Yuri Shiono and Toki Murakami

“Yuri and Toki grew up together in San Francisco’s early Japantown, galavanting together in their youth. As lifelong friends and later, sister-in-laws, (Toki married Yuri’s brother), they maintain a deep history of shared history, experiences and recollections that begin years before the war. This interview was conducted jointly with Toki and Yuri at Kokoro Assisted Living in San Francisco in 2004. Sadly, Toki passed away in 2013, while Yuri passed in 2017, but had each other in their elder years after the passing of both their husbands.

Let's just establish some facts. Can you tell me your full name and where you were born?

Yuri: Yuri Shiono. My maiden name is Yuri Murakami. I was born in Oakland, California on May 10th, 1919.

Okay, let's quickly ask Toki the same questions.

Toki: I am Toki Murakami. I was born in San Francisco, and my maiden name is Toki Miyahara and my birthday is November 11, 1921. My husband died three years ago. We were married nearly 60 years. My parents are from Kumamoto. I’ve never been to Japan.

Do you know when they came to the United States?

My father was here before 1906. He remembers the earthquake. My mother came in 1915 or 1916. My father’s name was Yahachiro and my mother’s name was Haru. 

Was your mother a picture bride? 

I think so. They were all at that point. And she ran a restaurant, too. In South Park, near Townsend and 3rd in San Francisco. All the Japanese were there. They kicked everyone out of there. I was about 8 or 9. 

And your mother ran a restaurant? Yeah. And what was the restaurant called?

Matsu. And she served all Japanese food. My father was a dishwasher. Cleans the kitchen.

I'm going to go back to Yuri and I'll go back to you again. Yuri, what were your parents names? 

Yuri: Hasajiro and Kiku.

Do you know her last name? Maiden name.

Terao. 

And where were they from, exactly?

Naturally Japan. Mie-ken, both of them. 

Okay, well, there aren't as many people from Mie-ken. And do you know what year they came?  

I don't remember that far. We settled in Oakland, Papa had a shoe store, and then we moved to San Francisco when I was young. And he opened another shoe store and repair store, too. And my mother, she just selling in Japantown on Post Street.

And what did she sell?

Shoes. 

Okay. So he ran the repair shop. And your mother did the selling, right? Did he make custom made shoes?

Things were going pretty good but then people started going downtown to buy shoes, so I think that was the end of the shoe store. Yeah, that’s at the start of my father’s life. When they come from Japan, you know he can't speak English. So I think that dad used to work in a salt mine or something.

A mine. Do you know where that was?

Yeah it wasn’t that far, I still see it now, on the other side of the water. I don't know, about in the San Mateo area.

Oh, on the San Francisco Peninsula where they evaporate the salt. That's hard work. It’s hot and salty and you're in the sun all the time and the salt is hard to break. How about your mother?

She was the assistant to a midwife here. She learned it from Mrs. Hota. 

So was she a midwives helper at the same time she worked in the shoe store? 

Yes. 

Busy lady. So most of your memories are growing up in San Francisco? 

Yes. 

She was an independent woman, wasn't she? Ran the restaurant, ran her husband, went to Japan. Didn't she get in trouble with the law? 

Yes. She would bring drugs in some the sailors gave it to one of the thing that goes in to get in trouble for that. So who goes to jail? My father goes to jail. I was so mad at my mother. I won't forgive her.

Oh, what kind of drugs do you know? 

I don't know.

So she sold the drugs that the sailors had…

Toki: And that was terrible I thought. We were young then.

Yuri: It’s easy to make money.

And that was while you were in South Park?

Toki: Yes in South Park. Of course after O’Farrell Street I remember that.

Well, what was it like growing up in San Francisco's Japantown?

Yuri: Oh, it was nice. Yeah. Because everybody was there, you know, like, we all got together, and played most of the time.

So you knew all your neighbors? 

That’s for sure.

What kind of games did you play?

Well we had skates, that was the thing. I have a lot of scars.

