To the, some valley in Oregon, some man he knew had a, some kind of an orchard there. And he used to tell how that, that summer, that he tramped all through those mountains and then when he was just staying at the man's place, he had found a meditation stone in the riverbed someplace. He had a dog that he used to take and he'd stay up all night doing Zazen and the dog was to, to keep it, to scare away the snakes. And then he said during that time that he was thinking about going back to, to Japan, coming back to, to go further with his Zen study. And so he sat down during that summer and he worked out the answers to a hundred koans.

[01:11]

He solved them so that he would be all ready for Sokatsu when he got back. And when eventually, some years later, he did go back, every answer was wrong. The third summer, he got a job as a paymaster on the Union Pacific Railway. They were putting in a new line or a double track or something way out in Utah and he acted as paymaster and tramped all around in between times in that, in the, around Salt Lake, the Salt Lake and South Salt Lake and, and all of this time, but he was tramping. He was writing and he had a continuous outlet for these essays and stories, writing up the

[02:14]

stories, for instance, if, of these people living in the wilderness and all kinds of things, imaginative stories and so forth. He, his outlet was the Chuo Koron, which of course was the, and still is, the big literary magazine over here. And he also wrote for the Hokubei, he wrote for this Hokubei Shimpo until, until the war, until 1941. He continued to write for that, always wrote for that. But his money came from the, he got considerable money. It helped support his mother, who was over here. Left the mother over here, of course. And at any rate, he was becoming a very popular writer and his name was getting well known.

[03:15]

One time when I was at Northwestern University in Evanston, somebody, a Japanese I knew was working in the library there and he took me to show me, they had bought, for some reason or other, a complete file of, going way back to the Chuo Koron. And I found these early things of Soke Anson in this, in these magazines. Every month he had something, regularly. Then, about 1913, his mother wasn't very well in, in Tokyo. And his wife was pregnant a third time and she was not very happy in America. She never learned to speak English. She, he said, oh, said she looked like an Eskimo. Or, and she was very happy with, when she could be with some of, with the Indian women

[04:22]

up around, outside of Seattle. Are there some islands up there or something like that in the bay? Oh, no. Because I think they spent, one time before they got settled in Seattle proper, that they had a shack on one of the islands up there where there were quite a few Indians. And she was very happy with that kind of life, but was very unhappy with, with civilized life, so to speak. And so in 1914, when she was, the mother was not well, his mother, and she was pregnant again, she took the two children and went back to Japan and left him here. Then he went to New York and he got there shortly after the war had begun.

[05:26]

And well, I guess that we didn't go into the war till 1917, did we? So it was, he was there before the, before we went into the war. At any rate, he went to New York and he did much the same thing there to earn a living. He worked for several different furniture companies. At that time, they wanted carving or trimming for fine furniture and that sort of thing. And that is the way he earned his living. He began by that time to live in Greenwich Village and got to know some of the poets of those, those days. He knew, I know he knew, oh gosh, my terrible, my memory.

[06:33]

Shall I say that one of the first of the beat poets, who would that be? He died a few years ago. Bodenheim. Bodenheim. I happen to know Bodenheim, too. He was a friend of my brother's and he was one of that Chicago crowd. And another person that he knew was Crowley. And while his interest in Zen kept, kept on, on the other hand, right at this period, he was finding out a lot about life. He had no wife and he never drank. His father's dying of drink made him feel that there was nothing he wanted to do. And, but I think he had rather a somewhat gay life, at least, in New York in that time. He tried to enlist in the army after the war broke out in the American army.

