Tey

Tey

June 19, 2014

Tey was the second daughter, but ten years younger than Haru. She was born on December 1, 1920. She had three boisterous older brothers who influenced her far more than Haru, who was almost more of a second mother. It was no surprise then that she was something of a tomboy, playing marbles with her older brother, Shiro, and her younger sister Alyce; climbing the olive trees; and hunting for wild flowers in various unlikely places. The three youngest children were very close to each other, with Shiro acting the role of protective, yet domineering, big brother, something he could not do with his older siblings. We have already read about how he would make Teyko and Alyce run around for a lick of candy. Tey recalls him doing the same thing with ice cream. The three of them also got into mischief together, even under the strict eye of their mother. At dinner, they would push their rice bowls back and forth across the table until their mother would scold them and make them leave without finishing their meal.

This did not mean that Teyko was ignored by her other brothers. Tim, in particular, took great delight in scaring her with snakes. On day when Teyko was only 8, he brought a snake into the house and chased her around with it. She was too scared even to scream. How could she imagine that a snake would get into the sanctuary of her home? To this day, she still has a great fear of snakes. On the other hand, she and Tim sometimes conspired together. Tim liked to cook, so one day when he mother and older sister were out. She helped him bake a cake using a dozen eggs, about eight too many. It tasted okay, but it would not stand up by itself, being more of a soufflé .

As Tey grew into adolescence, she blossomed into a very attractive young woman. Her childhood and teen years were not typical of those days, for she never got to go the movies or anywhere else in town besides church. Living far in the country tended to hamper a girl’s social life. She and Alyce never got to participate in school or social activities because they had no way to get there and no one had the time to drive them around. When Tey finally got old enough to drive, Suye remained very cautious in allowing them out. They could only go to church. The mischievous streak in her and her sister was not easily overcome, however, as they would occasionally skip church to go to one of the movies they had heard so much about from their high school chums. Despite such excursions, high school was largely uneventful. Tey was not much of a scholar, although she was well like by her teachers and classmates. It helped that the teachers were well acquainted with all of her well behaved and respectful older brothers and sister.

Probably the biggest event in her life was when she went to Sacramento Junior College in the fall of 1938 after graduating from Oroville High. Sacramento was the “big city” where her parents seldom took her except for the most special events and now she was there on her own. Well, not entirely on her own; her big brother, Shiro, was still there to look after her and help her find her way about campus. She soon found her own friends among the Nisei who were attending school there. Many of them were from the area and had been able to keep their Japanese language skills, something Tey had not developed at all, being the sixth child. She had depended on her sister Haru and her older brothers to help her communicate with her parents and had spoken only English among her siblings. She found it mildly embarrassing to admit she could not speak Japanese very well. Still, she came to master her business courses, so she gained a modicum of respect.

With at least one of the young men she met, she gained more than a modicum of respect. Henry Imaoka was a dashing young man who soon caught Tey’s eye as she had caught his. They met on campus in the spring of 1939. He was very friendly and outgoing, so it was not long before he had asked her out and they were going “steady.” Soon after that, Tey had taken him to Palermo to meet her mother. Suye was captivated by this handsome fellow with the ready smile and even more with the way he was willing to help around the farm with little chores during his visits. They were making plans for marriage when Pearl Harbor was attacked, so they decided they had better tie the knot quickly before they could be separated, since the Japanese Americans were required to go with their families. It was a very small ceremony without any of the Tokuno family present, because they could not travel. After a farewell party in Palermo, Tey was driven by a family friend to Sacramento, where Henry was staying with his brother. It was March 29, the last day they could travel out of the restricted area. They were married by a justice of the peace on April 5, 1942.

In May of 1942, the Imaoka family was ordered to the Walerga assembly center, outside of Sacramento. They stayed there for two months in conditions that were as bleak as any that have been described already. In July, they were sent to their permanent relocation camp in Tule Lake, where, at least, Tey was re-united with her family who had been sent there. Although the Tokuno family was later sent to Topaz, Utah, Henry and Tey did not join them in that camp. In October of 1942, Henry volunteered to harvest sugar beets in Caldwell, Idaho, as part of a government program to allow the Nisei to contribute to the war effort. Henry preferred doing that to working in the confines of the camp. Tey, unfortunately, could not go with him right away, so she worked in the camp canteen for $17 a month.

When Henry’s contract with the sugar beet harvest ended, he arranged for Tey to join him in Ogden, Utah, so she could be close to her family in Topaz. Henry had found a job with a dry-cleaning business. Initially, in November of 1943, they stayed with a friend of Suye’s who had a noodle shop there. Soon after that, they moved to a rental house in Ogden and there, their first daughter, Carolyn was born in December. Topaz was to the west of Ogden. As the Nisei in particular began to move out of the camp in Topaz to points east, Henry and Tey’s house became something of a way station for their friends and relatives. This lasted for only a few months, however, once the young Nisei men were declared to be eligible for the draft. Henry was drafted and inducted into the army in September of 1944 and Tey and her little daughter had to live in Topaz for a while.