Did you do tricks or did you jump curbs or – 

No, no, it was a hill, you know you’d go down the hill just on the streets. We started racing around after school.

So were you friends when you were growing up, the two of you?

Yuri: No she lived a couple of blocks down.

Toki: I lived on O’Farrell Street. 

Yuri: I didn’t see her too much, just people on Post Street.

And you're a couple of years difference. You're about three years difference.

I met my husband at the Candy Kitchen.

Where else did you hang out and see? Where did you take the Japanese classes?

Yuri: Oh, yeah. We were sent to Japanese school. Kinmon Gakuen. There are so many now you know.

Do you think you learned much?

No no. Too young then I guess.

Did you live here until you were married?

Yeah.

Now, that's if you're born in 1919. The war started in 41. You were how old by then. So 19.

Oh, 18 or something like that.

So you were already married when Pearl Harbor was bombed?

No not yet, not quite. I guess I was going to school and then working in the evening.

Helping your parents with their shoe and repair store?

At that time? Yes. 

All right. We’ll stop here and we'll come back to Pearl Harbor, but we'll go back to Toki. You were telling me that your mother ran the restaurant. Your father was a dishwasher, and you were a rascal.

Toki: That was me.

You mean they (your siblings) were all angels except for you?

Yes. I had to watch my younger brother a lot of time, so. And anybody hit him? I went and slapped the boys.

If somebody teased your brother George, then, I see. You married a George, too, didn’t you?

Yeah. I met George in ‘41.

You know, a lot of young men had already volunteered or had been drafted. How about George?

They tested him three times for the Army. They couldn’t take him because his eyes were bad. If he took his glasses off, he couldn’t see. He was supposed to go to Japan before the war, and my husband said no, he didn't want to go because he had a girlfriend.

And that was you.

His father was mad at him because he wanted to go to Japan and become a teacher.

A kendo teacher. So he was a kendo master with poor eyesight.

I told my mother, I was going to marry him. She said, you’re going to marry a bum?

And how old were you when you told your mother that?

It was before [Pearl Harbor]. 16. I was going with him. We were sneaking out and he would meet me at Parks sometime. His mother found out and told him, you’re not supposed to be going with her.

So you married when he was 20.

He's seven years older.

So the war in Europe had already started by then. I want to back up a little bit. You were 19. Had you graduated high school? And you were already working.

I was and I was married too.

What kind of job did you do?

We were going after school. We used to cook for people, you know, help cook dinner or something like that. School girl they called them. But when the war came, we couldn’t go any further to certain places.

So you were a school girl to a family that was much farther than five miles from here.

It was up on California Street.

Oh, it was close. So did you lose your job?

Toki: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We stayed with his parents until the internment. The 10th, that was her birthday.

Yuri: I remember that.

Toki: From the YMCA, that’s where they picked us up on the bus.

Do you remember the day when Pearl Harbor was bombed? What were you doing?

Toki: I was cleaning house with my husband and I put the radio on, and Pearl Harbor came on. My husband said, “I better go report to the draft board.”

Oh, that was his first thought. Do you remember being scared or apprehensive or worried when you heard about Pearl Harbor? Did you ever think that the Japanese might come all the way to California?

Yeah. 

You think so? 

Yeah that’s what we were worried about, and we would be interned by the Japanese.

Ah, as Americans. So you and your husband talked about that?

Yeah, we talked about. He said, “Oh, they wont come, after Pearl Harbor they’d stop.” He felt safer.

So you had to stop working?

Yeah. 

That must have been a radical change in your life. You know, all of a sudden.

No work. Yeah, we would mahjong in the yard. We put main things into my apartment and then closed it up. And then, you know, Yuri’s father’s stuff, my stuff. Anyway, we had closed up the house and rented that place. Well, you know, so many years.

How did you keep the space?

