<Begin Segment 81>

AI: What kinds of things was your mother saying to you and Mike while you were still there? Tosh had left already, but was she --

MY: She was very fearful. I mean, she just --

TY: Yeah, uncertainty.

MY: She didn't tell us not to leave, 'cause she didn't feel that -- but she kept saying, "What am I gonna do, what are we gonna," well, just said, "Kokorobosoi." It was just really very... how do you translate kokorobosoi, it is, hitori, futari...

JY: Not "pitiful," but...

MY: No...

JY: "Sorrowful"?

TY: "Fearful"?

MY: Fear -- yeah, yeah. And, "What am I gonna do with just, with just Joe? You're gonna be all gone." Of course, she had come to depend on the three of us so heavily. And so, and then little Joe there, and he wasn't much help. [Laughs]

JY: [Laughs]

MY: He was off playing, and you know, she just really felt like she was going to be hitori bosoi. Which is true. "Be all by myself." And, and then, of course, before that, when my dad was around, my dad took care of everything, right? And then, and after he left, somehow, we had to grow up really fast and we kind of looked after her and took care of her after that. And so it was just, and I just remember that she was just agonizing, through, during those days that, of our leaving. But as I said, she just never said, "No, I don't want you to go." She knew somehow that, that it was something that we needed to, needed to do. And so we both left.

<End Segment 81> - Copyright © 2002 Densho. All Rights Reserved.