharing and writing our stories until he passed in 2017. Our OMOIDE writing group has shared memories for now 33 years and meets regularly on the 3rd Saturday of each month at the Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Washington.

 

Come share your "uni" stories!!!