My father in-law would pay the rent, and then after that, I had a Caucasian grandfather. I called Caucasian grandpa. I adopted him from when I was a little girl. When I was only about two and a half years old. He's the exterminator. You know, some public health exterminators come in. I used to follow him all around, and then, you know, he showed me how to set traps, and then he taught me not to touch the tail of a certain thing, you know? And then ever since then, he was always coming to our house to eat dinner with us. So I had an adopted grandfather.

What's his name? Do you remember?

Mr. Jones.

So here you are. Newlyweds.

Yeah. No kids.

Did you worry about family and things like that?

You know, my mother went to an assembly camp down south.

Where was she living before?

O’Farrell Street. So she missed the cut. They had to cut from certain street. And she didn't make it. So she had to go to Los Angeles. Trauma for them.

How about for you to have your mother so far away?

My father wasn’t worried about me because he said, “You're mischievous.” So he said I could take care of myself. I remember in Tanforan, we were getting lousy food, dysentery, and then finally they got the San Quentin's chief cook. Come and inspected all the food. And then he gave us better food. I remember that because he came to our mess hall, so. And we treated him well. And every time he came, he asked for me because he liked me.

What was so lousy about Tanforan food?

Beans, you had to eat beans, ugh.

Is that baked beans or do you remember what kind of beans you got?

It would give you dysentery. You had to run from the mess hall to make it.

That's kind of eerie to think about – the San Quentin, Chief Cook coming over. I mean, he’s cooking for a maximum security prison. So you didn't have to eat beans anymore after this. Mr. Tall, San Quentin, Chief Cook came?

After that we had better food and vegetables and all that. You know, fresh vegetables. So that wasn’t bad.

Any other memories from Tanforan?

The baseball team, softball team.

Softball. Okay. So you were athletic?

Yeah I was athletic.

What position did you play?

Center field.

Center field. You caught those long flies…

Yuri: Yeah, that’s her.

Chased them all. I'm going to ask Yuri what she remembers of Tanforan. Is that alright?

Yuri: Well I didn’t stay long.

Oh, you didn't stay long. Do you remember having to pack up to get ready to go to the assembly center?

Oh, that you could only bring, what, only two suitcases?

And said that must have been really hard. You left everything in the house, that’s it.

Yeah. Yeah.

Toki: That’s when the secondhand men came and bought most of the stuff.

Yuri: Yeah, he just came in and took everything, you know.

Well, did you store things in Toki’s apartment.

I must have.

What do you remember packing? 

Well they told me to bring boots, so that’s what I decided to take. And socks and underwear and things like that.

And how long were you in Tanforan for? You moved there on your birthday?

That I forget.

You were confined to a very short time because you and your husband moved to Minnesota. So can you say a little bit more about that, how you arranged to do that and what you did in Minnesota? 

Yuri: My girlfriend, Peggy Yano, wanted to go out there at that time and have a chance to go and go into an American home. 

Caucasian homes?

Yeah. She’s an instigator, she always wanted to go here there, all over. And we had to get a sponsor. Mrs. Hill. 

Well, you must be pretty adventurous, too, because..

I just a tag along.

Now this term “schoolgirl” and “schoolboy” usually means that you're going to school. Were you going to school?

No.

So were you more like a maid? 

Maid, yes.

So this Mrs. Hill had a enough money to sponsor the two of you?

Yes she did. 

So all day long, you cleaned and set the table?

Yeah. Oh, yeah but it was very easy.

And then you wanted to tell me how you got married in Minnesota. How did that happen?

By that time, my husband was drafted. He didn’t volunteer, he was drafted before the war. And sent to Camp Shelby or someplace. So we all landed there in Minnesota, yeah.

Was the city Minneapolis or Saint Paul?

Saint Paul.

Okay. Is part of the reason why you were a maid in Saint Paul because of Camp Shelby?

Yeah.

Did you know your husband before the war in Japantown? 

Yes. His name was Henry Hiroshi Shiono. 

Was Henry in the MIS? Was he an intelligence person?

Not in intelligence, no. You know, he was drafted and with a Japanese face going to the Philippines to fight the Japanese, he was kind of misplaced. 

