Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Mary Hirata Interview
Narrator: Mary Hirata
Interviewers: Beth Kawahara (primary), Alice Ito (secondary)
Location: Seattle, Washington
Date: March 27, 1998
Densho ID: denshovh-hmary-01-0002

MH: Well, my father's friend was going to Japan to get his wife, and he had asked this man if he would find him a wife. So, he must have been thirty-two, I guess, because it was, Mom came in '13 and he came in 1900. So this man found my mother, and so they made arrangements for her to come over. She was saying that the one thing she remembers mostly about it was a lot of the ladies had gotten pictures of their future spouses when they were very young, and so when the boat docked in Tacoma, they were really upset, because here were these old men waiting for these young girls. My mother was much older, so it didn't bother her, and she knew what she was, where she was going, but she said she felt very sorry for some of the girls, because they were very young. And she said a lot of them just ran away.

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