Tomi, An Issei Woman
Henry and Tomi (Murakami) and her daughter, Kimi
Henry Murakami worked in California for a numer of years in the early 1900s.
Meeting through Letters
Unlike many Japanese male immigrants to the U.S., Kishiro did not get married to a picture bride. According to his daughter Iyo, (who was recorded in a 1995 oral history interview) Kishiro met a fellow Japanese immigrant named Henry, who came to the Oakland area a bit before he had. This man convinced Kishiro to start conversing with his sister, Tomi, back in Tokyo. One of Kishiro and Tomi's children (Iyo) later said,
"Henry persuaded my father to write to his sister. So my parents began a romance through the mail. They corresponded and exchanged pictures and then he went back to marry her. That's what I understood" (page 5).
Kishiro was successful enough to make a trip back to Japan to visit his family in the countryside (Naegi) and get married to Tomi Murakami, from a prominent sword-making family in Tokyo in 1901, only four years after first coming to the U.S. Kishiro and Tomi settled in Oakland and had 7 children, all born in Oakland, many of whom he sent to U.C. Berkeley for higher education. The U.S. government halted immigration of Japanese men after 1907 with the Gentlement's Agreement. In this agreement, the U.S. government agreed to stop segregating Japanese children in schools and the Japanese government agreed to halt emigration from Japan to the U.S. by not issuing any travel visas. After 1907, wives and children were allowed to immigrate to marry Japanese husbands. However, none of these Japanese immigrants were able to naturalize as U.S. citizens.
Kishiro and Tomi immigrated before this law, which was formalized in the Immigration Act of 1924. Their romance is an interesting story. Why would Tomi leave all that she knew when she came from a prominent family? Did Kishiro intend to move back to Japan after a few years in the U.S.? Did they consider this move a temporary adventure or a permanent decision?
Tomi's mother Ko, and brother, Henry
Tomi Murakami was born December 2, 1882 to mother Ko Tsujikawa and father Tokichi Murakami. (Unknown birth, marriage or death dates). Tokicho was from Tokyo-shi, Kyobashi-ku, Motominato-cho 11 Banchi, the full address of Murakami residence.[Kiyo's Family History] Kyobashi-ku contains the Ginza and is one of the oldest wards in Tokyo.
Map of Tokyo (where Tomi's family lived) before the Kanto Earthquaker of 1923.
Some is known about Tomi's maternal family (Tsujikawa). There was an aunt Iyoko (could this be Tomi's aunt or great aunt?) who was recognized for her beautiful calligraphy and was a scribe in the court of Emperor Meiji. Iyoko's calligraphy was given to Tomi. She later gave this to her third daughter, whom she named after Iyoko. The work is about 15" square, part of the "Tales of Genji". (It now belongs to Tomi's great granddaughter). There also survive some of Iyoko's calligraphy practice books.
Tomi, possilby as a high school aged student, at far right. 1901.
Tomi got married to Kishiro Yamashita on June 2, 1901 in Tokyo in an arranged marriage. Kyobashi-ku (currently Chuo-ku) is adjacent to Azabu-ku where Tomi's first two children, Kimi and Sus, attended Toyo Eiwa and Hijirizaka grammar and Azabu Middle schools, respectively. [Karent Tei Yamashita's 1972 Yamashita family research] Tomi was proud of her Samurai heritage. Tokichi was a retired samurai whose family became sword makers. Ko was a patron of the arts and held "salons" in their Tokyo home to entertain artists. Kimi and Sus were exposed to this environment at the Murakami residence. Tomi said that the Murakamis were the "true samurais" in the Yamashita family (as opposed to Kishiro's family which had bought the title of samurai.[Chiz's memories of Tomi] To see more photos from Tomi's family in Japan see the Collection, Family in Japan, Pre World War II. Note: the items with the title Murakami are Tomi's family in Tokyo, Japan and the ones titled Kohei are Kishiro's Family in Naegi, Japan.
Tomi's parents, Mother, Ko (Tsujikawa) Murakami and father Tokichi Murakami.
Left to right: Kimi (Tomi's first child), Sus (Tomi's second child),and Ko (Tomi's mother)
A Future in Two Countries
After coming to the United States in 1901 shortly after marrying Kishiro in Japan, Tomi returned to Japan in 1911 with her three chidlren, Kimi, Sus and Chizu. Tomi brought Kimi and her younger brother Sus to Japan to be raised and educated because Tomi and Kishiro, like many immigrants, were most likely planning on eventually returning to Japan. Tomi and Kishiro may have wanted their oldest children to be fully acculturated in Japanese society so that they could have a future in Japan. But they could not send all of their children to be taken care of by their relatives either. Kimi was eight years old and had just finished 3rd grade at Lincoln Elementary School in Oakland. Sus was 5 years old. Kimi was sent to be with her maternal grandmother in Tokyo, and attended Toyo Eiwa Girls Academy in Tokyo, a Canadian Methodist missionary boarding school.
The photo below shows Kimi with her mother. Kimi looks happy in this image. Her mother did not tell her the whole truth about why they were visiting Japan, to leave her daughter there and travel across the ocean to return to Oakland to help run the business.
Tomi, seated with brother, Henry to right and daughter, Kimi to left. Tomi visited Japan to deliver her eldest son to Naegi to live with her husband's family and to deliver her eldest daughter, Kimi to live with her own family in Tokyo to be raised and educated.
