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TI: Did you have brothers or sisters?

BB: I have one sister and I'm a twin. My brother got killed, my twin brother got killed in an accident in the schoolyard right across the street from where we lived, on a swing.

TI: And how old, how old were you when this happened?

BB: Five years old, four or five. And that caused a split in the family.

TI: So how, when you say a split in the family, what happened?

BB: My father left with my oldest brother and took off, we don't know where. And my mother took, went to her mother, mother's place in Oakdale, California.

TI: So it was sort of the tragedy of losing your twin brother, it split apart.

BB: Yeah, family... disturbance, you've had family problems, they split up.

TI: Now, do you recall the incident or the accident, when it happened to your, to your brother?

BB: We were both on the swing, and one of the kids -- I don't remember who -- was pushing on the chain, the swings had chains, they were held by chains. So when you went so high the chains would jerk, and they jerked and he fell out and he got, he hit the border around the swing area, which was a wooden border, I think, and broke his neck. Didn't know it, I didn't know he had... all I knew is that he had been in an accident and was hurt. And ran and got Mrs. Grisby, who was the landlady, and that was, that was that.

TI: Wow, that's so tragic.

BB: It was a tragedy, a family tragedy.

TI: How about just in general, just growing up in -- so where did, where did you go with your mother? Where did you live?

BB: I went, I lived in Oakdale, California, with my grandmother.

TI: Now, where's Oakdale, California? I'm trying...

BB: In Stanislaus County, right, oh, it's between Modesto, the valley, and I guess the Sierra Mountains, I think.

TI: Okay, okay. And so what was it like growing up with your mother in Oakdale?

BB: My mother didn't have very much say about what happened in the house; my grandmother really ran the house. And that was... well, I was raised with a lot of discipline in the family. My grandmother believed in discipline. "Spare the rod and spoil the child."

TI: So what, what did your grandmother and mother do to support the family?

BB: My grandmother lived -- well, she had a husband, and he worked in, was a farm laborer, did pruning and he ran the, he ran the irrigation system for the local cannery, he had charge of all their, they had a lot of areas that grew apricots, peaches, walnuts, whatnot.

TI: I'm curious, in that community, were there very many Japanese or Japanese Americans?

BB: None whatsoever in that community.

TI: How about like Chinese or other Asians?

BB: One Chinese laundry with about three Chinese people in it; that was it.

TI: Okay.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2005 Densho. All Rights Reserved.