[07:39]

But, and there was some talk at that time of starting a, or building up a group of Japanese living in America. But it didn't come to anything, so he didn't do that. And in 1919, in the summer, he used to speak about it this way. He was, it was an awfully, awfully hot day in July and he was walking down the street and suddenly on the street, he saw the carcass of a dead horse. And something happened to him psychologically, and he went straight home to his rooms and packed up his things and got a ticket for Japan and went back to Sokatsu. He remained, he could not remain in Japan longer than two years and keep the type of

[08:52]

passport that he, or the type of visa that he had. He had a semi-permanent visa for America. Which was good only, or could not, became invalid if he remained out of the country for more than two years. So when he went back this time, 1919, he went back to his wife and to his mother and the three children and had apparently a very unhappy time. And all the time was writing for Chuo Koron, had several books published and was quite a literary figure in Tokyo at that time. At the end of that, which would be 1921, he had to come back to New York. And at that time, he also went to live in Greenwich Village, but his carving had improved

[09:59]

to the extent where he could carve and repair jades and different things of that sort, antique wood carvings and so forth. So he went to work for a man by the name of Edward Farmer, who was one of the most luxurious stores selling jade lamps and porcelain bowls and all sorts of Chinese ceramics and jades and things like that. And he worked for Farmers, I guess, as far as I know, continuously until he went back again in 19—what—he went back 1926 or 7, I don't know which it was exactly. And all that time he was writing.

[11:01]

And he told me that he used to make on an average of $200 a month, which was a lot of money in those days, with his articles, because he had an article every single month that Chuo Koron— That's just from his Japanese income alone? Yeah. And that was given to—I mean, his wife went regularly to Chuo Koron and got the check, which was for what he'd send in. And asking him why he was popular, he said that one thing, one reason, was that he was—that his language was a curious mixture due to the education he'd had. His father had begun with classical Chinese and, of course, classical K'anbun, Confucius

[12:05]

and he knew reams of the Rongo and so forth by heart. And then there had been this smattering of Shinto material that had been thrown in and the expressions of the early Japanese language. Then he had—another part of the little side part of the story is that his real mother's aunt, one of her aunts—aunt, would it be? No, it was one of her sisters—was a geisha mistress in Osaka and had a geisha house. And he used to come and when he was older, in his, what, 18, 19, somewhere along in there, he would come for a vacation and spend it with this aunt who had the geisha house and

[13:14]

play around, fool around with the girls in the geisha house. So he learned that kind of language. And she had another sister who was—whose husband was a famous—now let me see what you call it— a joruri singer. And she sang with him. They often gave programs together. The husband was more famous than the wife, but they did many things together and they were— they performed in what we would call vaudeville houses in Osaka particularly. And so he was—became very well acquainted with them. He was very fond of them. And he tells of one time that he got his uncle to let him come on.

[14:22]

He was very good as a mimic and he had quite a bit of dramatic talent. And his uncle let him come on in his place on the stage and perform. Some of his tales about going around with these geisha girls and these maiko, you know, that his aunt had—was the mistress of were very amusing. Because by that time, at the time that he was going to the university, going to art school, and going to studying, beginning his zen study, he came upon his own mother again. He was then about 18 years old. And it was after that that he knew these—that he picked up her relatives. And she married a second time to two fairly good-sized families.

[15:26]

And so—but he picked up that relationship. Well, he said that his writing then was a mixture. It began with—it had Confucian, old Japanese from Shinto, and of course his poetry studies, his Japanese language poetry studies. His geisha lingo, the stuff that he picked up from his joruri relatives, and zen lingo, and then mixed up. And he would write, when he wrote essays and stories and things like that, there would be the play of these various types of expression and idioms and so forth used, which people found very, very entertaining, and which was one of the reasons for the success of his writing. Well, as I say, he came back—he stayed in America then until 1926.

[16:34]

It was there five times, five years perhaps the second time. And I don't know—well, I can tell you this, that before—by the end of that time, toward the end of that time, his interest in zen had become such that his Greenwich Village relations were a little different than they had been. For instance, he—at that time, the Orientalia had just been opened. And Orientalia was set up by Mr. Brown and Kumaraswami's son. And the old man, Kumaraswami, as I remember the story, backed his son or helped him at any rate in the organization or in the getting Orientalia on its way. And one of the things that Orientalia did in its earliest days was to have evenings of talks and discussions and things on Oriental art.

[17:43]

And Kumaraswami, the old man, spoke down there. And Sokyon, for the first time, gave some talks on zen, which would go back, what, to maybe 1924, 25, somewhere. And I think he felt that was the first time that people had really talked about zen, to—anyone had talked about zen to American audiences. Not that he had any special success with it at all. I mean, it was just that he was—knew these people at Orientalia, and they just asked him to talk about this particular subject at one of their—at some of—several of these evenings that they had at Orientalia. Then he came back again. And he came back then in about either the end of 25— well, he had to get back 28, so he must have come back in 26.

