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AI: So we'll get started here. It's April 3, 2003. I'm Alice Ito with Densho. Co-interviewer is Dee Goto. Videographer is Dana Hoshide and we're interviewing Dr. Ruby Inouye today in Seattle. Thanks very much, Dr. Ruby, for being with us. And I wanted to ask first, when and where you were born?

RI: I was born right here in Seattle. I, I don't know the exact location but somewhere in the Baptist church area, somewhere like East Spruce Street. But I was the second of six children.

AI: And when were you born?

RI: November 17, 1920. So I am now eighty-two years old.

AI: And what name did they give you at birth? What was your birth name?

RI: Ruby Ayako Inouye. And Ayako was, my father gave everybody a Japanese name but I never used Ayako except as "A," Ruby A. Inouye. The way I signed it I always used the "A" but Ayako never appeared in any of my writings and even in Japanese school my father registered us under our English name. "Inouye, Rubii" was my name in Japanese school.

DG: So you were all given English names?

RI: Yeah, we were all given English names. I don't know why he named me "Ruby" but my sister Bessie was named after somebody he knew in America after he got here.

DG: You were born at home?

RI: I'm sure, yeah. I think it was Mrs. Beppu, she was a midwife. In those days most of the babies were born under midwives and the mothers were taken care of by some woman who came to help in the house and stayed for about a month, taking care of the family and the baby and the mother. But that was the way they did it.

<End Segment 1> - Copyright © 2003 Densho. All Rights Reserved.