Hatsuki Yamamoto

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Marble Springs 2.0 screenshot of Hatsuki Yamamoto

What we know

1879 - 1944
Born in Kobe, Japan. Married Kenji Yamamoto to fulfill the vow her family had made to the Yamamoto family before Kenji went to California. After working
on the CR&R Railroad, Kenji settled in Marble Springs in 1881. He made money with a laundry and sent for Hatsuki in 1902. The laundry prospered, and they retired to San Francisco in 1925. Hatsuki died shortly after being deported to Japan in 1942. Her son, Ichiro, died in the Japanese Regiment in Italy, 1944.

Mail Order Bride

The man who met the boat
and carried off her bags never spoke—
as though the memory of her old tongue
were as colorless as her cheeks
and the sounds of the new one
were as meaningless as shadows in
the moon-flower she was named for.
They sat facing each other
for two days on the train.
She refingered the golden crane
that Kenji had sent to her parents
to seal the marriage agreement.
His father knew your father
Obasan1 had whispered
through the paper screens.
This stranger who had left so many years ago
and taken a new name in
a new country… .

She pressed the crane back into
Kenji’s thick fingers when he
came to take her from the train.
Silently, she folded the silk kimono
away after the plain foreign wedding
in the marble building
with strange iron-rimmed benches.
Forever silent as the wedding dish
she offered from her knees—
the shadowed and white koi
formed from bacon rinds and corn flour.


Connections

connect-yamamoto.jpg

Portal

Sources

Mills, H.A.,The Japanese Problem in the U.S. New York: The MacMillan Company, 1915.

Ozawa, Fumio. Japanese in Colorado 1900-1910. University of Denver, master's thesis, 1957.

Suzuki, Rokuhiko. The Development of the Inter-mountain Japanese Colonies. Denver, Colorado: The Denver Shimpo Sha, 1909 (?) Biography of 300 Japanese in Colorado. In Japanese. Available at the Western History Department, Denver Public Library.

Portal caption and links

A drawing of 2 interlocked fish.
Hui Sing
Perry Sue Gladston

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Portal for secret connections
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