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MN: Today is Tuesday, March 15, 2011. We are at the Woodfin Hotel in Emeryville, California. We will be interviewing Jun Nakahara Dairiki. We have Tani Ikeda on video, Jack Dairiki is a guest in the room, and I will be interviewing, my name is Martha Nakagawa. Jun, let's start with your father's name.

JD: His name is Hatsuki Nakahara.

MN: And your mother's name?

JD: Kita Nakahara. Her maiden name was Yasutake.

MN: And which prefecture did your parents come from?

JD: Both came from Kumamoto.

MN: Are they both Issei?

JD: Yes.

MN: Were your parents active in the Kumamoto kenjinkai?

JD: I think they were. 'Cause I think when they, Japanese immigrants came they, I think, felt comfortable with people who were from, not only from Japan, but from their own prefecture, and so you had all these kenjinkais, right, the Hiroshima Kenjinkai, Kumamoto Kenjinkai, and I don't know what else, but I think they had a comfort level in doing that, so I think they were active in that.

MN: Now, how many children did your parents have?

JD: There were actually five total. One of them was a set of twins, but they both passed away at birth.

MN: Where are you in the sibling hierarchy?

JD: I'm the baby of the family.

MN: Now, you have a very interesting name. It's Jun, but it's spelled J-U-N, which is masculine in Japanese. Can you share a little bit about the background of your name?

JD: It is a masculine name and it was, I don't know if it was intentional or not, but my mom and dad had four girls before me, and I guess when I was born, the way I heard it anyway was that the doctor asked him, "Now, what are you gonna name your daughter?" The first thing he came up with was Jun without an E, and I guess the kanji character for it, it is a masculine. Yeah, so that's how my, I got my name. My dad named me.

MN: So that's, does that mean he wanted a boy?

JD: Could be. I don't know. [Laughs]

MN: Where were you born?

JD: San Francisco.

MN: What year were you born?

JD: '34.

MN: And how were you delivered?

JD: Well, I was born in a hospital. It was known as Stanford Lane Hospital, which is now California Pacific Medical Center, but the location of CPMC, as it's known, was the former Stanford Lane Hospital. And I'm told that that hospital was the precursor to Stanford Hospital, but it was in San Francisco.

MN: Was it common for a family, Japanese American families in San Francisco to have their babies delivered in a hospital?

JD: You know, I don't know that. I don't know the answer to that.

MN: Now, before the war, what were your parents doing?

JD: My mom was a domestic. She went and cleaned houses for others. And my dad was a salesman for a Japanese export/import company, and so he had a car, a company car, and he took that car -- his territory, I should say, was all the way up to, from northern California down to central California, so he knew Jack's grandparents 'cause he conducted business with him, or with them. And then he knew Jack's parents because he stayed at the hotel in Sacramento, that Main Hotel that Jack mentioned.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.