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TI: So let's talk about your mother a little bit. So where was she from?

TO: She was from Kumamoto, too.

TI: And in terms of the age difference between your father and mother, what was...

TO: I think about twenty years.

TI: Twenty years?

TO: Yeah. She was... so my father was an old man by the time I was born, I think he was about fifty years old when I was born.

TI: And what was your mother's name?

TO: Sugie, Sugie. Shino was her maiden name.

TI: I'm sorry, maiden name was...

TO: Shino, S-H-I-N-O, Shino.

TI: And what do you know about your mother's family in Japan?

TO: My mother's family, when she was... I think she had a brother. I think she had a couple brothers, but one of the brothers was killed, he was in the Japanese army, and he was killed, of course. I don't think my mother heard about it 'til after the war ended, of course, and we started communicating. All I remember is she was, her nieces and nephews, they were having a real tough time as well as her, I guess, sister-in-law, so she'd send whatever she could to Japan to help them out.

TI: And do you have a sense of what kind of work your mother's family did before the war when she lived in Japan?

TO: I assume they were farming. Because when we went and visited Japan, it seemed like the neighborhood where her nieces, I guess, they were living out in the country and they were in the farm area. But I don't necessarily think they were all farming at that time. By then it was nieces and nephews that I met, so they were all, I think they were working somewhere and I don't think any of them were farming. But they still lived out in the old farmhouse up there, so I don't know whatever happened to that farm that they were farming, whether they owned it. But something very interesting at that time when we visited Japan. My cousin, I guess, my mother's niece, she was kind of interested in my father's background. And apparently there was some connection that she had that she knew the family of my father. But, of course, they were quite a bit older than us. But her, my father's brother, I guess, his grandson came and met us in Japan when my niece, when my cousin hosted this party. And he profusely thanked me for my father giving up his share of this farm, which I didn't know anything about. But I thought that was kind of funny. Here this strange man was thanking me for something that my father did for, I guess it was his parents. So he must have been the son of my father's oldest brother, is what I gather. But the language, my Japanese is not very good, and his English, of course, was nothing.

TI: So it sounded like your father had some share of the family land there.

TO: Apparently so. I was always under the assumption that the oldest son got everything, but apparently that wasn't the case. Or whatever, I don't know what the legal situation was. But he just kept thanking me and thanking me and thanking me.

TI: [Laughs] So you almost wanted to ask him, "How much was it worth?"

TO: That's right. [Laughs] I had no idea how big the property was or anything.

TI: As long as it wasn't downtown Tokyo. [Laughs] Okay, so we were talking about your mother's family and farming. How would you describe your mother? What kind of personality, what was she like?

TO: She was... well, being a little bit older than a typical mother, I think, she had four children. I'm the oldest son... I had an older sister, but I was what they called the chonan in the family. And so for some reason, she leaned on me a lot, because being the oldest son, doing different things. But I recall a couple of things. When I was a young guy, I think, probably nine, ten years old, we'd never raised chickens or anything. But some neighbors gave us a live chicken. And Mom told me to chop the head off that chicken. And that was very frightening for me. I didn't know how do to that. I grabbed this chicken and I had it on the chopping block. Everybody, all the farms, everybody chopping blocks. Our only source of heat was wood and cooking. So the chicken kept moving and I whacked it and whacked it. I got part of it and then I got scared, and the chicken started flopping around with half his head cut off. Oh, what a horrible experience that was. And finally the chicken died. That's something that was very unforgettable for me.

But if I recall, she was always full of praises. Like I remember carrying, I was real young and I'm carrying some wood, I think. I was just probably old enough to carry some wood into the house for her cooking and she praised me. Praises didn't come very often from anyone in the family, but that kind of impressed me. So she was a very kindhearted lady.

TI: Yeah, that is unusual. Because I rarely hear of the Isseis using praise.

TO: Yeah, right.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.