<Begin Segment 3>

TI: Yeah, I want to go back to your mother. Can you tell me what your mother's name was?

YI: Koisa, K-O-I-S-A.

TI: And can you tell me a little bit about her family and what kind of work they did?

YI: Okay, my mother had a terrible childhood. She was born out of wedlock, okay, from what I hear she was a child of two prominent family in the village, two merchants. And I guess they went through all the... I mean, they knew each other actually, you know, but she became pregnant. So for, I think, well, actually he would be my grandfather actually, family decided that for stature, they didn't want the marriage to go through because my grandmother was pregnant. So when my mother was born, she was put up for adoption. So my mother had very little schooling, in fact, one or two years I think, you know. And to this day, I'm not able to trace the family that adopted her. It's not registered in the Japanese koseki, it's hard to trace. I'm still trying, you know, but that's the kind of life my mother had.

TI: So they didn't send her to school so was she more like a servant kind of or she did more work?

YI: I guess she must have been adopted by a poor farming family where you know...

TI: Okay, so she just --

YI: That's one thing she never talked about. Yeah, she never talked about her growing up.

TI: Interesting, okay. And so how was that for your father, so your father was more learned, I mean, he could, you know, read, write and your mother wasn't. Was that difficult for them?

YI: No, because I used to see my mother late at night writing to my sister. My sister was sent... Toshie was sent to Japan to go to school in Japan after she finished eighth grade here. So I saw her writing and she was writing all in katakana, you know. And, you know, we had those Japanese tablet that had blocks, you know, you write your kana in the block and I think it took her hours to write a couple of pages to my sister but I saw her doing that.

TI: Okay, so it's almost like a schoolgirl writing then?

YI: Yeah, and then later on she learned how to write hiragana, okay, and that's a little harder than the katakana but that's all she learned. My mom was a good seamstress, she could sew, she learned how to sew kimono, you know, she used to sew all my shirts and trousers. And so she did the sewing for the community almost.

TI: Oh, so more than just the family, she did others.

YI: She never went back to the fields. She did all the work at home while sewing.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.