Henry went through basic training and, like many Nisei men, was sent to Fort Snelling, Minnesota, in February of 1945, to be trained for the Military Intelligence Service (MIS). This was a stroke of good luck, because his brother-in-law, Shiro, was also assigned there. Henry, in the first of many such messages over the next years, sent for his young family to join him in Minnesota. The two men had become good friends. Shiro, just having gotten married himself, let the Imaoka family live with him and his new bride in their St. Paul apartment.

Shiro left for his MIS assignment in June, but Asako stayed in St. Paul with Henry, Tey, and little Carolyn. Soon they were joined by a second daughter, Marolyn, who was born in Minnesota in August, right at the end of the War. In October, Tey took baby Marolyn and her sister to California where they stayed with Asako’s parents for two months before rejoining her own family in Palermo. Meanwhile, Henry finished his training in November, too late for the war, but not too late to help with the occupation of Japan. He was therefore ordered to Japan where he was stationed in Sendai, north of Tokyo.

The young family was separated for over a year before the U. S. Army would allow Tey to come to Japan, because they needed special housing for dependents. It was not until December that Henry was able to see his wife and children join him in Sendai. They stayed there for five years, during which their third daughter, Henrietta Joyce, was born in November of 1949.

Henry left the army in 1951 and brought his family back to the United States. While trying to buy a house in the Bay Area, where they had decided they wanted to settle, they ran into some discrimination against them. No one wanted to sell their homes to “Japs” or have them living in their neighborhood. They finally were able to find a house in Richmond, where they were close to Asako and Shiro and Asako’s parents. Henry enjoyed playing Goh , a Japanese board game, with Torayoshi Maida, Asako’s father, late into the night.

Still, they all remembered their days in Japan fondly and Henry decided that he wanted to go back to a career there. In 1954, he took a civil service position with the U. S. Forces, Japan Procurement Agency. He sent for his family and they went back to Japan in July of that year. All three daughters attended an English language school for U. S. citizens and became very accustomed to life in Japan. I never got to know my Uncle Henry very well, but I always heard my parents speak highly of him and I remember him well from one incident in the late 50s or early 60s when the Imaokas came for a visit. We met them at the airport and Tony was playing with my cousin Don on a stair railing. He slipped and hit his head. Uncle Henry scooped him up without hesitation and ran to the dispensary carrying him in his arms.

In that same year, they decided to ask Suye if she wanted to come and stay with them for a year or two. She had not seen her native land since 1938, just before the war, so she was happy to come over. Not one, but two of her beloved daughters were in Japan, since her eldest daughter, Haru, was also living there with her husband, Kozo. Tey’s mother had a wonderful time visiting with her daughters, their husbands and her three grand-daughters. They visited museums, dined at restaurants where Suye could eat her favorite foods without having to worry about cooking and cleaning.

The two years passed quickly. Near the end of her stay, Haru and Kozo departed for the United States where Kozo had found a position. Suye was busy shopping for gifts to take back to her family at the end of 1956. She would miss the holiday before she got back to Palermo, but her return would make it seem like a second Christmas. For Christmas dinner, Tey and Henry invited relatives from both sides of the family for a nice dinner. As they were bidding everyone a good night and a Merry Christmas, Suye suddenly crumpled to the floor. Henry carried her upstairs to her bed and they called a doctor who told them all she had was a simple case of indigestion. He was wrong. She had suffered a heart attack and died that night. Tey accompanied her mother’s body back to California where she was buried next to her husband at the beginning of 1957.

The next few years were relatively uneventful. As Carolyn entered the teen years with Marolyn close behind, it was evident that, while both matched their mother in attractiveness, Carolyn took after the Imaoka side, while Marolyn looked much like her mother. Joyce was the “baby” of the family, who was excited in 1962 when her cousin, Karen visited with her whole family. Karen was the same age as Joyce. Tey, of course, was delighted since she and Alyce had always been so close. The Kos planned to celebrate Alyce’s 40^th birthday there. It was nice that they had Henry and Tey there because the Kos could see sites that were off limits to most civilian tourists. The entire visit was wonderful for both families, but just as Suye’s visit coincided with tragedy, so would this visit.

On June 21, the night before the Kos were going to leave for home, the Imaoka family had dinner with them and another family of friends, the Takais. People converged on the restaurant in downtown Tokyo from different locations and Henry drove home alone in his sports car, even though Carolyn had begged to ride with him. It was a rainy, foggy night, so it was hard to see and Tey had some concerns about Carolyn riding in Henry’s little sports car. Henry hit an abutment on the road that was obscured by the weather. The car flipped over and he was killed almost instantly.

The surviving women of the Imaoka family returned, grieving, to California where they buried there husband and father in Sunset Cemetery in Berkeley. Tey went to work in the Public Relations Office of the Atomic Energy Commission in Berkeley. About a year later, in June 1966, she married Sukeo Oji, an old friend of Henry’s and watched her three daughters marry in California. The Oji family eventually settled in Walnut Creek, California. The oldest daughter, Carolyn, married Jerry Sugimura, from Kauai, Hawaii, in 1962. They had a son, Henry, and two daughters, Kimberly and Julie Joy. Marolyn graduated from Sacramento State College and married Maurice Svihovec in 1966, and they had two sons, Michael and Matthew, and a daughter, Melissa. Joyce married Paul Cho and had a daughter, Terri Tey.