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TI: And so you talked about older brothers and sisters, why don't we talk about that now? Can you go through, 'cause I know from previous conversations, you had quite a large family. So why don't you tell me your siblings in birth order.

MY: Okay. Oldest one is Tom.

TI: And about how much older was Tom?

MY: Ten years.

TI: Okay.

MY: And then Mike, Mitsuo. He was 1909, yeah, Tom was '7, he was '9, and then Mun was... actually, I can't remember the next two, Mun and Masato. And Alice was two years older than I was, so she was born in 1916. And then I was born in August of 1918, and George was born in April of 1920. Dan was born in October of '22, and Gengo was born in 1925... Gengo, and Oscar was, let's see... golly, I can't even remember the year.

TI: That's okay. So after, Gengo, was it Gengo?

MY: Gengo, uh-huh.

TI: And then Oscar.

MY: Uh-huh, and then Carl and Bill.

TI: And so I heard there were two girls?

MY: Uh-huh.

TI: You and Alice.

MY: Okay, so there should be ten brothers. [Laughs]

TI: Yeah. Tom, Mike, Mitsuo...

MY: No, Mitsuo, Mitsuo and Mike are the same person.

TI: Okay, same. Then Masato?

MY: Manabu is before that, Mun.

TI: Okay. And then...

MY: Masato.

TI: Masato. George, Dan, Gengo, Oscar, Carl and Bill.

MY: Uh-huh. Not enough or too many? [Laughs]

TI: Wow. You know, as I go through this and I look at this, so ten boys and two girls. Back then, was there... what's the right word? Preference in terms of whether or not farmers wanted boys or girls back then? Was there ever kind of a sort of gender preference?

MY: Well, I don't know. I really don't know. I think they would have rather had the boys to work on the farm, although my dad had a grocery store, too, so that the farm was very small, you know. By the time they got going through high school, they were out working away from home already. I think Dad had a vision before even we grew up.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright (c) 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.