<Begin Segment 39>

TY: [Jpn.] By the way, it was 1938 that your brother Yoneichi was killed in the war.

MK: [Eng.] Uh-huh.

TY: [Jpn.] How did you know that?

MK: [Jpn.] Oh, a letter.

TY: [Jpn.] Letter. From whom?

MK: [Jpn.] Well, I wonder who told us. They told my father. Because I wasn't there.

TY: [Jpn.] I see.

MK: [Jpn.] So I wonder from whom my father received that letter. Oh, Akira --

TY: [Jpn.] From Akira?

MK: [Jpn.] Did Akira die in the war? He wasn't killed in the war. He was alive. I wonder who sent that letter. My father didn't say anything, so I don't know. He didn't tell who sent the letter.

TY: [Jpn.] Yoneichi was in Manchuria, wasn't he? In Manchuria.

MK: [Jpn.] Oh, yeah. That's right.

TY: [Jpn.] Yeah.

MK: [Eng.] Uh-huh.

TY: [Jpn.] And so your father received that news...

MK: [Jpn.] Yeah.

TY: [Jpn.] I heard that he cried.

MK: [Jpn.] Yeah. That's right. I heard he cried. I heard from a friend of mine. That's all I know.

TY: [Jpn.] Even if he didn't grow up with his father, they were still a father and a son, weren't they?

MK: [Jpn.] Yeah. Right. But we didn't live with our father when we were small. It was only after I graduated from the women's high school and came to the U.S. that I started living with my father. So we are not that close. It's like a stranger.

TY: [Jpn.] I see.

MK: [Jpn.] Yeah. Really. If you don't live together, you don't feel like a parent and a child.

TY: [Jpn.] Yeah.

MK: [Jpn.] Uh-huh. If you live together, you will love a child of another person. You start loving that child. Some people adopt small children, then those children are just like your own children. Just like a real family.

TY: [Jpn.] I see.

MK: [Jpn.] Yeah. So if you don't live together, real love will not grow. I believe that.

TY: [Jpn.] I see.

MK: [Jpn.] Uh-huh. So if a parent and a child don't live together, they are just the same as strangers. Uh-huh.

TY: [Jpn.] Yes. By the way, Akira went to Manchuria, too, didn't he?

MK: [Eng.] Yeah.

TY: [Jpn.] Akira who raised Hideo...

MK: [Jpn.] Yeah. Akira, Yoneichi and also Yoneichi's adoptive parent went to that war.

TY: [Jpn.] I see.

MK: [Jpn.] They went there at the same time. Yeah. I heard his adoptive father say. I understand they fought in the same area. So he told him to keep his head low and never to lift it up, but he lifted his head and that's why he got shot here.

TY: [Jpn.] I see.

MK: [Jpn.] He said he had told him. He told him but he lifted his head. So a bullet hit him on the cheek. That's why he was killed.

TY: [Jpn.] I see.

MK: [Jpn.] His adoptive father told us he had said so.

TY: [Jpn.] Yes.

MK: [Jpn.] Uh-huh. He said he had warned.

TY: [Jpn.] Yeah.

MK: [Jpn.] Uh-huh.

TY: [Jpn.] By the way, how did you feel when your younger brother died? Even if you didn't grow up with him.

MK: [Jpn.] Yeah.

TY: [Jpn.] Yeah.

MK: [Eng.] Yeah, yeah, mm.

TY: [Jpn.] Weren't you concerned about Japan?

MK: [Jpn.] Japan?

TY: [Jpn.] Yes, the war was on at that time.

MK: [Jpn.] Yeah, that's right. Because the war was on, we couldn't correspond.

TY: [Jpn.] I see.

MK: [Jpn.] Nothing until the war was over.

TY: [Jpn.] Yes.

MK: [Jpn.] Yeah.

<End Segment 39> - Copyright © 2000 Densho. All Rights Reserved.