Remarkable People: Making a Difference in the Northwest; Interview with Mayumi Tsutakawa, Tape 25

i'm having problems that our listeners i guess a vaccine on you that i know that position or that he ever did you know are you to grant iii there's seven grandchildren in the family and they range in age from about four to eighteen i probably have those numbers wrong but in my two children pollan no and i think it's interesting too to see how they view their grandparents and how they view are all of them grew up right here with all of these things on as babies they were caught they were told that is daiichi this word which means a treasure or when a valuable and so there's so many things in this house that my parents' house that our artworks are sculptures are japanese antiques and so they were always to it and so their two boys ended five

girls and it's interesting to see how they view the importance of art imprints of japanese things and culture and language and i think the real respect that they have even in this you know really fast paced high technology age they they do view that heritage the japanese side of their teachers is very important and if they think of their grandparents is very very warm people who are very patient and have so much knowledge and a semi interesting cultural things to impart to them so it will be interesting to see what artistic influence or japanese influence comes out in their lives as they become older there's no doubt that to be creative people somehow see their employer well i have to

say that my parents be entertained a lot and so many of those parties which as children we just thought of those you know adults talking a lot with that we now see as having been really important cultural meetings where artists such as smart toby or polymer each he would sketch at the table or on where notable thanks to the ford foundation there were many notable occasion cars and cars from japan who came to the interest of washington and performed or were in residence inn taught shoji hamada the noted folk potter in japan the issues national treasure and mr nomura who also was a national treasure in japan who's the head of the child in drama school people like that jazz she cites no one of the most well known would block printers print artists in japan were they were all here right here and soul party's an entertaining would be a chance

for other artist from seattle boss variant perry where she you know oranges on non color or others to meet and then mingle with these people so we were always observers to that in my mother having come from a restaurant family her mother having been a restaurant owner has been absolutely the best party gear at that i have ever witnessed she's a fantastic and very very organized and congenial hosts said that the two of them i think the other really gave birth to a lot of artistic friendships through the many many parties that they held here yes yeah but i think that they saw the value of the year meeting over good food into drains you mean meetings don't happen without a convivial atmosphere a nice beautiful setting to be in and get food into drinks

so i think if they had that worked out as part of that their operation expeditions that you get grumpy sometimes across as he obviously is he always as happy during as he seems to be i have hardly remember them ever being grumpier crossley she had probably witnessed maybe won by a here is that he may have been eying korean in because of some political principle i know that during the vietnam war years there were so many people in seattle who we're against the war and end all of us being at that time in our young twenties and late teens been an active part of the anti war movement i do remember that that he i had lots of arguments with his relatives who are republicans and really big

nixon chance they're going where shark political differences between between my father and some of the relatives but i mean over time those change the meantime change tenth and those changed by it no i think that he has always had a steady good humor and and a lot of patience and that his status on good stead he's trying to see you know crime scenes here is that in her free agents are in her hand well yes it's difficult for all of us to obscure fat and keyser says it's difficult for all of us to observe the deterioration of his health especially the eyes and the steadiness of anderson hands which are so important artists in in the social sense is that his failings in his hearing have cut off a

lot of social interaction with colleagues as well as children and grandchildren and i think that my mother has frustrations in and being a person living with a person who is recently hard of hearing i think that people who maybe have been down for her appearing all their lives have different ways of communicating whereas as an older person when you when you develop that yet it's a real frustrating situation for both the person and their spouse so it's cut off a lot of contacts that he's had with his peers and so on and then not being real steady on his feet no he doesn't go out alive when he hadn't thought he would go out and take the dog for a walk and make a duck students fill in that retired i wouldn't you know their life and so when we haven't had a midair doc so he is a physical movements have

been limited and can he wants that he has a light on a wheelchair he doesn't want to be in a wheelchair be crushed in a wheelchair and so i was kind of limited and in his movements and contact him no i think that it takes more effort on our part to to communicate with him and we really need to come to to remember too to speak very clearly and two to think of things said that they really will capture is a memory imagination because mentally is very very sharp so on there isn't any difficulty in his understanding what it is that were talking about it's just the effort to get to the point of communication and in doing so you use do you

want to know that it does raise there is in my momma oh it's like so i do yeah yeah and the audience you know it also unmentioned the fact that they are going well it's there you're even as a separate question about wage get this question do it pay myself to you we are you now yesterday is

you know quote unquote i don't really read it anyway at you and maybe the most obviously created by an incentive for purposes of this winter and tell you what each one of us since i left the king jr it's commission where i was the director and i have been for about nine years i have been working as a freelance writer and editor and also a curator and a lot of most of my projects have to do with cultural and arts projects within the asian american community for example at bennington of asian american artists of the early twentieth century for the wind occasionally see him marcus is that the conductor and music teacher of garfield high school and he's directly there fantastic job in building up that orchestra from a very small the orchestra to a very large and very excellent orchestra and he's also taught at roosevelt high school he has been a

composer but i think that most of his efforts are taken up in working with his hundred or so music students in the program at garfield high school and divas this is jazz musician and he has been continuously since he was in high school and he has never had yet another job two snoop side job to keep up his music or whatever he's been a professional music musician since he was in high school and he has three cds are the records to his name and then jerry is a fulltime sculpture and he is a nail sculptor who specializes in fabricated bronson stainless steel forms which means they're not cast their cut unformed and he has a studio he works out in the same studio that my father used which is adjacent to my parents' house that's how

our charge is unique in the world are they being pushed without making to you that not having a cast and by incorporating plame in the actually on me is that i think you really have to talk with their kids a little it's a rainy day that that one last thing going to be you that i wanted to point out that tom because the circumstances of history and immigration and discriminatory laws and so on over the years both of my parents have will from the time of childhood they did not grow up within nuclear families they both grew up in an extended family situations and on breaux not broken

family that disjointed family so to speak my mother didn't know her father and her mother was married several times and schwinn mother left sierra she's wearing the sandals left california when she was one and left her mother and came back and lived with relatives in japan until she was thirteen so crisman she came back she didn't really know her mother and new stepfather and my father or his own mother die and his the stepmother became his mother for many years and that family moved from seattle to japan and he lived there from the age of seven to seventeen but at the age of seventeen he and then i i should add that during the time he was growing up in japan his father was absent most of the time because of work that he was there and trick he traded in metal scrap metals and so on says the twenties and thirties when he left japan at age seventeen he

never saw his father again never communicate with him marc responded with him until he became a professor at the university and his father accepted him back into the family so he actually grew up with cousins and uncles here in seattle so i guess i just wanted to point out that that that the fact that we have a very warm nuclear an extended family now and have for seventy years may have something to do with the fact that they wanted to create that in didn't happen and it is so well that was the point that is season when my father left japan at the age of seventeen he actually didn't leave of his own volition he was disowned and when he was a student of growing up in oklahoma area ok um and

fukuyama area he was a very poor student and he he freely admits that he skips school and went sketching out in the hell's he hated the school of that period was very militaristic and it was the pre war japan period and was scary are distasteful to him in addition his own father wanted him to follow the family business and become a commercial traitor which his other brother followed along with but my father wanted to become an artist was very very deeply dedicated to that as as a teenager and a very good artist even at that age and so he left the family and he spent about a few years maybe six months as an apprentice to a carpenter in cold air which his father set up and then his father's ear cut gave him a ticket to get on the road and just to go into the darkened state could buy an end he did land in seattle

and was met by and lived with his cousins and uncles this is disgraceful anything then you as loud as the piano and then i mean we might all be really be maddening ten dollars is something i know i sound leader sheik singer up a second fb fb