<Begin Segment 2>

TI: Did you have any brothers and sisters?

RY: Yes, I had one sister, and I had three, three brothers, I guess. One of my brothers was younger than I was, he passed away when he was, I don't know, four or five years. He was, he wasn't younger than I, I guess he was... well, he was younger than I was. He passed away when he was four or five years old, I guess, I don't, I don't recall.

TI: Okay, so for my benefit, can you, can you kind of like name or give me the names of your brothers and sisters in the order of their birth?

RY: Okay. Tomoko is my oldest sister, Floyd Yamamoto, and Ed Yamamoto, and me, my, and... oh, my baby brother's name... I forgot.

TI: So he was the one who, who died when he was four or five?

RY: Yeah.

TI: And, and Tomoko, what was the age difference between Tomoko and Floyd? How much difference in age, do you remember?

RY: Oh, there was quite a bit of difference. Well, I don't, she... she was sent to Japan when she was young, and you know, like in those days, they sent, the parents of the Issei group usually sent somebody back to Japan for education. And she was, she came back a little before the war, and she married Henry Yamamoto of Coeur d'Alene, and he was a chicken, chicken, he was a chicken rancher, a fox farmer. He was quite a, quite a... fox farmer, he's a mink rancher, he did quite a few things. And my sister passed away in 19-, what was that? '41? And at childbirth, and as, as the papers said, she died because of the war. I believe she died in, Tuesday or Monday after the, you know, World War II started.

TI: Oh, so let me make sure I understand this. So, so before the war broke out, she was, while she was young, a young girl, she was sent to Japan to study, and then she came back before the war started, married Henry...

RY: Henry, yes.

TI: ...and then she was pregnant and delivered...

RY: Well, she had, she had another child before that, but then she had this one that, in '41, she was pregnant then and...

TI: And just died days after...

RY: After the war.

TI: During childbirth?

RY: Well, yes, that's, that's the understanding. And so I don't know, but my mother was saying that the nurse told her a little too soon that the baby died, and then complications came in. And I don't know exactly how she died, but they said she died of, you know, in the papers, they said she died because of remorse of the war or something like that. And my brother Ed, he's a, he's quite the, I don't know, journalistic-minded people, person, that he tried to get the Spokesman Review to rebut saying that she died because of the war. But that was passed over, never got...

TI: I'm sorry. So Ed, Ed wanted the Spokesman Review to change that from saying that she died from remorse of the war, to just died giving birth.

RY: Well, she must have died because of... yeah.

TI: Now, do you... has, what did the family think would happen? I mean, is this something that -- of course, it was a tragedy, but was there any concern that, that something happened that was unusual?

RY: Not, not that I remember. There wasn't anything else. Like my brother pointed out, the Spokesman Review wrote that notice in the paper following her death. Other than that, there was nothing, nothing concerned about how she passed away.

TI: Okay. So that was your, your oldest sister, Tomoko, so she was quite a bit older, do you recall how much older she was than, than Floyd? How much older...

RY: Oh, maybe two years, two or three years.

TI: Okay. And then Floyd and then, between Floyd and Ed, how many, how long, how much older?

RY: About two years, two or three years between the two.

TI: And then between Ed and you, how, same thing?

RY: About three years.

TI: Three years.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.