The history of Mae Higashiyama

Grant County history

The Grant County Historical Society has compiled several volumes of Grant County history. The books are available for purchase at the Historical Society Museum gift shop in Ephrata.

These are memories of Grant County, compiled from taped interviews by the Grant County Historical Society.

Mae Higashiyama provides an interesting and unique view of Grant County history. Read on.

Today we begin the story of Mrs. Maeky (Mae) Higashiyama:

A history of a Japanese American, by Mrs. Maeky (Mae) Higashiyama

There have been many times when I have wondered why I was so fortunate as to have been born in this country. I’d say the Lord let it happen with a “delayed stroke of the pen” or of a “shift of the paper,” or so I found out about two months ago when I asked my younger sister for some information.

During the latter days of the Russian-Japanese war over the Kuril Islands, Dad had been called up for the draft and banned from leaving the country. While reporting to the appointed place for this notification, the potential soldiers-to-be were told to line up and answer as their names were called out. When Yoshida, Kirihei was called out, no one answered. The name was called out again and still no answer. When they were asked who was a Yoshida, naturally, Dad answered.

Well, he got a dressing down and was called a malingerer when he told them his name was Tohei, not Kirihei, and for the first time in his life he found out that the registrar of births had, in the spacing of the characters, turn him into Kirihei, the name I knew him by until two months ago, instead of Tohei. As a child he was called To-chan. When they were released to go home, Dad resolved that if he was not called into the army, and as soon as the ban of leaving the country was lifted, he would leave for the United States, which is what he did. I believe it was when he was 23 years of age.

Dad landed in San Francisco not too long after the earthquake of 1906. He told of the destruction and smoke still rising from the rubble. He didn’t stay there long. He went to central California then to Southern California pruning and working in fields and working at whatever he could find as he had intentions of writing home for a picture bride.

When Mother arrived in 1918, Dad had been working in the fields and had forgotten about the time of her arrival. When he realized the time, he knew he didn’t have time to bathe and put on clean clothes, so he went directly from the fields to the dock.

When he sighted her, he said, “Here I am, and at day’s end this is the way I’ll be, all dirty as you see me now. If you don’t like it, I’ll put you on the next boat back to Japan.”

He said her reply was, “Oh no, it’s quite all right,” so they were married by the Justice of the Peace and had their photos, which were used for their picture bride exchange made into colored oval portraits.

Mother didn’t want an arranged marriage and to live in Japan because the bride goes to the husband’s home and is the “low one on the totem pole,” so she refused a couple of offers and at the age of 24 welcomed marriage to Dad in America to be free of those obligations.

Too late, Dad found out after their marriage, that the one and only additional qualification he made in the picture bride marriage wasn’t met. The usual qualifications were sound of mind, good health and from the same village. He did not want the youngest in the family, because they were spoiled brats; well, that’s what he got.

More about Mae Higashiyama next week.