[18:47]

And when he came back this time, he devoted a great deal of time to his zen, because he really, he says, had finished his zen study the time before. But this time he came back to make certain that he hoped he could become a roshi, which, of course, eventually he did. In 1928, Sokatsu gave him his inka and gave him the teaching inka. But before that, while he was here, he had one of the great shocks of his life. That was that he went one day to Chuo Koron, and he was told that his day was over.

[19:58]

They didn't need anything more. That there were other men coming up who were taking his place, and that his vogue was finished. And one of the very pathetic stories which he would tell was of how he came back home after that, being told in the office that they didn't need an article for the next month, and how he threw himself on the floor Japanese man fashion and wept bitterly, realizing that his literary career was at an end. So, he went back again in 1928 to New York.

[20:59]

Now he was a roshi and could teach properly. But he didn't find anybody when he first went back who, and he was still apparently quite distressed about many things. He was completely finished with his wife. That was, that's another story too, it's complicated. And he felt that he was completely alone with nothing but his zen, because the teacher had, his teacher had told him that now he was, his life was to be devoted to teaching zen. And no more earning his living by some other manner, and playing with zen on the side. And so at first he didn't know quite what to do.

[22:03]

He didn't have anybody to, any group to go to, he was more or less alone. And he got a commission from some other magazine, not Chuo Koron, or magazine or newspaper, I don't know which it was, to write a series of articles on the various foreign people who lived in New York City that made up the New York City population. And so when he got back to New York, instead of going back to Greenwich Village and picking up that type of friend again, acquaintance, he lived for two or three months apiece with an Italian family, a Portuguese family, and eventually with a Negro family in New York City. I don't know how many others he did, the Negro family was the last one.

[23:10]

He was forced to do something to eat, and he went to Yamanakas. Whether he had known Mr. Mia, who was then one of the most important men in the New York office of Yamanaka, whether he had known him previously or how he knew him, I don't just exactly know. But at any rate, Mr. Mia was very interested in Zen. He had studied Zen with whom I don't know either, but he had studied some previously. And so he gave Soke-On $500 and went around and hunted for a place for him to live and to begin to give his lectures. And because he felt it was terrible for this man to be living with the Negro family,

[24:20]

as I say, that was the last family that he lived with. But he always spoke very beautifully of these Negro people. He liked them very much. He liked the Italians too very much. So Mr. Mia himself arranged the lease on two rooms with a little kitchen on West 70th Street, 63 West 70th Street, and gave him $500. And then there was a Japan Club in New York at that time. This was before the last war, of course, quite a while before. This Japan Club was quite a prosperous institution. It was run largely for the heads of businesses who were established in New York, heads of the banks and import-export houses and Mikimoto Pearls and so forth.

[25:24]

And it was not a place to live, but they used to go there for dinner and have Japanese food and they had reception rooms and they could play cards or play Go or what have you, gamble a little bit and so forth. So a group of those men who were heads of businesses, all very good standing here in New York, had a class and he began to talk to them on Zen a certain number of nights a month. Mr. Mia had been instrumental in starting that. And I don't know how the first people came, whether Mr. Mia brought them or how they came, but little by little people began to come to listen to him. And the Yamanakas also gave him, they had a number of antiques that had to be repaired.

[26:33]

I remember one thing particularly that I heard of, a great big old wooden statue, about the height of this room. I've seen photographs of it, which Mr. Mia had sold to one of the American art museums and that had some repair work to do. Well, that kind of thing they gave to Sokeon to do. He did it at home. He would never go out to do anything anymore. They would send a statue or two, a big one or a small one. That he had to go out to do, that big one. They had it in a special hall or something in some building, place they rented a loft or something. But that and what he took up in collections and things like that was what he lived on.

