<Begin Segment 11>

AI: Well, also, about the Ehime-ken, did you or your family do very much with the kenjinkai?

RI: Oh, yeah.

AI: Very much activity?

RI: Well, kenjinkai, yeah, Ehime-ken kenjinkai was big deal in those days. They socialized a lot. They had Ehime-ken picnics and Ehime-ken meetings. Well, the Ehime-ken people, they were all, almost like a great big family. But it was pretty big in those days, but gradually, the other day I went to a Ehime-ken New Year's thing in February. And now, instead of being Ehime-ken, it's called Shikoku-ken. There are four kens in that island and so they're all getting together because there are so few people. You know, the Issei people, I'm really not Ehime-ken because I wasn't born there, but for the sake of my mother and father's memory we go, because there are some old friends there, but not many. There are some new Ehime-ken people who, you know, newly immigrated Japanese people who came from Ehime-ken. So, but our old-time friends aren't there. The Nishimuras, Frank Nishimura and his family are there. But his father and mother are long gone, but he invites his whole family to come.

AI: But when you were young, I think there must've been hundreds and hundreds of ken people.

RI: Oh, there were lots of people then. So we, well, Ehime-ken people felt close to --

DG: Was your father one of the... a lot of Isseis, they spent lots of the day going around and talking to their friends and...

RI: No, I don't think so. My father was sort of a quiet person and he, he did not go socializing a lot. I think my mother was more a sociable kind of person. But my father, aside from work, well, he'd come home and he'd drink. He had his sake. And he even made his own sake in our basement, which was illegal, but then... and then after a drink then he'd go to sleep. He was always taking a nap. So he wasn't doing too much of that. But then, for different Ehime-ken functions, well, he'd go out, but then, not too much.

DG: Since we're talking about your father and your mother, you mentioned to me earlier that your mother was sort of the smart one, you were saying.

RI: Well, I wouldn't say that my mother was the smart one. I think they were both smart. But I think that, I think of my mother more because, since she did not have an education I always think, gosh, if she were able to have more education and have a college education, she probably would have been, done, have done very well. But my father, I think among his friends, was considered to be smart. And so, lot of people would come to him for advice and things like that. But, I'm sure that he was smart, too, because when we were in grade school I remember that he made sure we did our homework and I don't think that Bessie and I had trouble with reading, but my other sisters were having little trouble reading and I remember his sitting down with them and teaching them reading and listening to them and tutoring them with their homework. So he was interested enough in that they did okay. And then when we were in school, well, Bessie did very well in school and she was coming home with lotta "A's" and he said, "Well, for every 'A' I'm gonna give you a dollar." Or don't know how much it was, but a dollar was a lot in those days. So she got a lot of dollars. Then when I came along, then I was getting lotta "A's" and after that he quit, because he said it was too much money. [Laughs] But Fran and Lil, they did well, but probably not as well as we did. But Fran says, "Well, I was in the honor roll, too," but since Bessie and I did so well, she didn't get that much attention, but she was good, too. And I think that all of us were, we all did quite well. My brother Howard did well, Lloyd did okay, but by then I was away from home so I wasn't too much involved in the younger brothers.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2003 Densho. All Rights Reserved.