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[Translated from Japanese]

TY: This is Tomoyo Yamada. It is Friday, March 13 of 1998. I am going to interview Mrs. Take Murayama at the Seattle Keiro nursing home. Hi, Mrs. Murayama. First, please tell me your date of birth.

TM: Date of birth...

TY: What year were you born? What year of Meiji era...

TM: Twenty-eight.

TY: What is your date of birth?

TM: It's August 11 of Meiji 28 [1895].

TY: Your birthday is August 11. And, you are from Nagano Prefecture?

TM: Yes, Nagano Prefecture.

TY: Could you tell me a little bit about the village where you were born and raised?

TM: You want me to talk about the village where I grew up?

TY: Yes. I heard that it was near the Tenryu River.

TM: Yes. There is a lake called the Lake Suwa. There was a house, a big house, on the riverbank, which anyone would wonder what it was made there for. It was on the bank of the Tenryu River that flows out of the Lake Suwa. The house was big -- it was a two-story house. In the big house, I was born and raised.

TY: How about your family? Could you tell me about your family?

TM: There were eight children in my family. The oldest and the youngest were boys, and six in the middle were girls. I was the youngest of the six girls.

TY: Everybody lived in the big house.

TM: Yes, everybody lived in the big house.

TY: I heard that you became a nurse at the age sixteen.

TM: Yes. Back then, after graduating from [inaudible] grade school, people either started working or still continued studying. I studied and went to a school of nursing. Then, I became a nurse.

TY: You worked in the hospital.

TM: Yes.

Take M. Interview - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved. - <End Segment 1>