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TI: And let's talk about your mother. What do you know about your mother, starting with maybe her parents, what do you know about her, your grandparents on your mother's side?

PN: Yeah, I know it probably even less. I think they came from Fukuoka, but I'm not quite sure. My grandfather, my mother's father, died in the '50s, so I didn't really know him. But my grandmother lived until she was ninety-five, and she never learned English, so she spent, you know, seventy-plus years in this country never learning English. She used to come out to our farm and stay there and pick berries in the summer. So she was very hearty and had a cancer operation late in her life. And two weeks after, she said, "Okay, I'm ready to go home now from the hospital." And she got up and she was going home. [Laughs] So really strong spirit, strong person.

TI: And then how many children did they have?

PN: Let's see. One, two, three, four... six children. One that I don't know his name, but he got hit by a baseball bat when he was, like, fifteen or sixteen, and died at a fairly young age. My mother and her older brother are the only two right now surviving. And I think my mother was fourth out of six. She grew up in Carver, Oregon, which is also near Oregon City, close to Portland, lived on a farm. I think met my father, maybe from a Japanese community picnic, something like that, Blue Lake, that was before the war, and somehow they corresponded during the war, they both went to Minidoka and then they both got paroled out.

TI: So about how old were they when they met at Blue Lake?

PN: That's a good question. Probably eighteen, or... my mother was about eighteen, my father must have been about twenty-two then, 'cause they're four years apart. Seventeen or eighteen, I think.

TI: And this was, like a community picnic type of thing?

PN: Uh-huh. And I don't know if it was a ken, but like a Japanese Association picnic.

TI: So how would you describe, first, your mother? If you were to describe what your mother was like.

PN: She's both, I think she's both traditional and feisty. And in a different time and place, if she had been educated, she would be probably a lot like me in a way, 'cause she's very competitive. So on the farm, we would have these, she would have these races. "Okay, let's see how many berries people can pick in the next thirty minutes." She'd always have these little competitions going. She pretty much ran the farm, you know. She got things moving. So she is pretty strong-spirited, and, but she would not think of herself that way. She would think of herself as shy and quiet. And in public or something like that, she is. Nonetheless, she's a strong Nisei woman. Our relationship got a lot closer when I realized, oh, I'm a lot like her. [Laughs] But for the fact that she didn't have the opportunity to get education, which I did, I think she would have been pretty similar to me. Although I'm pretty much a lot influenced by my father as well.

TI: Well, how many children did your mother and father have?

PN: Four.

TI: And where are you in the order?

PN: The youngest.

TI: So why don't we go through that in terms of your oldest to you.

PN: My sister Linda is the oldest. My mother had, I think, four children in five and a half years, so very close together.

TI: And do you know what year Linda was born?

PN: Uh-huh, 1946. They were married December 24th of 1945, and Linda was born on December 24th of 1946.

TI: Good, okay. So after Linda?

PN: Jerry, and he was born on April 28th of 1948, it must be.

TI: Okay, then after Jerry?

PN: Jim was born July 24th of 1949.

TI: You have a good memory. I don't think I could do that with my siblings. [Laughs] Good, okay.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.