Tetsuji

Tetsuji

June 20, 2014

From the day of his birth, on February 2, 1914, Tetsuji had a different life carved out for him than his older brother and sister. Like them, he was born at home. Tony and Haru were given the brunt of the responsibility as the oldest brother and sister. Tony, who was aggressive and strongly motivated was well suited to be the primary heir to the family name. Haru was the model “big sister” who was almost like a second mother. From his childhood, Ted was easy going and very affable, but he was not particularly industrious like his older brother. His favorite activities were fishing and hunting, which he did with his brothers or with his chums, George Lavey, Jim Huse, and Doc Huse (Jim’s cousin). They were a nimble, athletic bunch, so they also liked to play baseball, football, or go swimming. Sometimes they would play with Ted’s brothers, Tony and Tim. Suye was not fond of this American game of football that they played in the ploughed fields, getting mud into every seam of their clothes.

He was not an extrovert, but he liked to be around people. He went to Palermo Elementary School on the heels of his older brother and sister, then went on to Oroville Union High School where he became the manager of the baseball and football teams. He was extremely popular among his class-mates for his personality. He had a wonderful sense of humor and seemed to get along with everyone. On the other hand, he was not a scholar and his parents would get upset when he brought home a report card with “Ds” on it. It didn’t bother Ted too much, though. Even though he was not scholarly in an academic sense, he liked to read and spin his own brand of down to earth philosophy.

Through high school he had helped his father and older brother around the farm. He would make deliveries of the farm’s fruits and vegetables to the nearby markets. He did this awhile after finishing high school, then decided to seek greener pastures. From 1933 to 1936, he stayed with his sister Haru and her husband, Kozo, in Los Angeles. He had read a lot of books about flying and dreamt of becoming a pilot, but his father had always opposed it and he never went against his father’s wishes. He never considered joining the military, even though he had been a cadet in high school and it might have given him a chance to do some flying. He would come back to Palermo in the summer to help out on the farm. His longest regular job was in a fancy produce department in a Beverly Hills market. When Haru and Kozo left for Japan in 1936, Ted stayed with the Hirano family and became friends with one of their boys, Ben. He also spent some time staying with the Uehara family.

When he returned to Palermo in 1940, it was to help his brother on the farm, delivering produce to the Bay Area and assisting in other ways. He had bought a roadster in LA. It was a convertible. He had picked up some sporty tastes from southern California and he often spent his nights out late, after which he make his younger sisters clean his car.

Ted was strikingly handsome as a young man. He was tall for a Japanese, close to six feet. He was slender and very elegant looking. He could have been a male model in a later period in this country. When the Tokuno family was sent to Topaz, his arrival there stirred a commotion among the young ladies. According to my Aunt Meriko, he was the best looking guy they had ever seen. They all rushed to get a first hand look at him. They had to have had their enthusiasm dampened considerably in seeing Lucille Tanaka arm in arm with him, a happy young bride to be.

He had met Lucille while the Tokuno family was at Tule Lake. A very artistic and creative person, she was teaching dancing for the camp. Meanwhile, he was managing the camp hog farm. Much as his brothers did, he wanted to be active while in camp, doing something creative. It is not likely he had any shame about being in charge of the pigs. More likely he was just shy; not the kind of person who would sign up to meet this beautiful young lady tutoring the other internees at their dance steps. Instead, he got a mutual friend to introduce him to her and things moved very quickly from there as evidenced by their engagement on March 15 after they left Tule Lake for Topaz. They actually got married in Ogden, Utah on September 9, 1944.

Not long after his marriage, he found that Lucille was pregnant. Ted felt that the camp was not the kind of place where he wanted to raise a family. He was able to secure a job in nearby Mesa, Idaho as foreman of other evacuees working in an apple orchard. They found a cozy little cottage to rent and shortly, Ted and Lucille were the father’s of a happy little girl, Teresa, born on April 10, 1945. They lived in Idaho for awhile, farming. This allowed him to obtain an agriculture deferment like Tony, so, like Tony, he never saw any military action.

Shortly after the war ended, Ted and his young family spent some time in Chicago with Lucille’s family. He and Ben Hirano were able to find jobs doing auto body repair. They returned to Palermo with his family, but it was not long after that that he moved to Yuba City. He farmed a plot of land, which had belonged to George Uyeno, his sister-in-law Mary’s brother. Mary, who was heir to the land, decided that Ted should be given a chance to farm it and to live in the old house that stood on the property. On this land he planted 18 acres of peach trees on Franklin Boulevard and he and his family stayed in that house for the rest of his life.

In 1952, they took a trip back to Chicago to visit his in-laws again. There Lucile became pregnant and in 1953, on September 24, she gave birth to a son, Dean, who was to grow to be the most creative person in the family, winning numerous awards as a photographer.

Farming life was not always a prosperous one, but Ted did whatever it took to assure his family’s well being. Part of the problem was that the amount of land he had was not enough to sustain a family of four. Worse, the trees were aging and so were not as productive. In 1958, he considered moving back to Chicago, but prospects were no better there. He tried to supplement their income by leasing more land on which he grew lucrative crops like tomatoes. They required very hard work, but it was enough to keep them going. In 1961, after a particularly poor harvest, he took a job with CalTrans in Sacramento, living with his brother Shiro. I remember those days with some fondness, as he and I shared a love of seafood and he would bring home the kinds of fish and shellfish we both loved to eat. In the cold mornings, he would gently chide me for sitting on my hands to keep them warm, asking me if I was doing some new kind of meditation.

Ted became a leading member of his community. Being very civic minded he became president of the Franklin Farm Bureau, a member of the Farm Home Association, and a two time trustee of the Franklin Elementary School. In that latter capacity, it gave him great pride to be able to award diplomas to both of his children as they, in turn, graduated from the school. He continued to pursue his childhood hobbies of hunting and fishing.

Teresa married in 1966, right after her graduation from Columbia University. She settled in New York with her husband, Larry Franks.  Dean graduated from the Brooks Institute in Santa Barbara, then pursued a very successful career as a professional photographer, winning national praise for the quality of his work. In 1989, he returned to his roots in Yuba City where he lives and photographs in his old home wife his wife, Amy, and their three daughters, Chloe, Hannah, and Asia as well as a youngest, son, Harrison.

In the fall of 1995 Ted suffered from a major stroke that left him unable to care for himself. Still powerfully proud, he would not allow himself to be dependent on his wife and children for his everyday survival. As much as they tried to care for them, he was determined to leave and died of starvation on September 30, 1996. Dean, honoring his father’s dignity by photographing his last days, won the prestigious national Ernst Haas Award for his pictures. They are a touching legacy of what Ted was as a man.