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TI: So I'm gonna switch gears now and talk about you now, in terms of your early childhood.

HM: Oh, I had a wonderful life.

TI: Tell me about it.

HM: Real spoiled kid. Being the oldest daughter and the only first granddaughter, I was really spoiled. I mean, spoiled is not the word. I mean, people used to tell me that I was really spoiled. But I had a wonderful, wonderful life. I was Grandma's pet. My, that's how I... I couldn't do anything wrong under my grandmother's eyes, so I, you can just imagine how spoiled I was. And I went to church with her, hongwanji, Waipahu Hongwanji with her, and Grandma always wore kimono and went, so before we went to temple, to keep me quiet, we had to stop at a store called Matsumoto Store and buy me some goodies so I'll keep quiet while the service was going on, but I enjoyed that because I had something to munch on. And so you can see I was spoiled. Then running around and getting into trouble, but I remember I was told not to go into the ditch because all the kitchen water and everything went to a ditch and went to the river, but I never listened, I guess, and I got blood poison going into the ditch, so I, my mom said it was touch and go kind of thing, but that didn't teach me any lesson. [Laughs] I got into other trouble, but, but I guess that's growing up.

TI: And how old were you when you got the blood poisoning? Do you remember?

HM: I was very young. I don't remember it, but this is the story that, so I ended up in those, the Kuakini Hospital was called Japanese Hospital, so I landed there. So I must've been, I don't think I, not going to, maybe about four years or so, so I was, I never listened, I guess. [Laughs]

TI: You mentioned you were Grandmother's pet, so when Amy and Miyeko came along were you still kind of the...

HM: Yes. Mom was very upset about that. She was very upset because Amy, Amy was the cutest thing. She had lots of hair and then, she had so much hair it was bouncing off her forehead because she had lots of hair. Amy was real sweet. She had dimples. And Miyeko, Miyeko was the prettiest among three of us. She was cute. But Amy used to wet her bed every night, Amy would, so Mom used to say that Grandma was always upset, "But if you had done that," she said, "June, if you did --" they all called me June -- "if you did that, Grandma wouldn't have said anything. But she said it really hurt every day, Grandma picking on Amy, so that really hurt Mom. That really hurt Mom.

TI: So it almost sounds like the children, you and your sisters, it was like a tug of war between your mother and your grandmother, in terms of how they were raised and what should be said.

HM: Right. Right, so it was really tough on Mom. It was really tough on Mom. I remember her crying. I remember her, seeing her cry, so, but I thought she was nakimiso, crybaby, because I didn't quite understand, why was Mom crying?

TI: Especially since she, you, she was perhaps being critical of your grandmother, who you probably adored because she was so --

HM: Yeah, so this is why until I started to work on my genealogy and got the facts, I didn't understand.

TI: Well, you were a young girl, so you probably wouldn't understand that.

HM: No, no, I didn't think anything of it because while you're young you don't think of anything but yourself only.

TI: So at what point did the family move away from the grandparents?

HM: Okay. So in the house we had, I remember we had the second, my uncle Yutaka lived with us, Auntie Teruyo lived with us, and Uncle Satoru, and everybody lived in one big house, so you can see what Mom went through. So Uncle, when I think about that, Uncle Satoru was a funny one. Mom said he comes home from work, his socks is there, couple of steps, his pants is, the khaki pants, everybody (wore khaki pants), so that's the story I remember about Uncle Satoru very well, Mom said, "You knew he was home because his socks was there and his pants was there," so that's the reason why I remember Uncle Satoru so well. But we left the family, everybody got married and moved out, so we moved out when Grandma passed away, because no longer we could stay in that plantation home because Grandma passed away, so we moved out.

TI: And where did you go?

HM: We moved about half a mile away or so. We had to rent a home.

TI: And about how old were you when you moved? Do you remember?

HM: I think about six years old.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.