<Begin Segment 6>

TI: So going back to being the only non-white students at the public school, did --

RE: The reason was that my brother Rokuo worked as a janitor for a lawyer, prominent lawyer in Clovis. And so he was not allowed to go to public school, but nonetheless, the lawyer taught him as much as he could. And at the age of fifteen, Rokuo took the entrance exam to University of New Mexico. The lawyer falsified documents that he graduated from Clovis High School. At the age of fifteen, he was a freshman at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. Weeks later, people questioned that he looked like he was twelve years old, so the administration at University of New Mexico inquired with Clovis High School and they said they never heard of the guy, kid. He came home with his suitcase.

TI: And how did your parents react to that? Do you recall what that felt like for the family?

RE: Shou ga nai, you know, you just live with circumstances. But Rokuo was a very brilliant, brilliant young man. I think he was near a genius, according to my mother, years later, she told me. But he wanted no part of being a machinist like my dad. When he was seventeen and a half, the lawyer taught him enough that he can take the four-day intensive exam in San Francisco to enter San Francisco law school, which had, apparently, no prerequisites that you have to be a graduate of a college.

TI: So by seventeen, he had essentially finished his undergraduate work, in other words. I mean, he knew enough to enter law school.

RE: He took the law exam in San Francisco, took the train there. And before returned, some of the Asian gang warfare was going on, and he was an innocent bystander, got kicked in the kidneys, came home with a damaged kidney. Ultimately, he died from a kidney infection, there were no antibiotics and such. Some months later, my mother received a letter of congratulation that he was accepted into San Francisco law school.

TI: And how old were you when he, when he died?

RE: Two years old.

TI: Okay. So you really don't remember that.

RE: No, my mother said, "You were crawling in the casket trying to wake him up," so that's about all I remember. I mean, I don't remember a thing, only what my mother said.

TI: And did you ever get more clarification, when you said an Asian sort of gang fight or something like that, do you know where that was and who was...

RE: The streets of San Francisco, well, he was gonna catch the train the following morning back to Clovis.

TI: Boy, what a tragic story, I mean, just so promising in terms of...

RE: My mother, for many years, remembered the dates of her daughter and son, and would always... she was well-versed in the arts of Japanese, she always had a shamisen. She'd lock herself in the bedroom and sing mournful songs, and we always left her alone 'til she came out of it.

TI: So we asked, I asked a little earlier about what your dad was like, you said he was gregarious. Describe your mother. What was she like?

RE: Oh, she was always a complainer that my dad (depicted to) her a picture of America lined, streets were lined with gold and how wonderful it is. She then came out to this God-forsaken country in the eastern, high plains of New Mexico. And my mother, for many years, never forgave my dad. I don't think she ever forgave him for what she was taken out of. She, she learned all the cultured things that most rich girls would always have, relegated to a ghetto, poverty existence.

TI: Do you recall whether or not she corresponded with her family back in Japan, letters, things like that?

RE: I don't remember those things. I think they really cut her off as well, I think. So there was very little communication that I recall ever went on. She also segregated herself from the rest of the (Japanese) families because she thought they were from -- you know, the caste system, the class system was very strong in her.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.