<Begin Segment 9>

AI: Well, and then you graduated from the Washington School.

GY: Yes.

AI: Is that right? Here at Seattle.

GY: Uh-huh.

AI: And now, at that time, did you also have your mother's mother living with you in Seattle?

GY: Yes, I did. Grandmother, yes. She was my mother's mother, Mrs. Abe. I don't know her first name. What was her...? Well, you said, "Baachan," Baachan all the time. Baachan. And she shared -- she and I shared the same room in the Seattle apartment. A little bed on the side, and she had some room. And she would sit on the bed and practice her shamisen. And, hmm... I don't know how old she was. Maybe -- let's see. My father was about forty when he married, so she must've been maybe -- my mother was twenty. About sixty, sixty-five. But in those days, that was old. And she was shrunk. She was curved over like this, as many elderly Japanese people were. Maybe osteoporosis, what if they were -- whatever, sitting on the floor all the time, bunch of them like that. But she, she really dug that, too. And as old as she was and the fact that she was not at all familiar with the English language, she would take a streetcar and give, and go to a student to teach shamisen. And at that time, it was nothing, but now, in retrospect, I think, gad, that's pretty bold of her to do that. Obaachan, going out, making her own way, not knowing how to speak English.

But that, I didn't enjoy that at all. I thought, oh, God, that sound is terrible. I couldn't deal with it and, because I was more into American music, which my mother was, too. My mother didn't especially enjoy that. She didn't say, "Listen up, that's our music." No, none of that. So she, that was her life, and I guess she was relatively happy. But that was about the only enjoyment she had. None of her friends were alive anymore, and parents were very busy, trying to make a go of it. We were on our own, making a lot of noise. So that was Obaachan.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2002 Densho. All Rights Reserved.