Interviews

1. Four sisters had international marriages (Japanese)

2. Disrespectful Child (Japanese)

3. Discrimination faced in San Francisco (Japanese)

4. Missing Home (Japanese)

5. The Kids and Japanese Language (Japanese)

6. Regret (Japanese)

7. How she met her husband (Japanese)

8. Public views on marriage with non-Caucasian (Japanese)

Calloway,Terumi Hisamatsu

(b. 1937) A war bride from Yokohama

Four sisters had international marriages (Japanese)

(Japanese) Two older sisters, a younger sister and I - 4 of us ended up living in America.

The eldest sister got married. And, how can I say it? Back then there weren’t too many international marriages. So my mother used to be in tears. As I saw her cry, I never imagined I would come to America myself, too. But for some reason, it was some kind of luck. We didn’t all come together. Each one of us met someone individually. Two of them married white men, and two black men. It’s a little unusual, I think. One lives in Wisconsin, another in New York, and the two of us in California.

My parents were never prejudiced. So all of us children were very friendly and had many friends. Half of us were born in Yokohama, which may be the reason, but we didn’t have any prejudice since our childhood. So I’m proud that my parents were not prejudiced.

brides marriages migration war brides wives

Date: February 6, 2015

Location: California, US

Interviewer: Izumi Tanaka

Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum

Interviewee Bio

Terumi Hisamatsu Calloway was born in 1937 in Yokohama as the 5th of 10 children and grew up in the suburb of Tokyo during the war. She met her husband, Edward E. Calloway, who was a civilian engineer working at American military base in Tokyo and married him. In 1960, after having 2 children, Terumi moved to the U.S. with her family and settled in the Bay Area and had two more children. Later they moved to the Lompoc area where all of her 4 children - 2 girls and 2 boys - grew up. In 1977, they moved to Inglewood where she resides now. Terumi was widowed in 2009, and she currently works as a caregiver. (April 2016)