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KM: (In 1936) when he was about thirty, he met my mother, and that was an arranged marriage. And my mother, she's very sweet, she said she just couldn't marry somebody that she didn't know, which was really the practice at that time. And so apparently they dated a few times, and my mother lived in the country on a farm around San Jose. And she said she remembers Papa coming in with his old Model T car, and he would come all dressed up in a suit with his tie and his hat -- I guess just like his mother had said -- to the farm. So I can see the contrast there. But my mom was a real Nisei. She was born and raised here. She was born in San Juan Batista in 1914. She's about seven years younger than my dad. And she was very popular, very active in high school, and she played tennis. And her group of friends, they were not all just girls, you know, the boys and the girls mingled together, socialized together. She drove to school every day. And so they grew up very differently, my dad and my mom, but they got married in 1936.

[Interruption]

JF: We're back, Kiyo. You were talking about your family's history, and you mentioned that your father's name was Goro, Goro Sato, but you didn't, we forgot to ask you about your mom's name.

KM: Of course. My mom's name is Kimiko Nakayama, and of course she went by Kimi. And as I said, she was born in 1914 in San Juan Bautista. I don't know who the... they said baishakunin, but it's a go-between, I don't know who that was, but I was surprised that my father would be introduced to somebody who lived so far away in San Jose when he was in Alameda. [Narr. note: the baishakunin were Mr. and Mrs. Eguchi.]

JF: Can I ask you about some of the years early before the evacuation, before they had to leave Alameda? Where were they and where did they go?

KM: My folks got married in '36, and after they got married, they were in, I'm pretty sure it was a rental on Oak Street, which is just a few blocks away from the temple here. And my brother, Kazuyoshi, he was born there in 1938. And then I was born there in 1940. And, of course, Mom didn't go to the hospital, we had a midwife. [Narr. note: the midwife was Mrs. Takiye Kondo.]

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2021 Densho. All Rights Reserved.