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MN: Now, your parents, what year did they get married?

BK: You know, I don't know the exact year, but going back, I would say it must've been in the early, maybe '20, 1920? Yeah, I was born 1926.

MN: Well, your sister was born...

BK: And she was older.

MN: Nineteen...

BK: So it may be they got married around 1918 or '19, somewhere around there.

MN: Now, when your mother arrived in the United States, what kind of work did she do?

BK: She was working for a while at the railroad also. The sleeper trains, they would change the sheets and things like that. And then she got pregnant and then from that point on she was at home.

MN: So how many children did your parents have?

BK: Three. Mariko was the oldest, and then Midori was the second, and I was the last. So we had three children.

MN: And what year were you born?

BK: 1926.

MN: Now, were all three children delivered by a samba-san?

BK: Yes. As far as I know, yes.

MN: And do you remember your samba-san's name?

BK: You know, I don't remember, but it's on my birth certificate. She later lived in Boyle Heights, so we used to walk past her home, and I can't remember her name but...

MN: Do you know where you were delivered, what area?

BK: I was delivered up on the, where the music center is. Yeah, we were up there on, what street was it? I forget the name of it, but we were up there on Bunker Hill. He was, my father was managing an apartment house and we got a free apartment as long as he managed, collected the rent and sent it to the owner. And when the Depression hit and nobody was paying rent he had to leave because we had, we couldn't pass anybody on to the owner, so we moved to a very rough area that had no, no streets, which was around Ninth, Ninth Street near the armor, armor rendering plant where they killed cattle and... off of Olympic. And the streets that we lived on had no, no streets. It was just sand and dirt. It was very, not very well developed project, but it was a place to sleep. So we moved into a two-bedroom house, the five of us, during the Depression, and it was very tough going.

MN: You said there's this rendering plant nearby, so what did your neighborhood smell like?

BK: Pretty powerful smell. It was, people didn't want to live there because of the, the smell and the fact that if you could afford it you would move out. And those that couldn't afford it then moved in, so we couldn't afford living in regular quarters because there was no income coming in, or very little that I, the parents weren't working, both of them weren't working, so...

MN: What happened to your father's job at the Santa Fe Railroad?

BK: Well until the business improved, what I mean is when the Depression hit people weren't traveling. Business came to almost a standstill, so cargo was not being shipped by the trains either, so as the economy improved, then passengers were going onto the train and freight was now being loaded up and delivered, then the railroads then started to have a need for people to come back on. As soon as that happened things improved for us, so we moved from there to Boyle Heights.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.