<Begin Segment 30>

MN: Now, just your personal... how many children do you have?

FH: I have two now. I had three, but I have two.

MN: You have a daughter and a son?

FH: That's correct, yes.

MN: And one daughter who passed away.

FH: That's correct, yes.

MN: Can you share with us their names?

FH: Yes. The oldest one was Darlene, Darlene Kumiko Hirata, but she died at age twenty-eight. [Interruption] And the next one is Alice Reiko. Alice Reiko Hirata, who married to Randy Miketa, M-I-K-E-T-A. "Miketa" sounds like Japanese, but it's not Japanese, it's more or less Hungarian and Italian mixed name, Hungarian, I think. And he's from Columbus Ohio, he works for the Toyota Motor company now. He's 6'4". And so that's our daughter, and then the son's name is Curtis, Curtis Hirata. He's a bachelor, I think he's about age fifty. And so it'd be nice if he got married, but it seems like that's the way nowadays, boys and girls, is that right? Want to enjoy their own life instead of getting married and so forth, family and so forth. But he works for the... what was that? Parde Home, P-A-R-D-E Home. That is one of the five largest homebuilders in the United States. He worked for another company like that, but he lost job and then he landed on this job, company, which, Los Angeles office, which is in, on Wilshire and Westwood, near there.

MN: Can I ask something about your wife and yourself? Did you have a Christian marriage?

FH: Yes, we did. At the Okayama church. Because she was baptized in Hiroshima. Went to Hiroshima Jogakuin, that's a Christian, Methodist institution, and they had the missionary. And through her influence, she was baptized. She wasn't a Baptist, but she got married there, yes.

MN: So you folks didn't do a --

FH: I mean, she got baptized.

MN: Did you not go through the sansankudo or anything like that, the traditional...

FH: No, no. Just the Christian... at church. My parents were in the United States, we didn't have them, but we had this professor and his wife and so forth, who introduced us together. And then the other were all the church friends and so forth, Sunday school teachers and all the church members, they attended the wedding at the Okayama church.

TI: So I have a question, this is kind of shifting gears, but earlier you were talking about the occupation, and you mentioned your uncle working for the U.S. government as an interpreter. Can you tell me again what he was doing?

FH: Interpreter. Interpreter, because there was the GI and so forth stationed in Okayama, and they need an interpreter. And he barely went to the eighth grade in elementary school and then lived in this country for so long, so you know what kind of English it was, it was a pidgin English. But at least he was good enough to go around in the car with them. Not the real business kind of thing.

TI: So he would go around with an American and he would help interpret.

FH: Right, in the jeep, that's right. That's right. Just to get away from the daily needs of the American soldiers and so forth.

TI: And in general, how did Japanese feel about other Japanese feel about other Japanese working with the U.S. government? Was there any stigma?

FH: No, no ill feeling at all. Because when his son was in Korea and got the tuberculosis and was sent back to Japan and so forth, his life was saved because of his father who worked for the U.S. government, got the... what you call that, the medicine and so forth, was able to use that, and that's why his life was saved. Antibiotic and so forth.

<End Segment 30> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.