<Begin Segment 23>

[Translated from Japanese]

TY: By the way, you had seven children and when you came to Seattle, you had four children with you.

YI: At that time, I had four. Then three more were born here.

TY: Can you talk about parenting, parenting in Seattle or parenting in America?

YI: What in America?

TY: Parenting.

YI: What? Something about here?

TY: Parenting in America.

YI: Portland?

TY: No. You raised seven children in Seattle. That experience.

YI: Well, I had a lot of work to do in the women's organization. But I had many children and so I could not do much to help. I did visit a few sick people or visit someone at a hospital. Others took me along when we visited a family.

TY: When you returned to Seattle, your older children, Satoru and others, started going to school, didn't they?

YI: No. They went to school while we were at the old temple. Even before the war, they were going to school. Garfield School. Then they went to a high school. Then they went to the University of Washington.

TY: You had a conference at an elementary school between a teacher and a parent. The one where a teacher and a parent discuss a child's grades and other issues...

YI: When Shinya was in the elementary school, I went once.

TY: Didn't you go to other children's conferences?

YI: Well, since all the talk was in English, I would not understand anyway. But once I went with Mrs. Kusakabe, wife of a dentist. To a PTA meeting.

TY: Then what did you do with the language?

YI: I did not understand the language, but I don't know what I did. I don't remember. [Laugh]

TY: Is that right?

YI: The previous elementary school to which the Japanese went is being used as a Native American Center. It was called Bailey Gatzert.

TY: Is that right?

YI: Bailey Gatzert school was built near the Betsuin Temple. The principal of that school was Miss Mahon and she was very kind to the Japanese. The Japanese people made a Japanese kimono for her and sent her to Japan.

TY: What were some of the happy times and difficult times in raising the children in America? What was the most difficult thing about raising the children in America?

YI: Let me see. First of all, I had nobody to help me.

TY: Because your family were all in Japan.

YI: Yes. We didn't have any grandparents. Some people suggested that I hire a school girl to baby-sit, but we didn't have money to hire. But because everybody, the members, were very kind to me, I could survive.

<End Segment 23> - Copyright © 1999 Densho. All Rights Reserved.