<Begin Segment 6>

TI: Well, so you talked about your first two older brothers, so Noboru, when he was fifteen, he had to quit school and help, same thing with Isamu. How about your older sisters? When they turned fifteen, did they quit school also, or did they keep going to school?

SO: They had to. And then Shizue was the first one that went up to tenth grade, but she had to leave school, too. And when the war started, I was next in line, but I was fortunate enough to graduate Konawaena High School, I went through the twelfth grade.

TI: But this was after, you finished after the war?

SO: During the war.

TI: During the war you finished, okay. And so how did you get lucky that you got to go all the way, all the way through twelfth grade?

SO: I had two older brothers, and then three older sisters, they were all helping in the store. So... and the others were younger, but we were able to manage, to survive the war years.

TI: Okay, and we'll talk more about the war years, but I want to finish your siblings. So we talked about the first six, so you're number six. You had more siblings, too, brothers and sisters. So tell me who the other brothers and sisters were.

SO: The older brothers?

TI: The younger one.

SO: Young ones?

TI: Yeah, young ones.

SO: I had a younger sister, three younger sisters below me, and two younger brothers. Actually, there were eleven of us. One passed away, Mitsuye, so actually, there were twelve children.

TI: And so what were the names of the younger ones?

SO: Younger ones? The one below me was Yoshie, then Fujie, Fusaye, and then Wataru, and Stanley Kiyoshi.

TI: Okay. So one died, but eleven others, so you have eleven kids. What was it like growing up in such a big family? Was it common for families to be this large?

SO: Yeah, a lot of farmers wanted coffee pickers, so they used to have seven, eight, ten, twelve children. They used to have big families.

TI: So it wasn't, so for you, like, at dinnertime, what was dinnertime like when you have so many people there?

SO: Well, since we had the store business, we used to eat in two shifts. Half would eat first, and the other half would eat later on. Because we had to wait on customers in the store. So that's how we managed to run the family.

TI: And what would be a typical meal for dinner? What would you eat?

SO: Typical meal? Corned beef and cabbage. [Laughs] And Dad couldn't afford too much meat, so we used to buy the cheapest meat, and then my mother always used to stretch that by slicing all the meat and cooking with vegetable and shoyu. So that's how our meals used to be. And whenever there was an occasion at the church, any kind of occasion, they used to serve rice ball and takuan, and nobody complained. And those days, we didn't have soda pop, also, just plain water from the, wherever you are, faucet. That's how we used to survive.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.