[27:43]

In the beginning, in the early days, he had a couple of rich women, one in particular, who wanted to finance the whole business and put him up in a big house and so forth. But he wasn't interested in that. And he was there in that house on 63rd Street. They moved in about 1930, the beginning of 1930. And the next year, with the people that, Mr. Mia and others, they had gotten together. They formed the, they incorporated the first then Institute of America. That was April, I think, 1931. But now I'll take a rest for a minute.

[28:52]

I've been talking a long time. His wife came back here and they had a third child, which was a daughter. And after Sokaean had come back in 1928, his mother was always living with him, or rather, long before that. Shortly after she came back, which would be, and the third child was born, which would be about 1914, 15 in there, she went a little strange in the head. And she became infatuated with a married man who taught Christianity.

[29:59]

No, he didn't teach, who, well, it was a kind of a new religion of the time among the poor people in the cities, in Tokyo. And they had quite a time about that because she, that was quite goings on. And then she went off her head and they took her out of the street one day when she was down on her hands and knees, worshipping a horse. And she was in a sanitarium for two or three years after that. When she came out, she became a Christian and she became a very violent Christian. And by this time, when Sokaean went back the last time, I say he found living with her

[31:08]

impossible. And when Sokaean went back the last time, I say he found living with her impossible. And she was so, she was a very yakamashi person. I know her. And she's now dead. She was killed in a street accident somewhere in her late 80s. And, but she was one of the people I came to see and his younger daughter when he was, when I came back after the war. And she decided that she wanted her younger daughter to be a Christian minister. She was a very beautiful, beautiful girl, took after her father. And since the boy, the two of first children had been born in America, they were American

[32:10]

citizens. And at least they could enter into America without passports and things. So the boy, when he got to be 21, decided that he wanted to go back to America and the mother thought that he should go back. So the boy went back and he took after the mother, he looked very much like her. And he was certainly not normal in his head and never was normal. And after he'd been in this country for about a year and had no, really no fixed place of abode, he never left the West Coast until after his father died. He, she sent the second, the first oldest sister to look after him. And the oldest sister went to Seattle and the boy then left Seattle.

[33:16]

It's very complicated and I don't remember all the details of it. And the girl married a Japanese boy up there in Seattle who wasn't really very much of a fellow. And he came from a very good, a very prosperous family of ship chandlers in Seattle. And they supplied the fishing boats that went up to Alaska and they had a small canning place in Alaska, a salmon canning place. And the boy would not, not Sokan's son, but the man, the fellow that the girl married, the daughter married, went up with his father to the canning business in Seattle, I mean up in Alaska in the summertime. And he drank rather heavily.

[34:19]

And finally, after he'd married the girl, got into a fight with his family and was disowned and sent off. The two of them drifted down to California where the brother was by this time. And the brother was with, with somewhere near Senzaki, used to see him from time to time. And he worked as a house boy for a while, as a gardener. He never was able to stick at anything very long. Where he is, I have no idea. Today, I've never heard that he's died. But at any rate, he, I don't, as I say, I don't know whether he's dead or not. But then going along a long distance, the girl and her husband, who had been in Southern California at the time of the war, when the big war broke out, were among those people

[35:28]

who were sent to a camp in Southern Arkansas from the West Coast. And she had three small children. And life, of course, the camp was not too easy. And at that time, this was 1944. This is going ahead a good deal to tell this part of the story. The boy or the husband had, wasn't a bad fellow, but he was a very heavy drinker. And he was not very, he was rather quick-tempered and so forth. But anyway, they were down there in this camp. And at one time, I'll explain later. In 1944, Sogan was in Arkansas.

[36:31]

And the girl and her, brought her three children up to see him. Her youngest one was just a little baby then. She was the daughter that he was most fond. He had, of course, never seen very much of the one who was born in Japan. But he was, this girl had some talent in painting. And she had some talent in writing also. And she and her father, after she came to America, had been in very close correspondence. And he was, she never came to New York. She never would. And she, after she married her, this man, Inoue was his name, Inoue. But at any rate, after the war was over, and Sogan, of course, was dead by that time. And they went back to the, to California District and from the camp.

