<Begin Segment 7>

TI: And then you went to middle school and you went to Hiroshima. What was that like? Was that hard for you to be away from the family?

PY: Yes, living alone was very hard. And those years, we didn't have enough food. That was, and I was growing up, and that was very hard. Because always, you feel hungry. And when you are sixteen, seventeen years old, you know, you want to eat. But it was very hard to leave. Not only myself, but everybody was, they had a hard time.

TI: So when you're hungry, like, always hungry, what do you do? Is there anything that you think or do to kind of distract yourself from the food?

PY: Well, somehow, we used to go out and illegally, we used to get some food, yeah.

TI: Like what? How would you do that? What would be an example?

PY: Well, you know, once in a while I go back to Atatashima. And Atatashima doesn't have too many rice field, but my mother's side in Yamaguchi-ken, me... myself and my brother Goro, we used to go to what you call black market things. Go to my mother's temple and get some rice and then come back to Atatashima. And that's what I used to bring to Hiroshima, or when I went to college, I'd take it to Tokyo. In a suitcase, nothing but was rice, instead of book. [Laughs]

TI: Because at school you wouldn't have enough food, they wouldn't give you enough food, so you would bring extra food from home.

PY: Yeah, yeah.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.