Interviews
What made your parents decide to move to Brazil?
Well, there was a time when my father, who grew up in a family of 7, went to Brazil. There was someone named Koto Ninomiya – this person, well, they were my dad’s older sister. And there was also my dad’s second older sibling Ninomiya Tokuichi. And together with Harumi Sonokumashita, my uncle, they went to Brazil in 1926 or 1927 as a family unit. So, well, Koto Ninomiya got married in Brazil to someone named Shimuta who was originally from Fukuoka Prefecture.
Either at the end of 1952 or at the start of 1953, the Shimuta couple came to Japan. They seemed extremely wealthy. They looked at our lives and said something like “Things are better in Brazil. Japan lost the war and has no future. So, if you go to Brazil you can have a good life”. And well, my parents, well, how do you put it, took those words to heart. “Well then, let’s go to Brazil” they said.
They left Yokohama on November 28th, 1953 on board the “America Maru” ship and arrived in Santos on January 16th, 1954.
Date: September 19, 2019
Location: California, US
Interviewer: Yoko Nishimura
Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum
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