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AI: Well then, also, your father was having some health problems, too, at this time.

PB: My dad was changing color, he said, and he was eating less and less and getting very thin. But he was going to a doctor quite often, and the only thing the doctor was doing was giving him vitamin pills. And yet he seemed to get thinner and thinner and eat less and less. One, until one day, he called me and he had started turning yellow, and he called me and he said, "My skin is turning all yellow. I'll have to go to the doctor." So I wasn't driving much then, so I had to wait until Emily came home, and as soon as she came home, she took him to Dr. Uyeno at that time. And right away, he said, "Oh, your father either had cancer or gallstones. We'll have to get him in the hospital right away." So he put him in the hospital right away, and he determined that he had cancer and that he would have to have surgery.

So he was in Harborview, and I guess he was in a ward, and he was having a lot of difficulty because he told me one time he, it was around noontime and he had gone to the restroom, and I guess he passed out. And he had had a discharge, so he cleaned it up, and by the time he got back to his room... came to, and I think he must have fainted -- came to, why, dinner hour had passed and he didn't get no lunch, and he was quite ill. So by that time, my other sister, Hanni, the one that was in Chicago, she came up for a visit, and she's one of these people that will speak up. She, we didn't say much of anything, Dad was in this ward, we didn't say much. But when my, Hanni came out, she said right away, gonna put him in a private room. "Why is he in the ward like this?" And so they did put him in a private room and gave him much better care then. But we knew then that he had possible terminal cancer, so he did have surgery, and they said they couldn't do anything because it was too far gone. But he, my dad himself was looking forward to recovering and watching baseball games -- [laughs] -- because he loved baseball. And when we told him, he didn't even know he had surgery and it was over with. But he was real excited, he says, "Well, let's go home so I can watch baseball." But he would never be going home; he passed away.

AI: Well, by the time that your father passed away, he must have been in his eighties; is that right?

PB: Yes, he was around eighty-two.

AI: And that was in the late 1950s?

PB: Uh-huh. 'Course, Mother, by that time, we had her in and out of the hospital, and she was there, but I don't think she quite comprehended that Dad was gone. And we tried to keep her away, because we knew that he was dying and we had a private nurse around the clock, but he had a very strong heart, and his heart kept beating and he kept breathing, and we were all there. But I was trying to keep Mother away, because the nurse kept saying, "He'll pass away any minute." But he just kept, his heart kept beating, and just as we came too close where my dad was, Mother wanted to see him. And I was trying to keep her away, but she walked right up to him and he passed away. But I don't think she realized that he was gone, really, because she didn't cry or anything. But it was really a hard time for all of us at that time.

AI: I'm sure it was. Well, then, at one point, you had been hoping that you would perhaps live with your parents, or live next door or near your parents. But with your father's illness and passing, and then your mother's mental state, that didn't happen. But at some point, I recall reading in your memoir that your mother's condition started to improve again.

PB: Yes, and when my father died, he made me promise that I would take her out of the hospital permanently, because she wasn't really a mental case, it was because of the strokes, the mini strokes she had, that she had these bad moments, but she had her good moments, too. And this experience at the hospital at Steilacoom was really something, because we had never experienced anything like that; making visits there. I learned a great deal about the mental hospital, and got acquainted with the head gardener there, and they had a beautiful garden and greenhouse, and had so many unusual plants. I got starts from some of the plants, and it was really quite an interesting experience, yet kind of... well, educating experience. Because I had never been to anyplace like that, and I was surprised that they took the patients and when they give 'em a bath, they just put 'em in one big room and turn a hose on 'em. They take a bucket of soapy water and throw it on 'em, and then they turn the hose on 'em. And you see all kinds of patients; some of 'em crying, some of 'em just taking their clothes off and eating flowers and anything they could get a hold of, they'd eat it. And they had to put a straitjacket on some of 'em because they wouldn't do what they were supposed to, and some of 'em, they would steal anything. I remember Mother said she took her teeth out and they disappeared. And she would, Mother wanted to wash her underwear out every night. She'd wash her underwear out and they disappeared, so they had all kinds of patients. It was the first time that I'd ever been in a place like that. I thought, "My goodness..." unless you see them and have that experience, you would never know anything about. You hear about a mental hospital or mental patients, but you don't experience that, you don't know anything about it, and you don't even think about it. But there are lots and lots of people and lots and lots of families that have to put up with all these things that you never hear about.

<End Segment 66> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.