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TI: So going back to this early, your early childhood, so your, initially, your mother is a single mother, she has a young son, and then you're, during the day she's working as a maid and you're, like, at different babysitters.

SY: Right. She did indicate this, which I thought was quite interesting, the only day off she had Sunday, and she would take me to a park the entire day until the evening, then she had to put me back into the babysitter and she would have to walk to Pacific Heights and San Francisco is a very hilly area. So the thing that I noticed about San Francisco after moving to Los Angeles area, I noticed San Francisco's very cold, and then, being in the park area, you have a lot of wind, fog, and whatnot. And so she'd mentioned that to me, that that was her prime time with me, something goes back in my mind, I said, well, you know, with that hardship, coming back from Japan, she was really sensitive about cleanliness, and I would always think about being six months or a year old, how did she do the diapers and how did she maintain the cleanliness, and how do you dry diapers in a ship or whatnot? We never talked about it, but in my mind I think about this. But I never digressed back feeling sorry for myself about the fact that I didn't have a mother for six or five days, or six days, Sunday was the only day I saw my mother for four years, but I think it made me a stronger person, and that's just my own opinion. I could have felt sorry for myself, got into trouble, and blamed the parents for this. I never did. And so everybody has different answers.

TI: Good. In thinking about your mother, what kind of personality did she have, how would you describe her?

SY: I was, at the time, when I remember as a child, I'd describe her as a mean, very opinionated, outspoken, a nagging mother. And I always pictured her as old, she never went to a hairdresser, all her clothes was given to her, she knew how to alter her clothes, she never bought any clothes other than underwear, she always believed in clean underwear, just in case she had an accident that the doctors was, you know, you got clean underwear. That was one thing that she was very concerned about. So I always pictured, even in camp and even before that, I always pictured her extremely old, and I didn't really want her to participate in any school activity because of the fact that I was ashamed that she was a lot older than the other mothers. And it turned out that she was extremely young, but it was my perception of what she looked like.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.