Paul Maruyama, my great-grandfather, was born in 1907 in the small Japanese village of Yamanashi. Our family has lived in this village for over four hundred years. Paul was the oldest son of the family, meaning that he was obligated to take care of the family business- running a farm and selling lumber. After he graduated college in 1933, he asked his father if he could visit America for one year; something he had always wanted to do. He promised his father he would return to take over the business. Having no English knowledge, Paul traveled to Colorado, where some extended family was living. His uncle and cousins lived there, and were American citizens, so they helped him learn the basics of English. In order to master his English, he went to a first grade elementary school classroom to learn the language. He absolutely loved the education system and how friendly everyone was to him! Not yet a citizen, Paul then enrolled and was accepted to Western State College in Colorado. He majored in business. With all of this education, it only took him six months to learn English! A year was almost up, but Paul requested one more year in America from his father. After he graduated, Paul headed to New York to sight-see. When he arrived, he took more classes at Columbia University and got a Masters Degree in Business and Accounting. Just five years after he arrived in America, he graduated from Columbia in 1939. At this point, Paul’s father was growing very angry, so Paul traveled back to California. Upon arriving, he completely ran out of money. He began to work as a Japanese language teacher to Japanese-Americans. This is where he found his wife, as she was one of his students. After dating for a while, he proposed to her in October of 1941. He wanted to take her back to Japan with him, and they were set to leave in mid-December. However, everything changed on December 7th. Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, and they were sent to an internment camp in Tuley Lake. They stayed here for four years, and my grandfather was born in the camp in 1944. When they were released, everyone had lost everything. Paul took the lead and found the city of St. Louis to be the only place that would accept them. After meeting with the mayor, he started a Japanese-American community there that still thrives today. Paul worked in a cleaner for years until he saw that the Japanese people were missing the goods and foods of their homeland. Paul proudly opened up a shop selling these things and was a happy and successful man for the entirety of his life. The one thing he always told my grandfather was, “There is no other country on this earth that will give somebody like me, an immigrant to this country, with five hundred dollars in his pocket, the opportunity to succeed.”
