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TI: Shig, I forgot to ask this question, so I wanted to come back to it. But in terms of siblings, so did you have brothers and sisters?

SM: Oh, I had two brothers and a sister.

TI: Okay, so let's go through the birth order in terms of...

SM: Well, my sister was the eldest.

TI: And what was her name?

SM: Kazue.

TI: And how much older was she than...

SM: She was two years older than I. And I had a brother two years younger than I am.

TI: And what was his name?

SM: Ryouchi. And another brother who was five years younger than I am, Tsutomu.

TI: Okay, so there were four children, a sister, you, and the two younger brothers.

SM: But my sister, this was in 1928 or something, our family took a trip to Japan. And when we came back, my sister stayed in Japan.

TI: Okay, so in '28, so that was, so you were pretty young.

SM: Yeah, I was about four years old.

TI: Okay, so you didn't really know your older sister very well.

SM: No. Well, I got to know her after the war when she came back to the United States.

TI: Okay, good. So that's good to have established that. So going back to the family, so you were the oldest son, and two younger brothers. Did you ever talk to your younger brothers about what was happening?

SM: Well, I was... well, Terminal Island was a little bit different from other places. It was like a real Japanese family where siblings don't talk to each other too much. And you talk to other people a lot more than your own family. [Laughs]

TI: Oh, so you would talk more with people your age, for instance.

SM: Yeah, uh-huh.

TI: And then your brother would do the same.

SM: That's why, like Terminal Island, I know a lot of these people that are older than I am, but people that were younger than I am, we hardly know each other.

TI: Now, so why is it that you know people older than you?

SM: Well, I don't know why that is, but I guess they, well, the younger people know us, but we don't know them.

TI: I see, so you would always kind of look up more in terms of...

SM: Yeah, yeah.

TI: I understand. Good.

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