“NEVER LEAVE THE PAN HANDLE STICKING OUT!”
Dec
4
The only picture we can find of Roy. Around 1931
I was making some stir fry and rice for dinner, Sam walked into the kitchen area, off the entry living room, pushed the pan handle in as he made an “ahem” noise. This happened a few other times. Then one day he said more firmly, “Please don’t leave the pan handle sticking out.”
Another day he came into the kitchen and said, “My Mom taught me to never leave the pan handle sticking out!” Sam was not one to talk a lot nor give me directions and was generally respectful. I’m also not that reactive so I didn’t think much more about the comments.
Over two years later, we had bought our house on 23rd Avenue East and we had our first daughter, born July 15, 1964. This one day, Sam came home from his dental lab in Seattle’s Medical-Dental Building. I was fixing dinner and he more forcefully said, “NEVER LEAVE A PAN HANDLE STICKING OUT!
So, I answered, “OKAY, but why are you so upset about it?”
Sam, hung up his jacket, checked on Lynette sleeping in her bassinet, came back into the kitchen and continued to explain, “Well, I never knew him, but I had a brother. I’m not the second son, that’s why Fred is four years older than me. His name was Roy. Mom says he was old enough to walk and came into her kitchen, reached for the pan handle and pulled the hot water onto himself.”
Rechecking our daughter in her bassinet, I was stunned with chills of what Sam’s parents must have gone through. Roy’s grave is in Kent, WA, where Grandpa Nakanishi bought the twelve family plots in the Japanese Section of the Hillcrest Cemetery in 1925.”
The photo is from Sam’s Dad, Nisaburo’s, black photo album of the 1920s and 30s when Nisaburo was single and first married. It looks like it’s just a little after 9am outside the cafe they once had across from the Immigration Building off 5th and Dearborn in Seattle. The year of the picture is likely 1931.
Ironically, the crease goes right across Roy’s face. None of the other pictures in the album are similarly mutilated. This story still elicits teeth clenching imagination of pain and heartbreak, as we look at the only picture we have of Roy sitting on his mom, Masako’s lap.
