<Begin Segment 8>

TI: So let's go back to your family a little bit. You mentioned you had two older brothers, Steve, who was born in 1943, and Sam, born in 1945. Then you were the third born?

RH: Yes.

TI: And you were born 1951, so a little bit after. Your, your two older brothers are a little bit older. And then you had two sisters?

RH: Right. Kimi, who's about two years younger than me, and then my youngest sister, June, is about six years younger than me.

TI: Okay. And tell me about some, oh, just memories of the family when you were young, before, before your teen years. What, just describe how the family functioned in terms of a typical day.

RH: Well, my father basically, because there're five kids, my mother didn't work. She stayed home and she, so she basically took care of the family, and so I just know that, remember growing up that my father was, always seemed to be working or gone and basically worked two jobs, because he, he worked at the Bethlehem Steel during the day and then after that he would go out and he would have these certain customers for gardening things that he would do. And so many times he wouldn't come home 'til like eight o'clock or even later in the evening, and then he, on the weekends he was always out doing the gardening work, too, working on Saturdays, even on Sundays, so he was, he was, always seemed to be working or gone doing things. So my mother was the primary person that was really taking care of the household. And, and many times, there were certain times in our lives, in my early childhood lives, where my father's parents were, would come, they would be coming in from Japan or stay with us for extended period of time, whether it's just a few months or actually a couple years or whatever, so it was different, they would come back and forth for different reasons, so I just remember having them with us at, so it was very, became very large extended household at times when they were there. And our home was, I guess in general it was kind of average. It wasn't, like, huge, but with five kids, my parents, and my grandparents all in one home, it became very crowded.

Some of the things I remember is that summertime we would, my mother's sister and, sister and brother lived in Los Angeles area, so every, usually every summer they would usually come up here or we would get a chance to go down to Los Angeles, and so naturally, for us, if we get to go to Los Angeles we get to go to Disneyland or Knott's Berry Farm and that was kind of the big event for us, that we'd get to go down there and do that. But I would always remember, again, that, even, especially if my grandparents were with us, that we would all pile into this station wagon car and drive down to L.A. to, to visit my relatives and have our so called family vacation together. And I never understood why we had to, when we would drive to L.A., why we'd have to leave at around like nine o'clock at night or something, because my father would always, we'd always pile into the car and he'd be driving most of the night to get to L.A., and so it wasn't until much later I realized that with five kids, all the people and my grandparents in car, it made a lot of sense to do it at night because we'd be sleeping and wouldn't be crying and complaining, having to stop every other ten minutes or whatever for somebody. [Laughs] He could just drive and make a couple stops because we would all be conked out sleeping. So, and that's what he did in order, to make it happen for us, basically, in his own way, he really kind of sacrificed a lot for us in his own way. And so, and those are some of the things I really remember about us growing up.

Even though my father worked very hard he was very, he loved to garden, so even though that was part of his work, he loved to garden and stuff, because at our home, in his, in our backyard, the plants and something was his pride and joy, especially roses, which I find really kind of funny because I'm really allergic to roses right now, so I can't, that's one of my worst plants I have to be around. [Laughs] And, but he just loved roses, so that's, he had it all over the yard and the garden and he would just take care of that and things. He would, as we were growing up, too, in the gardening things, he would make us, my brothers and I, help him at times, especially during the summertime when he knew we weren't in school. During school time, actually, he thought we needed to deal with school, so that was important.

TI: So, so yeah, explain that to me. Would that be your two older brothers and you, and would your sisters help, or it was just the boys?

RH: Just the boys.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.