<Begin Segment 6>

AI: Well, let's backtrack, back to when -- to childhood again because then after Tosh was born then just the following year your mother, or -- so your mother was pregnant again, expecting another baby. And so tell me what happened next at that point.

MY: It, it's, some of the facts are kind of hazy as, about exactly why Mom went. But she told us that, that Mike, when Mike was born -- when Tosh was born, he came a little early. And, and I guess in those days they had a midwife that circulated -- she had a schedule of babies or, you know, expected babies and so forth. And Mike came a little -- Tosh came a little bit early, and so the, the midwife couldn't come because she was somewhere else. And so my father had to deliver him, I think. He, he said that -- and then my older, and then Mike was -- let's see. He was how old?

JY: Two.

MY: Two years old, and he had a convulsion at the point where Mother was in labor. And my dad was trying to, to deal with it and the midwife wasn't there and then his son, older son was screaming. You know how the baby gets. I think he had a fever, and he, and so my mother said, "So when I got pregnant again," which was like month, few months later because I was born the following year in July, on July 5th. We're only thirteen months apart. And so she said, so Dad said that, "I can't just deal with this." You know, of course, he had nothing to do with it. [Laughs] "I can't deal with this. Go back to Japan because you have relatives, your mom, they will help you in Japan." And so when my mother was seven months pregnant, which is kind of unbelievable because the -- considering the number of days it took the ship to get to Japan. And Mike was -- she was pregnant, seven months pregnant. Tosh was -- what? Eight months old? She was, he wasn't even walking.

TY: No, well, I don't think I was walking yet, yeah.

MY: And Mike was two, two and a half.

TY: Yeah.

MY: Yeah. And so she took the two of them and went to Japan. And, and so I was -- and so that's how I happened to be born there. And then when this -- immediately about a month after I was born, Tosh became ill.

TY: In Japan.

MY: And just really seriously ill.

TY: Yeah.

MY: And because it was a very small town, they felt that they didn't, couldn't have medical help there. So my mother, my dad told her that they a, a friend who owned a hospital, a doctor, in Osaka. So she took Tosh to Osaka, and they, and they, they told her that there was no hope for this child. So she became quite frightened, and she decided to bring him back to my dad in Seattle, thinking that perhaps he can get a better, specialists in the United States. So she came back alone with Tosh. She left Mike with our grandparents, and she left me because I was only a few weeks old -- I was only a month old. And there were no sterilizing bottles or milk, formulas at that time. So she left, they looked for a family where the mother had a child about the same -- who had a moth-, they looked for a nursing mother.

TY: A wet -- wet --

MY: A woman who -- wet nurse.

TY: Wet nurse, yeah.

MY: A woman who had a baby about the same age as I. And they found her, who, it was outside of Mushirouchi. It was not, it was kind of outside of the town, I remember. A small town, a nearby town. And so Mike and I stayed in Japan, but we were not together. I was there until I was about three and a half, as I understand. And then I came -- my dad sent a couple, a honeymooning, a Nisei honeymooning couple to Japan to pick us up. And they picked me up with the, my foster parents' home, and then they went over to pick up Mike. And my grandmother would not let Mike go. As far as she was concerned, there was this, two strangers come to her house and said that, "Your son said that we should..." you know. And she just didn't trust him, so she refused to, to let her go -- let him go. And, you know, there was --

TY: Well, she didn't want to hand her, hand Mike over to a stranger.

MY: Yeah, that's what she said. And so then, so, and then -- and my mom was saying, "Well, they, this is a young couple. They didn't think that they had the right to wrench this child away from the grandmother and, and bring her back." And so she said, "They came back just with me," and that's how Mike happened -- and then my dad, hearing this, was a little bit worried about, about, they kept worrying about keeping Mike in Japan until he was old, you know -- older. As an older child, they just thought they should send for him quickly. And my, but my, our father was kind of worried about his mother, you know, because she had become so attached to him. And so he stayed there a few more years. And, and so he came back -- I thought he was about eight, but he said --

TY: No, I think he's seven.

MY: I think he said that he was seven.

TY: I think he was seven, yeah.

MY: Yeah. So... which means that you were five and I was, it was soon aft-, I was four.

TY: You were -- yeah.

MY: Yeah, so I was here about a year, I think, and then Mike came and, and joined the family. And we came, became, yeah.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2002 Densho. All Rights Reserved.