Interviews
Grandfather loved to tell her stories of her great-grandfather Arakaki
So he told me my grandma Arakaki’s side, that’s the grandpa that was college educated, from mainland, at that time, so that’s like in the tens and twenties, nineteen ten, nineteen twenties, and I don’t know if it’s Waseda or Todai, but it was a pretty prominent, big university – still is and because he’s well-educated he of course had different political views than the Japanese government at the time. And so for those reasons he left Japan and went to Peru. And so that’s just a really interesting story and because he was so well-loved by the Peruvian community, and well-loved and well-respected the communities who protected him from getting kidnapped by the Peruvian government to go to…I believe he was supposed to go to Crystal City, as a professor, as an educator in the community and they hid him very well so that he didn’t get taken and he would do some secret night teachings, like Japanese language or even just history and things like that. So I think because that story’s so interesting, my grandpa would always tell me about that.
Date: August 30, 2018
Location: California, US
Interviewer: Sharon Yamato
Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum
