Voyage to America
We boarded a big passenger ship in Kobe in December of 1913. I remember feeling lonely on the ship because men and women were separated during the voyage. The Great Earthquake had just hit San Francisco, and the city was still a ruin, so we went to Seattle, where entering the states was easier.
After Seattle, we boarded a train for Texas. We paid sixty dollars for a sleeper car. We arrived in Houston three days later. At the time, Houston wasn't all that developed. The roads were muddy, just as they were in Japan. The place where we were going to live was a rice farm, which was far away from the towns, and there were few Caucasians except for a Russian mechanic and his family. Some Japanese laborers, who passed away without ever returning to Japan, lived nearby.
I wasn't shocked when I moved to Pierce (near Wharton), and my brother was surprised not to receive a letter saying I was. I had lived in Yokohama, Kobe and Osaka and after those cities, nothing could surprise me. I was brought up in the home of a village councilman. I met people who gave me horseback rides, and we also had a kettle. I wasn't surprised to see Indian cows in America. I was 17 years old. When I first arrived, I thought about how far I had come. These days, Japanese people sometimes visit rice farmers in Texas, but there's no one here anymore.
A man named Maekawa moved to Webster from Osaka to work as a Rice farmer. He associated with Caucasians and developed a good relationship with them. When he was plowing the land using his six horses, he fell from his horse, and was run over by a combine and killed. Because he had a good reputation amongst the Caucasians, they dedicated a train station to him, and it's still there today, Maekawa Station. His tombstone is really big, and visitors from Japan say the cemetery in which he is buried looks like a great park. During World War II, the cemetery groundskeeper hid the tombstone in fear that someone would vandalize it.