<Begin Segment 7>

SS: It sounds as if you were very close to your parents.

EW: Uh-huh. Yeah.

SS: What are some of your fondest memories of them?

EW: Well, they, I think they were very good to our family after we were married -- do you want to go that far ahead? Because my husband was always good to them. And my mother, they liked him. And so they would baby-sit for us, maybe a couple of hours or something, we never asked them to baby-sit overnight or anything like that. But if I needed to do anything they were willing to help us.

SS: What were they like when you were growing up? They must have been very busy working. But your memory of being carried on your father's back, obviously that was very special.

EW: Oh, I picked out his gray hairs, too, on his head, and he would love to be pampered. And in the evening when he was tired, and he would be sitting, and we would kind of try to give him a little bit of attention.

SS: What was the typical family dinner like?

EW: Oh, hamburger and cabbage.

SS: Very American, not Japanese is it?

EW: Well, you put shoyu on it, though, and rice. And to this day we enjoy it.

SS: Do you have any regrets about your childhood, wishing that you could have grown up someplace else or done something else?

EW: No, it probably would have been nice if we had more money and could have done more things. But at that time we didn't know any differently so it didn't matter.

SS: When did you realize how much sacrifice your parents had gone through?

EW: I think it was after we left home and started our own families, that we sacrificed for our own kids, and then we thought, "Oh, boy -- they really did for us."

SS: Were you ever able to say, "Thank you," to them?

EW: Well, in later years my mother and father couldn't live alone. And so my husband -- we lived in a split level and he fixed an apartment for them in the basement. And they lived with us until my father died in a nursing home. And then my mother died in our home.

SS: That must have been a wonderful thing, to be with family.

EW: Yes. And I appreciate that fact that our children got to know them. And they have a better empathy with older people now. More so than their cousins, because they were able to see their needs and to meet them.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 1996 Densho. All Rights Reserved.