<Begin Segment 3>

MN: Wait, hold on. Before we go back to your childhood -- let's talk about your mother.

RO: My mother.

MN: Well, let's go back to your early, the early years, and your parents arrive in the United States. Do you know what year they arrived?

RO: It would be in the '30s. And he was working for a Japanese importing company. But I think the Depression hit, and that while my mother didn't intend to work, I think she did take in some sewing or did something to help.

MN: And this is when they're still in San Francisco?

RO: San Francisco.

MN: Okay. And can you tell me the names of your siblings and the order they were born?

RO: At that time, it would be my sister Frances, she was born in San Francisco, and then my brother George, and myself. There was another child that, I don't know his name, that died in infancy, and then I had another brother during internment.

MN: And so this other brother who died in infancy, was he older?

RO: Older than my sister.

MN: Older than Frances.

RO: Yes.

MN: And Frances was born... Frances, is it Michiko?

RO: Hmm?

MN: Michiko?

RO: Michiko.

MN: She was born in San Francisco. George, where was he born?

RO: I don't know whether it was San Francisco or Los Angeles.

MN: And how about yourself?

RO: I was born in Los Angeles.

MN: And where in Los Angeles were you born?

RO: At the, I believe the Japanese hospital.

MN: In Boyle Heights, East L.A.?

RO: Uh-huh, Boyle Heights.

[Interruption]

MN: You know, not a lot of people were born in hospitals at that time.

RO: Is that right?

MN: Most of them, they were delivered by a sanba-san.

RO: I didn't know that, but I have a birth certificate, I think, that has some signatures, I think, including the doctor. But how I refer to where I was born is I was born in East L.A. And it's an identity that I've embraced.

MN: What was your birth name?

RO: Birth name was Takayo.

MN: And what does it mean?

RO: Hmm?

MN: What is the translation of that?

RO: I would, the way I understood my mother was that I was named Takayo as a "child with high ideals."

MN: Do you know where they got that name? Is it a grandparent's name?

RO: I don't know. If I know them, they probably made it up.

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