[37:40]

And her husband got a job on one of these great vegetable ranches up near, outside of Stockton, California. And he was in charge of the maintenance of the trucks that they had on this big farm. And they, she was very unhappy on this farm because it was just, I don't know if you've ever seen those big vegetable, huge ranches out there. Up in the, there's, aren't there islands or something like that in California, which isn't California? In the Sacramento. Sacramento River. And it's a wonderful alluvial soil, isn't it? I mean, just grows vegetables almost like a hothouse grows them. And, well, at any rate, they were on one of the, this ranch was on one of these islands

[38:48]

in the Sacramento River. And one day, about a year after Sogan died, maybe a little more than a year, I got a telephone call from her husband, and I was in New York, saying that my wife has committed suicide and I am held for murder. Please come and help us. They had, the girl had met me in Arkansas. So I got on a plane and went out to Stockton and went out to this ranch. That's how I know what it was like. And the Ted, as his name was, had, who really is a nice guy, even though he is a heavy drinker,

[39:57]

has been, had gone out and got sizzling drunk, come home, and they had had a serious quarrel. And she had been showing symptoms of insanity herself, being very odd. And she went out in the dark of the night and jumped into the river, and they found her body early in the morning, some distance down the river, caught in the reeds. And the police, she had some sort of an injury, body injury, and the police thought that he had killed her and thrown her body into the river. So I stayed out there about a week, living in the ranch house that belonged to the owner of the ranch, who was awfully nice, awfully nice man. He liked Ted very much, didn't like his drinking, but he was good at his job.

[41:03]

And he, of course, she, and we got everything all straightened up, and it was all proved that the girl had committed suicide without a doubt. And Ted was left with these three children, the oldest one's a girl, Mary, who was about nine or ten by that time, and two little boys. And after that, Ted went into Los Angeles and bought a garage, and has, I guess, as far as I know, he's still running a garage. I see him always, not always, but I see him, yes, always when I'm in Los Angeles, I see Ted. He's now a man getting on towards 60. But his, the boy, the oldest son, Minoru, is the star of the family. Mary married, I don't know who, I haven't seen her since she married. Yeah, they're supposed to be his grandchildren. Grandchildren. But Minoru, who was the second child in that family, is like his mother, and he's a

[42:12]

tremendously hard worker. He lives now in San Francisco. He worked in his father's garage days and went to school nights, graduated from college, and went to a public accountant's school at night, and married a perfectly beautiful Japanese girl who worked in a bank, and who comes from a very nice family. And he is now, has a big job in a brokerage house in San Francisco, and they have two little girls, and the youngest, older one, I haven't seen the baby. I will see her when I go to California this time. The older child, who's about five, is a dream, she's so beautiful. The wife is very charming, and Minoru and I are completely devoted to each other.

[43:15]

That's the end of that part of the family. And the youngest daughter, what happened to her, though, that might be interesting. Well, I'll tell you, that's quite interesting, but entirely different. The second, this older daughter was here and married to this, to Ted, and the mother then wrote that the younger daughter was really, she was in more or less communication with Sokyan, and he would send her some money when he had it. The mother, his mother was still alive, and there was still some money from her, from bonds that she had inherited, these old ones from Meiji times. And she wanted to send the girl to college because she, or the university, because she was such a brilliant girl. So Sokyan sent money over to, for her education, and then when she graduated, he found out

[44:24]

that what the college was, the mother had lied completely about it, that what the college was, was a Christian theological seminary of some kind, and when the girl graduated, she was a minister, a Christian minister. So he was very much annoyed that money that he had either gotten from Buddhist comfort, should we say, was used to educate this girl as a minister. Well, she promptly married another Japanese Christian minister. This second daughter? Yes, this younger daughter. And I've forgotten now what her name is. Why she was, I would know her, and she's really beautiful. And when I came back after the war, they were living way up north in, oh gosh, way, way up north of Tokyo, in a very interesting old town.

[45:28]

They had a little bit of a shack, and the mother and the, and the daughter and the husband, and they had, they've since had another child. They have two children. They've been down in Wakayama, and I think they moved again, but they are, she is still a Christian minister, and she kept her mother, the old, Sokyan's mother died before he went back the last time, I guess, but, or sometime after that. But the, Mrs. Sasaki lived for a long time. It's only a few years ago that she, as I said, she was killed in an automobile accident. She lived to be something like 80, and she was a character. She was something to see. Well, that disposes practically.

