<Begin Segment 21>

AI: Well, so then there was a period of recovery then where your mother was recovering and Teri was there helping out and Joe was just an infant. And then within a few years, though, your parents decided that there would be a visit back to Japan --

MY: Uh-huh.

AI: -- in 1935, was it?

MY: He was three by that time.

TY: Yeah, we were up in Beacon Hill school then.

MY: Yeah, so we, in the meantime we moved to -- so Teri must have been with us less than a year because, because she left us before we moved --

TY: Oh, that's right.

MY: -- up to Beacon Hill.

Jeni Y: But then he had the high chair accident. Didn't she go back into --

MY: No --

Jeni Y: She became ill when he was one, I thought you said.

MY: Yeah, yeah. When, and then he was about -- that was, so he was about ten months when we went to, to Beacon Hill.

TY: Yeah.

MY: And then when she -- when you were about a year old -- well, you were older than a year old, I think, when you, when she got, I think it was a --

TY: Oh, that picture. Remember the picture?

MY: It was a -- I think it was kind of an aftermath of the illness she caught -- you know, in, in the hospital because it was about a year later that -- that she got pleurisy, and she had to go to a sanitarium for a year.

TY: That was while we were up in Beacon Hill home, then.

MY: Uh-huh.

TY: Yeah, okay. I remember that, yeah.

MY: And so that was when she was gone for --

TY: Long time, yeah.

MY: -- a long time, and that was about a year. And then that was when we had a series of housekeepers.

TY: Yeah.

MY: And that, that woman who was a Tenrikyo lady.

TY: Tenrikyo lady, yes, I remember her. Yeah.

MY: And so anyway, we had this Tenrikyo -- what is Tenrikyo? Is that a --

TY: What, what is it?

MY: Yeah. Is it a reli-, it's a religion?

TY: Yeah, it's a religious --

MY: It's a Shinto religion, right? I, I don't know. I don't have any information about that. She was a Tenrikyo -- I think there's a, it's a sect in Japan.

TY: Yeah.

MY: I thought it was a political sect in Japan around --

TY: No, it's not political.

MY: -- today.

TY: It's a religious organization.

MY: Yeah.

TY: Yeah.

MY: But, it's like it's Christian Scientists, isn't it? They don't believe in doctors?

TY: Yeah, yeah.

MY: Something like that?

TY: Yeah, I think that's true.

MY: Because anyway, Joe was still in a highchair, and we used to have one of those big cast-, we had that cast-iron stove.

TY: Yeah, in the kitchen?

MY: No, in the dining --

TY: No, in the, and they had a cast-iron stove in the --

MY: Dining --

TY: -- dining room, and we have a smaller stove in the kitchen.

MY: Well, the, the one in the dining room --

TY: We had a potbelly stove in the kitchen, small one.

MY: Oh, yeah. Okay. So then the big cast-iron stove in the, in the dining room to -- to warm because we didn't have central heating. And Joe's high chair was sort of -- I don't know why we had it so close to the stove. But I think the bottom, you know when those coal stoves that the bottom part opens out? You know, when you open up the part where the ashes --

JY: Yeah, yeah. To put the coals in or take the ashes out or something.

TY: Right. Okay.

MY: To take the ashes out? So that door was open, on the, on one side. And he was in, sitting in a wheel-, in the --

TY: Highchair.

MY: -- highchair, and he was rocking. You know how -- the way kids do? He was rocking it back and forth.

TY: Gosh, I don't remember that. Okay.

MY: And then he fell over, and he, he hit his lip on that --

TY: Yeah.

MY: -- cast-iron.

TY: Yeah, he had a --

JY: I still have a fat lip from that. [Laughs]

MY: On the cast-iron stove, and it just started to bleed and bleed. And so then --

TY: He must have been a year, he must have been a year old.

MY: -- Mrs. Takaha-, Mrs. Takamiya, Mrs. Takahashi, or what -- that woman who was with us.

TY: I can't remember her name.

MY: She, she took one of these, what she thought was a sacred paper, a white paper, and she put it on his lip like that, and it got all caked up there, remember?

TY: Yeah.

MY: It stopped bleeding because of, and --

TY: I think that serves as kind of like a, what they call butterfly band-aid you have now. I think that -- with that paper there, I think it, the blood clotted and held you, your lesion from spreading any more. And I think that really helped the heal, healing. So the paper did help.

MY: Yeah. But anyway, it really needed stitching.

TY: Yeah.

MY: Yeah. But it -- so anyway, by the time that, that Mom was gone for such a long time that it healed completely by the time Mom came home. But he had kind of a white -- his lip had, had this white scar.

TY: Scar tissue, you have scar tissue.

MY: Yeah. And so when Mom came home, the first thing she noticed was, "What's the matter with his lip?" You remember? And then, and so the whole story about what happened came out. And then, and then I remember Mom saying to Dad, "Why didn't you take him to the hospital? Why didn't you take him to the doctor?" And then Dad says, "Well, Mrs. So-and-so said not to." [Laughs] And I remember Mom getting really mad and saying, "Well, you're the father, Anta no sekinin desho." You know, Mother was really very angry to think that -- her child, and you didn't even take him to the doctor. And Dad saying, well, you know, the woman insisted. The babysitter, you know, wouldn't let me. [Laughs] I remember the argument. She -- and I thought, Oh, my gosh. Mom has just came from, just came home after being gone for a whole year, and they're already fighting. But -- [laughs]

TY: And that was before 1935 because that's when we went to Nihon.

MY: Yeah, yeah.

TY: Yeah.

MY: Yeah.

<End Segment 21> - Copyright © 2002 Densho. All Rights Reserved.