Did he speak Japanese well?

Yes, he could. 

So they wanted him for intelligence. Did you live in Minnesota all those war years?

No, not all of it at all. And I travel all over.

Why?

Because he moved all over too.

During the war?

During the war.

Oh, where did he move to?

One place down in New York. 

Oh, okay. 

Yeah. And I went to…

Toki: You went to Chicago.

Yeah, Chicago. That's where he got released from the Army.

As soon as he got released, did you come back to California?

Yeah. Finally we did come back.

Okay, well, let's give Toki a chance to talk about those war years, too.

Toki: We left Tanforan, and then drove us on the train, and they made me pull my shades down to go all the way to Salt Lake City. And then we went down to Delta.

Right, to Delta.

Right, so that's another 150 miles. A week or something like that. It was itself 150 miles away. And then after that, it was 16 miles inland. It’s a desert, that’s all that was. And they made it in three months, all that camp. The Army did.

They took pride in how quickly they can put up a whole barrack.

Toki: Sleep in cots, that’s what we had. And a Potbelly stove.

And well, do you wish you could have left camp like, her? You wanted to stay in camp?

We stayed in camp.

You and your husband?

Yeah.

So you never applied to go out?

No.

Did you feel safer? How come you wanted to stay in camp, to be with your family or?

It’s just his mother was on the other side, and his father, and we had a separate barrack. 

Did it ever cross your mind to go to Minnesota?

My husband left to go to Chicago and he said, “Should we move to Chicago?” I said, “No, we're going back to California. We have our furniture there.” He just went to visit her [motioning to Yuri]. They went to Cleveland to look, too. And I said, no, I’m not going back east.

I had my daughter in Topaz. Six pounds four ounces. She was a tiny baby. 

What’s your daughter’s name?

Janice Naomi Masako. 

So she has three names, that’s pretty special.  

Two years later, I had son. 

And where was he born? 

Topaz. And his name was Gary Momoru. That's all he only had one name. No Gary Edmonds Momoru.

So when was he born?

1945.

Oh, right before you left? Yeah.

I had to bring him home with me. Yeah, on the train with the serviceman. Whole carload of servicemen. And there's a baby in the car. 

And then they weren't nice to you?

They didn't know me. And then one guy asked, “Where were you going?” And I said, “I’m going back to San Francisco.” They said, why? I said, “I was interned, I’m a Japanese.” And then they all shut up. You know, nobody said anything to me after that. Because none of those fellows knew that the Japanese Americans had been interned.

Well, where was your husband?

He was in the city here.

Oh, he had already sort of scoped out the situation waiting for you. So how about your daughter? You were traveling with your daughter, too.

My mother in law and father in law brought her. They said, you can't travel with two babies. 

You're in the same train or a different train?

They came two days later.

So tell me what it was life like in Topaz. Just dust getting everywhere?

You had to close all the windows tight. It shoots into doors, put towels under them because of it. 

It must have been boiling in the summertime. And maybe not like Arizona but you know, it's a high desert.

Yeah. All I did was walk from my block all the way to the hospital. I just said, oh you're going for walk. I was going to have Janis and I was having pain and walked all the way to the hospital. It took me two days. I thought I wanted to go back to the mess hall. I got my dinner and you can’t eat dinner, you need to stay in the hospital. And I was playing solitaire for two days. I was never so mad.

Waiting for that baby. Yeah, well, what was everyday life for you in Topaz?

Still, this wasn't bad. I mean, you know everybody in the block anyway. And I used to go walk around. My adopted grandfather sent me a wooden stroller. What do I need a stroller for? It’s wood and I can't put it on the ground because it’s all, rocks no pavement.

You mean the wheels were wooden? 

I had to send it back. I said I didn't need it.

Does he understand?

He said, “Why did you send it back?” I said, “Because in Topaz you can't use that thing.” And if it rains, you know. So I used to carry him piggy back.

