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TI: Okay, so Frank, we're going to start the second segment, the second hour. And before we go onto the war, I wanted to first ask about your relationship with your parents. I mean, you talk about how they were always so busy.

FS: How many days in a year?

TI: Yeah, 365 days, you never sat --

FS: We had one day off.

TI: Yeah, one day off.

FS: New Year's.

TI: And so you saw that, and you probably understood they had to work hard. But were you resentful in any way about that?

FS: No, because I saw a lot of people suffer. Not suffer, but went through the same situation I did. Just because they were hotel owner's son, it didn't mean they had it better than me. I think I ate better than them. But in a lot of respects, I saw that a lot of my friends had more money than me. When I mean more money, they had a dollar in their pocket. I never had a dollar.

TI: But at least you always had food, I guess.

FS: Yes, yes.

TI: You were never hungry.

FS: Food and lodging. And then I went judo four nights a week. I didn't have to work that day.

TI: But in terms of affection, or maybe affection isn't... but in terms of just caring for you, how would your mother or father kind of just show you that you were, that they cared for you?

FS: Well, my mother, when I bring my judo clothes home, she'll look at it, and then she'll tell me, "Send it across the street to the cleaner." She didn't wash it, she'd send it to cleaners. So she looked after my welfare that way. I noticed that very much. And then another thing I know, this is funny. after my dad went home from work, maybe seven at night, my mother would be there until closing time, which was eleven, twelve. So about nine o'clock, she would give me a couple of bucks and then she'd say, "Go down to Lim's Cafe and get, I ordered something, pick it up." She'd call Chinese food. On the sly, my mom was getting pakkai and all that good stuff, almond duck. I regret that, because to my dying day, I never got a piece of it. And then she won't let me eat ice cream, and I had to get the ice cream from the front, not in the kitchen. So the only way I ate ice cream was my mom wasn't around. Because she used to go in the afternoon and take rests. So that's the time that I used to go in, Saturday, and get the ice cream, in a big old bowl, I used to dump it in there. And jell-o, I used to put... I'd go and eat that, man was it good, especially when you stole it. [Laughs]

TI: That's a good story.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.