[46:31]

What happened to Sokyan's son, finally? I don't know what happened to him. He's still in America. As far as I know, I have never, I must ask Minoru. I suppose Minoru will know something, Minoru's father, maybe Ted will know something. But, well, Minoru is such a nice man. What's his surname? Inouye, I-N-O-U-Y-E, I-N-O-U-Y-E, Inouye. He's such a nice man. He works too hard, and he's one of these people that works nights, you know, and so forth. But, oh, he's awfully nice man. And he and I are completely devoted to each other. I mean, when he found I was, though he lives in San Francisco, he found I was, he was going to be out of San Francisco when I was there. And I was going to be two or three days down in Los Angeles.

[47:34]

He jumped in the car and came right down to Los Angeles to have dinner with me. And that's all he had. He had to go back the next morning. But we're just completely devoted to each other. I'm terribly fond of him. And his wife was a charming, charming girl, and quite beautiful too. And the child is a dream. Just, I took them out for lunch. And the last time I was in San Francisco, and I took them to one of the restaurants in that hotel across from the, something with a tower across from Fairmont. Top of the, the Mark, Mark Hopkins, Mark Hotel, whatever it was, one of the restaurants there. And, oh, more people came over and spoke to the child. I mean, several ladies and men stopped and looked at her and laughed, you know, and smiled,

[48:36]

said a word as they went by. She's ravishing, the child is. She's about, she was about five then. And so very sweet, not conscious of it. I mean, you'd rather make anything of it, but she's, oh, she's ravishingly beautiful. Her mother's pretty enough, but the child is, at five, is a dream, dream child. Well, now we go back to Sokyan, yes. Now, I can't tell you very much about his early, I can't tell you very much till 1937 or 1938 when I came to New York. I met him, I came to Japan in 32 first, and I had never heard of him. And when I came in 1934, I was in New York

[49:44]

in 34, yes, 34. I was in New York looking for a boarding school for Eleanor. And I knew Mr. Miya through my Yamanaka friends, and I knew the Yamanaka family, the old Yamanaka family. And Mr. Miya asked me if I would like to meet Sokyan, meet Sokyan. This was 1934 after I had been here twice. See, I'd been here first in 32, and then I had come in 33 and gone and stayed a whole year. So this was in the, well, actually, this was the, yes, this was 34. And he, so he said, well, I'll have a dinner at the Japan Club and have you meet him.

[50:48]

And, but I had already, since I had been back in this country after two days in studying over here, I had heard of him through the Buddhist Lodge magazine, I think, in London. I think that's where I got the first information about his existence at all. Because I'd heard Mr. Suzuki speak of him, but Mr. Suzuki, the Suzuki's didn't approve of Sokatsu at all, and therefore nobody connected with them should have any introduction or know anything about Sokatsu or meet him or anything like that. So, and because Sokyan was Sokatsu's disciple, he was outside the pale of their interest at all. So I had written him and I said I was coming to New York and I would like to meet him. So he made an appointment for me to come to see him in the afternoon.

[51:53]

And I went in the afternoon and we had a spitfire conversation. He was, he had, I heard and heard from other people, made a big, made some very nasty remarks about these American women that go to Japan to study when there's plenty of Zen in America and so forth, and I don't know what all now I've forgotten. And so, as I say, we, it was like two cats spitting. Then he began to, I think he'd be a very, he could ruffle up like a cock exactly, you know, he was, he was a very temperamental man. And that, toward the end of that afternoon, it was only a very short, maybe an hour or

[53:05]

less than an hour, interview, he said that he had found it, this I think is very interesting, he said he had not yet decided what kind of Zen teacher to be, what kind of attitude to take with students. And he was, sometimes he thought he would like to be, that he should be like Sokatsu, the same attitude and so forth. And then, sometimes, he thought he ought to resemble his own fathers, his attitude to resemble his own fathers. And I remember saying to him, and he's looking so shocked when I said it,

[54:06]

