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TI: So let's, let's talk about your siblings, and you had ten siblings. Can you kind of run down the order?

RE: Hank became the oldest after the two died, Henry, Hiroshi. Everybody that we talked to when I visited, we visited Clovis would say he's Hiroshi. We've always called him Hank, but Hiroshi was his proper name. He wrote -- I'm not sure I shared anything with you about he wrote the President of the United States and Secretary of War Stimson.

TI: Yeah, I think you mentioned that, yes.

RE: It's a wonderful letter, when he was twenty-two.

TI: Yeah, we'll get to that later. Let's go down through the list of the names and then we'll talk about...

RE: Yeah, Hiroshi, he graduated in 1938 from Clovis High School.

TI: And how much older was, was Hiroshi than you?

RE: About ten years older.

TI: Okay. So after Hiroshi, who was next?

RE: My sister Amy, or Emiko. And she, Pearl Harbor was attacked when she was in her senior year at Clovis High School.

TI: Interesting, okay.

RE: Then, then there's Fumiko, or Fumi, she was in junior high school. And then my brother, Ben, he was also in junior high school at that time. And my sister Cathy, she was at elementary school with me, and then Mary, and then me, and then my brother Bill.

TI: And you mentioned that three were born in Japan. So Hank, or Hiroshi, was born in Japan. And then the... two, four, six, the other seven were...

RE: We were born eventually in Clovis.

TI: And, boy, that's... was it common for the families to be so large?

RE: Sure. [Laughs]

TI: And what was the thinking? That the more kids to help around the house, or what was the...

RE: I don't know, I think all of 'em came by accident. [Laughs]

TI: Okay.

RE: I have no idea.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.