So he tried to help you out by sending in packages. Mr. Jones. Did he send you anything else that was actually useful?

I didn't ask for any help, my friends were there, my adopted grandfather was there if I needed anything and he would always come and get me.

Did he come to visit you or just – 

He came when we came back to the city. He went to meet me at the train station. So that was nice.

Oh, that must have been amazing. Did he come to see you in Tanforan? 

Yeah. It's a hard trip for him because he wasn't a young man.

You know, when I interview people, if they knew somebody on the outside who was nice to you, not a Japanese person, it really made a difference because if you didn't have any non-Japanese friends, some people really lost hope or faith in America. You know, it was so easy to make a blanket statement. “Oh, nobody cares.”

Because I remember when I came back and then we moved from Wallace Street to Belvedere Street. Here comes this guy, “Dirty ‘Jap,’” he said. And I was so mad. I just went down the street turned him around and said, “Don’t you ever call me a ‘Jap,’ I said, I'm a Japanese American, but I was born and raised in San Francisco. Don’t you ever call me that.”

He looked at me. It was I said, you walk on the other side of the street. He did ever since then. He never came back on my street. And a tall guy white guy, you, you know, ignorant. That's the problem.

Oh, no. So he lived in your neighborhood?

Yeah, he did in my neighborhood. And his sister she said, What did he call you. I said, dirty Jap and I turned around and chased after him. My sister said, Don't do that. I said what do you mean? That's my right. And she said you really go after them boys?

Wow. You know, some people try to write letters to their congressmen or to the president or the first lady and, you know, ask to improve things they should do if ever write letters to anybody. I mean, it seems like.

Because when we first came out, many of us, did get Social Security instead of it. They never gave us anything. They only gave us $75 to live on. When we came back.

One time payment or per month?

One time payment. That's it.

I heard $25 per person.

I well I had $75.

Because if you and your two kids.

Yuri: You know afterwards, after what happened, many, many years and they gave us money but that's too late.

You're talking about the redress. 

Yes. 

Some people right after the war already started talking about reparations. And had you heard about the redress before the ‘80s? 

Toki: No

Yuri: No.

What did you think about it? Did you think that anything would come out of this? 

Toki: I don't think we'll ever get the money.

…or get an apology. 

That's right. 

Yeah. Did you pay attention to any of the hearings that went on? It was on TV.

Mostly it was the Korematsu case.

You paid attention to the Korematsu case.

He was fighting for his rights.

How did you feel when you heard that this bill was signed that there was going to be an apology and reparation checks?

Toki: We couldn't believe it. Then I said to myself, well, that's not enough money. Actually, you know, $20,000. Nothing compared to what you lost.

Yuri: That’s true.

So your reaction is, oh this is wonderful. And then wait, that's not enough. How about you? Did you think it was enough?

Yuri: It was too late. We needed it before, especially when we came out of the camp, we had nothing.

Too late. And then you think about all the Isseis that had passed on and the older Niseis, too.

Toki: But not even the dead people could get it.

Well I hear this over and over again, you know, not enough, too late. Too late, usually.

Toki: Because like her father, you know, her father lost all his shoe repair equipment. And that's a lot of money. Never reported it. A lot of them lost their business.

I'd like to finish by asking if you had to share a little bit of wisdom with the younger people today about how you survived the camps, what would you like to say? 

Well, you know what they say, you think they'll do it again? I said, they could do it to any nationality. They put up a barricade, no time flat. Army does that all and any nationality. But they never sent the Germans or Italians to camp, which I couldn’t understand, and they were guilty.

So your word of wisdom must be to be watchful, to be vigilant okay. All right.

To me, that would be the best thing. Tell the younger generation. Read all about it. 

How about you, Yuri?

Yuri: I feel the same way as she said. They have to read about the internment.

Toki: That is, nobody ever expects it. We don't expect it. But then we tell the younger generation to expect it.

Interview conducted by Grace Megumi Fleming. JAMsj thanks Grace for allowing the museum to archive and share these oral histories