I said, why don't you be yourself? And I think that's probably the first dent I made in him. At any rate, that same night was the night that Mr. Miya had the party. And then from that time on, from time to time, when I was in New York, I would meet him and I mean, I'd have him for dinner. But he was always a very prickly kind of person. If you said you'd send a car to get him, he'd say, I can walk. And if you didn't send a car, he would say, it's a fine way, no sense of how to treat a roshi. That was the way it was. Well, then, of course, I went, Mr. Abbott went to the sanitarium, and Eleanor was married

[55:10]

to Alan, and I came back again. And from the summer of 1938, then I picked up my sons and studied with him, and I was there continuously. And it was 1941 when we moved from the other house, I mean, from the 73rd Street, we moved over to the institute over to the house that I had bought on East 65th Street and furnished. And my mother was to have the top apartment, and I had the next, third, fourth floor. And then Mr. Sasaki had the third floor, and then we had the second and the ground floor for the institute, the way the thing was arranged.

[56:11]

And then just exactly one month to the day before we moved in, because Mr. Everett had died two years before that. And one month to the day before we moved into the house, my mother died. And then we moved, we did move in, and a friend of mine took her apartment. And we opened the institute there on the 7th of December. We had the first meeting, 7th of December, 1941. Pearl Harbor Day. 6th, 6th of December, Saturday night. The day before Pearl Harbor Day. Yeah. And of course, for months we had, we didn't know we had had previously, but

[57:15]

that there had been previously. But from that time on we knew. There were two FBI people under the Cosmopolitan Club veranda 24 hours a day. And of course, Mr. Sasaki was interviewed many times by FBI, and so was I. But the meetings were permitted to be continued until June. On the 6th, on the 15th of June, he gave his last, 1942, he gave his last talk. And the next day he was taken to, down to Poli Square, and then to Ellis Island, and finally to Camp Meade, outside of Baltimore. And he was interned altogether from June 15, 1942, until August 15, 1943, which was just,

[58:16]

what, 12, 14 months, wasn't it? And the story of how, what took place and how we got him back and all is an hour story and a regular thriller in itself. Then he hadn't been back many weeks, and he had been, when he, the question was, could he be allowed to remain in the East Coast area as an alien? Because he was released from internment. But the question was, would he be permitted to remain in the East, or would he have to go to the central part of the United States or Denver or someplace like that, way from the coast? So he was called down to talk before, to be interrogated, in a most friendly way,

[59:17]

but interrogated by a group of military men who would decide whether he would be dangerous to the East Coast or not. And a number of his pupils, including myself, were asked to come down too. And we were all interrogated, and he was interrogated a long time. And the men were really, there were about seven or eight of these generals, or not generals, but certainly colonels and people like that, sitting at the table as part of a board of the examination. But they kept him a long, long time, and we were awfully worried because there were, as I say, four or five of us went down with him, who were subpoenaed to come at the same time. And we were all kept maybe 10 or 15 minutes only, but he was kept 45 minutes. And we were worried about that.

[60:20]

But when he came out, he said, oh, no, they've been very nice to him indeed. And the thing that had interested them particularly was the fact that he'd been in Manchuria during the end of the Russo-Japanese War, and they questioned him about everything that he knew about terrain and so forth that he'd learned in Manchuria or seen or knew about as the result of his staying there during that time. And so we all got into a cab and we were about to go to Longsheng for dinner. As a matter of fact, we went to Longsheng for dinner. And one of them, I don't know, in the Fuli Square is downtown a ways, and somewhere along in there we went for dinner. And he suddenly got awfully white at the dinner table. And he said, I don't feel very well.

[61:20]

I think I better go home. So we got him into a cab and started home. And he hadn't gone very far when he started violently vomiting. And of course, he'd had a coronary thrombosis. And we knew that his blood pressure was high. His father had died of high blood pressure, which they thought was attributable to his drinking. But in the case of Sokyan, there had been reasons for him to go to the doctor long before the war. And he'd had to have an operation for hemorrhoids before that, and they discovered that he had normally very high blood pressure. As one of these, apparently, high blood pressure is an inherited, a certain type of

[62:22]

neurovascular situation is something quite common.

[62:29]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