In Seattle, my family’s mushroom hunting season would begin with discussions around the big table in the large, windowed breakfast nook at home, where the family took all everyday meals. Around the dinner table, rumors about friends and acquaintances being recognized at various well-known matsutake sites in the Cascades ...
An elegant few, pale pink blossoms on the slender limbs of a delicate February Fuji Cherry tree, displayed themselves in the midst of a light winter snow. To Naomi, looking down on the scene from her second floor bedroom window, the blossoms looked magical—large, pink snowflakes amid the falling ...
Read Part 2 >> In writing this remembrance of Minoru Tamesa, one more memory of Min’s father, Uhachi Tamesa, comes to mind. My Jichan (grandfather) Nisaku Araki was a friend of Uhachi’s. On one of Uhachi’s visits to our house, I remember hearing raised voices from the kitchen ...
Read Part 1 >> Last year, I googled “Minoru Tamesa.” I can’t remember why. I was startled to find a picture of him as a young man, looking a bit like a “tough guy,” nothing like the quiet, prematurely aged, sensitive, almost fragile-looking man who came to dinner. Believing there ...
When I was a little girl, Minoru Tamesa was, to me, the quiet man who came to Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. The holiday meals were held in our home in the South Park neighborhood of Seattle after we got out of the World War II incarceration camps. I’m sure ...
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