<Begin Segment 5>

TI: Okay, before we go there, I just want to just touch a little bit in terms of, I know a little bit about your father and mother, but just who they were as, as people, in terms of maybe their personality. So can you tell me a little bit about first your mother, just in terms of, how would you describe her in terms of, if terms of her personality?

JI: She was always the life of the party. She was much more gregarious and outgoing than my father, who was very shy as I told you. And even in the Japanese community, he was, he was very quiet. But my mother -- well, I guess she agreed to having, I remember we had a wedding in our house, of friends. They weren't even real good friends, but they were friends my parents knew, people my parents knew when -- and this was, I guess, the second marriage for each of them, I guess they had lost their mates. And so they asked to be married at our house, and I don't know why, our house wasn't that elegant or anything, but I remember that incident. And whenever there was a festival or something at the grade school, my mother was always asked to get a Japanese booth, and they would make food or whatever and have it available at this booth. And she was the one who was always called to organize them. And then my oldest brother, when he graduated university, went to work for the... a Japanese import/export company, Pacific Trading Company is what it was called. He was, he was able to get a shamisen, and he gave it to my mother. And my mother had apparently been taught to play the shamisen and do Japanese dances by people who raised her. But she had never played it in this country because of the association with geishas, that these were activities that geisha did. But she apparently remembered enough of it because she started teaching without pay. She had several Nisei girls learning both shamisen, and then she would teach them the dancing, and they would even perform. But she just thought that that was a good hobby for her. So I, in terms of interacting with other people, my mother was, was way out there.

And did you know Hiro Hishiki? He was the publisher of the Kashu Mainichi until it folded. And as a matter of fact, I studied Japanese with him for about two months, he worked at, he taught at Daini Gakuen when he was in high school.

TI: Could you say his name one more time again? I missed that.

JI: Hiro Hishiki. And he was... let's see, last time we saw him, which was probably when my brother died, one of my brothers died, he was remembering my mother. And I didn't even know that he knew my mother except as my mother, but he talked about how she would entertain the women. And I didn't know that his mother and my mother were friends, even. Because they lived on, across town from us, they lived in the Normandy area. He, he talked about how she would keep people in stitches by stories she had. And I knew she was a good mimic, 'cause she'd scare the hell out of me sometimes. When I was acting up, she would come to the door as the boogieman with a deep voice. [Laughs] And scared the hell out of me and tried to force me to be good. Never took, but at least she tried. And, but anyway, that was the kind of person she was.

TI: You mentioned earlier that your father and mother were Christian. Were they actively involved in a church?

JI: Yeah, they were very active. Not necessarily as officers of the church or anything like that, but with women's groups, my mother would... they had a lot of what they called prayer meetings at our house. They were at United Church, Union Church in Los Angeles, which was, I guess Presbyterian Church of Christ, and maybe Congregational, too. There were several, several denominations that were embraced. And most of our pastors were Congregational, as I recall.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.