Family separation is often a part of immigration stories, and this family separation left emotional scars. Kimi in later life described how her mother snuck away, and left her in a new country with relatives she had never met before.
To see images of Kimi's childhood in Oakland and Japan.
Sending an eldest child back to Japan was a relatively common practice among Japanese immigrants to the U.S. at that time. And after their education in Japan, these children often returned to the U.S. where they were born and were called Kibei. See definition of Kibei on Denhso Project. Tomi and Kishiro sent both Sus and Kimi to Japan for some of their childhood. They may have wanted their first children to be raised there in order to understand the Japanese culture and to be able to succeed when the family decided to move back to Japan. Like many immigrants, Tomi and Kishiro may have, at least in the beginning, had the idea of returning home to their country of origin.
Kimi stayed with the Murakamis during vacations and breaks from Toyo Eiwa. (Sus stayed with the Murakamis during the Hijirizaka boys' grammar school years since Hijirizaka was not a boarding school. Azabu Middle School was a boarding school so he lived in Azabu during the school year. Sus most likely spent his vacations and breaks in Naegi with his father's family, the Yamashita's.)
Tomi returned to Japan around 1928 as this photo shows the passengers of the ship. She went back and forth to Japan a number of times. She went again in 1925 and visited both her mother and Kohei when she fed the deer at Nara. (We only know about this trip from a few photographs- one below. Another above, shows her on the ship SS Shinyo Maru dated 1928.
After Kibei children reunited with their families, often having younger siblings who were not sent to Japan to be educated, they were culturally distinct from the rest of their family, a fact that would create divisions during wartime incarceration as referenced in the anthology, "Major Problems in Asian American History," edited by Lon Kurashige and Alice Yang (2015). The photo that is in the Tailor exhibit (here) also shows her in Japan at that time. She would return again to Japan in 1953 (Source Notebook 1900s - 1950s Page 28, yet to be uploaded).
Tomi, pictured at right with her baby Chizu on her lap, are accompanying picture brides on a ship from Japan to the U.S. West Coast.
Tomi, at far right with Chizu sitting in floation tube
Tomi with Ko, her mother, undated.
Tomi converted to Christianity in California after meeting a nice woman and apparently asking her why she was so nice. [Kay's Oral History Interview, 1991]
When Tomi was incarcerated during the war, she got a postive reference sent to the War Relocation Authority by the two pastors of her church. Frank Herron Smith described her as a capable church widow who had sent many of her children to college because of her laundering business. One of her sons (John) later became a Methodist pastor and was mentored by Frank Herron Smith and was guided to attend Garrett Seminary.
After the war, Tomi would remain a part of the church and had a large group of friends through the church, mostly women, which are pictured in her photographs from the 1960s.
Oakland Japanese Methodist Church, circa 1920(?)
Oakland Japanese Methodist Episcopal Church, 1907.Tomi is in the first row, fourth from the left.
Tomi with Church Friends (?), Unknown Date. Tomi is standing in second row from bottom, at far left, holding a child.
Her daughter, Kay, described her family's conversion to Christianity after coming to the U.S. in an interview in the 1990s:
“But I should explain to you that my parents were not Christians when they came to the United States. A lady, Mrs. Harrison, was very kind to my mother and my mother became curious, and after she got to really know her asked her what made her the way she was. She explained to her that it was because she was a Christian. My mother became, therefore, very interested in Christianity in general. Then, I don’t know at what point, but the Methodist missions became active in Oakland and all the way up and down California, and my mother became a Christian. My father was not. He was, in fact, anti-Christian. It was not until about the time I was born that he became a Christian. By then, he did not smoke, he did not drink, but he did not go to church. Yet when he died, we, the children, discovered that he had worn out [two] Bibles, so that indicates something. My brother became a minister later.” [Oral History Interview, 1991]
Along with many other Issei (first generation Japanese immigrant) ladies, she ran the social activities of the Japanese Methodist Church in Oakland Church, which became the center of the family’s social life.
As the Issei lived in Calfornia, they put down roots. Issei women found that they had more freedoms in the United States than in Japan. At least, they did not have their husband’s parents to care for. They could be active in their social lives, organize events with the church
The Oakland Japanese Methodist Episcopal Church was later known as the West Tenth Methodist Church.
The white stucco building pictured in the sepia tone photographs was the congregation's first building it purchased outright in 1907 at 795 10th Street (at the corner of West Street and 10th Street) in Oakland. The congregation had formed earlier, in 1887. To read a short history of the church and the congregation that survives today, see here. This history contextualizes the new building acquisition as a milestone made in the wake of the devastating fire of 1907 in San Francisco which led many Japanese to move from San Francisco to Oakland. To see a historic map of Oakland which shows this intersection, now replaced by 1960s redevelopment, see here.
You are currently in the exhibit "Tomi, An Issei Woman."
This exhibit explores Tomi an immigrant woman who married Kishiro and started a life with him in Oakland, ran her own business in dry cleaning and alteration, lived with a hernia for 12 years, filed a patent with the U.S. patent office, raised 7 kids and corresponded in cursive English writing out Japanese phonetically.
To jump to another exhibit, click on an icon below:
