I recall conference Ayako Kikugawa the very first time throughout the winter out of 1985 from the Dot’s Bistro inside the Wahiawa, Oahu. It actually was from the yearly Kumamoto kenjinkai (prefectural bar) into the Wahiawa/Waialua region shinnenkai (New year celebration). The newest bar was reactivated just after World war ii, in approximately 1955, following the nisei sons came back household out of offering on Eu battlefields. My hubby, Douglas, is actually chairman of one’s Waialua/Wahiawa area club getting 10 years. Therefore i try lucky to generally meet some of the issei feminine who had been because image brides regarding Kumamoto. Several of the issei husbands got just after already been leadership of pub but had just like the passed on. Some of these wives remained during the good health and you will checked toward the newest affair yearly. One wife try Ayako Kikugawa. From the eighty-eight, she was still breathtaking and extremely elegant. Her painful and sensitive features, darkish sight, and fair skin coordinated her soft-verbal, gentle style. It absolutely was tough to suppose that she had previously been one of many visualize brides have been obligated to toil away during the Wahiawa’s pineapple industries within the scorching sunrays and make a full time income. Immediately following retiring from the pineapple plantation, Ayako paid off along with her partner, Shitoku, along with her third young man, Akimi, in the Wahiawa. Akimi got committed to the latest home immediately after World war ii. Wahiawa is actually also known as “Pineapple Area” as it try in the middle of miles and you can acres away from steeped pineapple sphere. Their residence is actually located in a quiet form away from high eucalyptus trees across the Kakunahoa River, and therefore flows lazily for the quiet River Wilson, the most significant freshwater lake on the Oahu. Brand new Waialua Glucose Business first built it tank to help you irrigate brand new sugarcane industries as high as Waimea Bay. Many people named it the latest Wahiawa Tank, however, today it is preferable labeled as Lake Wilson. It is a well-known year-bullet fishing place for tilapia, catfish, bluegill, or other types of seafood. The brand new river also offers environmentally friendly turtles. The front lawn from Ayako’s single-facts household are perfectly improved which have an effective Japanese rock yard, shapely oak bonsai tree, and you will purple camellia plant life.
in addition to their adorable yonsei (fourth-generation) grandchildren most of the stayed happily in one place. When i went to Ayako towards August eleven, 1987, she greeted me personally with a loving smile and bowed their own head once or twice at the door. I replied with a ribbon, just as my personal mother got trained me when i was really young. Ayako, like other almost every other issei women, outfitted conservatively, from inside the an easy bluish cotton fiber skirt secure when you look at the a flowery pattern. Their own silvergray tresses is put into a beneficial chignon on the rear out-of her lead and you can stored positioned with an enthusiastic olive-green lacquer comb. I realized that their particular hands was secure into the marks out-of stripping the brand new spiny, razor-clear leaves from the crown of one’s pineapple bush. They certainly were the actual only real telltale signs leftover of years she got worked tirelessly on this new plantation. Given that she began unfolding their unique prior, their own sound faltered sometime that have emotion. She paused, and you can slowly regained her composure. She try the brand new embodiment of the lady in the Meiji era: strong-willed, separate, and you may hardworking. Believe it or not, in her one or two-hours interview she failed to fool around with the majority of her Kumamoto dialect. She utilized practical Japanese with many dialect and extremely little Pidgin or English. We started initially to ask yourself in regards to the way she spoke. Throughout my interviews with quite a few issei from the isles, I ran across that hvor kan jeg bestille en rumensk brud those who kept in intimate touching together with other villagers on exact same nations retained the languages and you will village customs. It actually was more straightforward to keep in touch with each other inside their common code. The brand new
