<Begin Segment 36>

BK: When you think back, when you were what, seventeen, when you actually left, I think your mother and father, to really, essentially live out on your own, and that's a pretty gutsy thing to do.

MH: Yeah, it is, I guess it is. At that time it was. And... but in our family, after the war, my brothers all stayed home until they got married. Like in their thirties. Nowadays, the kids can't hardly wait to get out. We all, all of us, after we once got back together again, never left until we each got married, one at a time, until Mother and Dad, didn't have anybody else, and had to go live in an apartment.

BK: Is that right? Talk about getting together, here is another picture. When was this taken? It looks like...

MH: It must have been taken in '46, after I came home. Because my sister was still here. She went to Hawaii after the war. Her husband had come to the States to go to school in the '30s. And then their father couldn't afford him to come home, so he came and lived with us. So after her children, she had her children, then she went home. Went back to Hawaii, and she only stayed a year, because her daughter would have turned twelve, and they would have had to pay an adult fare for her to come home. So, I was getting -- she didn't know I was getting married then, but she shipped the children home to my mother and father. And so they stayed with us, because they knew they couldn't stay in Hawaii. So the kids came home, and lived with us for just about a year, until my sister came. In that time, I had gotten engaged, ready to get married.

BK: So this is your entire family then?

MH: Uh-huh. That's what I mean is, our family was -- that's it. And now, my goodness, we're related to half the people in Seattle, it feels like. [Laughs]

<End Segment 36> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.