Tales of my Grandfather

My maternal grandfather, Harris Gary Hudson (1888-1982), penned a five-volume memoir of his life over a five-year period in the 1960s. He was then living with my grandmother in retirement communities in Santa Barbara and Laguna Hills. He was also rapidly losing his eyesight, and when I say "penned," I mean he manually typed the manuscript himself. And when I say manually, I mean on a manual typewriter. He was that kind of man.

My grandfather had a long career in academia as a professor of history and a college administrator. He also had a most interesting childhood: born in Japan to missionary parents in 1888 and growing up in the Foreign Concession in Osaka with four siblings. 

His memoirs cover these early days in depth, including his stint in World War I, and his days as a scholar at Oxford University. 

The entire manuscript -- now edited and digitized-- is linked here. 

Thanks to my sister, Leslie Boba, mother, Elizabeth Boba, and cousin, Jared Scarborough, for editing the manuscript.

Family Photos

From left: My grandparents, Gary and Ruth Hudson, my sister, Leslie Boba, mother, Elizabeth Boba, and me, Santa Barbara Mission, circa 1968. Perhaps my father, Imre Boba, was the photographer.

My grandfather with his parents, in Osaka, Japan, 1888. The back of the photograph with the name of the professional photographer is below.

The "famous" photo of the whole family with my grandfather at the organ, Osaka, Japan, circa 1898. The other children are, from left, Ellis (or Herndon), Rowena, Paul, and Donald in his mother's lap. We still have the organ.

The Osaka Connection

Recently, my cousin Betsy Hudson and her husband Koichi Orita researched the Kawaguchi foreign settlement in Osaka and came up with some great information regarding this enclave where both our grandfathers were born. Her grandfather was the second son, Herndon Ellis Hudson. Here are some of the images they collected. Clicking on the image will allow you to see a larger version.

  

A model of the settlement in the (now closed) Osaka Maritime Museum. The arrow indicates where we think the Hudson house must have been. Photo from Wikipedia.

 

The red dot line area indicates the foreign settlement in Osaka, fairly close to main part of Osaka. Google map courtesy of Koichi Orita.

 

The area now is a warehouse/residential area. The only thing left from the era is Kawaguchi Church. Photo by https://www.inforsante.fr/7688976925.html. 

We found a map of the northern part of the settlement with names of families and schools/churches/shops. The red box indicates the family home as it was described in Gary's memoir as 16B. The image comes from  Momoyama Gakuin Educational Corporation/Momoyama Gakuin Historical Materials Room via the website: https://shepherdz.exblog.jp/29640167/

 

That house and the other houses where the lots have the same green are the Presbyterian properties. Other colors indicate other protestant denominations, or Catholic properties. This image and that below are found in the paper "Functional Transformation of Urban Space in Kawaguchi Settlement, Osaka," https://dlisv03.media.osaka-cu.ac.jp/contents/osakacu/kiyo/111G0000009-2022-21-002.pdf.

 

Top row are the Warren house, then the Warren house, remodeled, and a building related to the Warren church. The bottom three are all schools in the concession. They all seem to be related to churches. The last one, Poole junior and senior high school still exists, but in a different location.

The settlement is long gone but there is a plaque outside a local elementary school now marking the settlement. Image from: https://okazin86.com/osaka-kawaguchi/#jp-carousel-6313

 The following four images are used with permission from Momoyama Gakuin Archives:

Panoramic view of Kawaguchi Settelment.

Wilmina Girls School on Reservation 22

A farewell party at the time of the abolition of the settlement.

Photo taken from in front of Reservation 16 looking north.