‘We Started From Scratch,’ Iku Matsumoto Says
The Matsumotos
As they sit side by side on a couch in their comfortable South Hill home, Sumio and Iku Matsumoto smile as they recall their first “ramshackle” Spokane house.
They speak at times as one person, often finishing each other’s sentences.
“It’s a doctor’s office now,” Sumio says.
“We paid $3,200 for it,” Iku adds. “It had a potbellied stove.”
A lifetime of work - she as a teacher, he as a landscape gardener - improved their financial lot from that harsh start. But a mutual work ethic isn’t the only thing that has held their marriage together for more than half a century.
When asked why their relationship has endured, 77-year-old Iku credits two things: “The kids and working together.”
Sumio, who will be 79 in March, is even more basic. “We didn’t have any real differences to begin with,” he says. “We got along OK.”
They’ve been a couple since meeting on the University of Washington campus in 1939 or ‘40 (they can’t remember exactly). What they do remember is that only a handful of Japanese-American students attended the UW at the time, so it was easy for them to find each other.
“He was a cute little boy,” Iku says, laughing.
Both earned college degrees before war broke out, he a bachelor’s in business, she both a bachelor’s and master’s (specializing in Shakespeare).
As part of the “evacuation” of Japanese Americans from the coast, Sumio and Iku eventually landed in Spokane, where they got married before he was drafted. After a 13-month hitch, Sumio returned home and they began their life in earnest.
“We started from scratch,” Iku recalls. “We had $120.”
“We were buying our house on payments of $30 a month,” adds Sumio.
They bore and raised three children, all of whom have earned college degrees. Their oldest, a son, is a Spokane surgeon. They have five grandchildren.
Their marriage hasn’t been without strife. For one thing, Iku’s father lived with them for 20 years. “And he was the patriarch,” Iku says. “A Japanese patriarch.”
But even if it had reached that point, and both say it never did, divorce would not have been an option. For Japanese Americans of their generation, divorce was unthinkable.
“Just because you had a fight doesn’t mean you’re going to say ‘I divorce you’ and walk out the door,” Iku says. “We call that ‘gaman’ in Japanese” - which she translates as “Stick-to-it-ivenes.”
And how have they handled the inevitable confilicts of married life? In a word: compromise.
“She flies off the handle, but she gets over it,” Sumio says.
“I’m the kind who gets over it right away,” Iku agrees.
“And I’m not the kind to keep harping on it,” Iku agrees.
“Some people say, ‘We didn’t talk for three days,’ ” Iku says. “And I say, ‘How do you stand it?”
“She gives in, I give in,” says Sumio.
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 color photos