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TI: Earlier we had just started talking about your siblings, so you were the youngest of five. Can you tell me your other siblings were, in birth order? Like who was oldest?

MB: There were five male children above me, and one died of pleurisy and he was, I think, maybe early school age, quite young. And we did have a doctor, Doctor Yamao, but I don't know where he went to medical school and those things were not discovered yet, how to treat pleurisy, and you never hear about them now. Never hear anyone ever having pleurisy.

TI: And what, what was his name?

MB: The doctor?

TI: No, the, your brother who died.

MB: Goro, meaning he was the fifth child. (Goro died as a youngster in early school years).

TI: Okay, and then how about your other brothers? The oldest, who was the oldest?

MB: Josaku, J-O-S-A-K-U, and everybody just called him Joe. And then Andrew, we called him Andy, and Grove, I don't if it's from Walnut Grove or, but, and Shiro was fourth, and Goro. And they're the only two with American names. The others, Grove, Andy, and Joe had Western names.

TI: Alright, and how much older, like Joe, how much older was he than you?

MB: Thirteen years older than me.

TI: Okay, so quite a bit of, of age...

MB: Yeah.

TI: And then, and so you had essentially four older brothers, and then a gap and then you, so how, how did your brothers and how did the family treat you, being the youngest and being a girl?

MB: They were very good. I suppose maybe my brother just above me, the two brothers above me might've been, might've resented it since I was getting all the attention, first female child. [Laughs] Yeah.

TI: And so what would be an example of special attention that you got?

MB: Oh, of course I was never disciplined manually, but of course, I was much younger. They were a few years older than I was, but the discipline was pretty tough on them.

TI: So like your father would maybe hit them to discipline them, but he would never do that with you, for instance?

MB: No, (I remember being spanked). So I got away with murder is what.

TI: [Laughs] That's kind of like, similar to my family. There're four older, there're four boys and then my sister is the youngest, and so yeah, we always thought she was a little on the spoiled side. I was just curious, it sounded like a similar situation. So growing up, when, as you're growing up, you're younger, did you have certain chores or things that you were supposed to do when you were growing up?

MB: Not really, but when my brother started college and (Mom) helped financially by going to the farms and raking and weeding and so forth, and she'd never... and she had to financially, even though tuition must've been really nominal 'cause when I went it was thirty-five dollars a semester, but they were much older than, yeah. And so she went out to work on the farm and I remember I cooked the rice and she was so grateful. She was surprised that I knew how to do it 'cause I about burned the pot, but the fact that I would even think to do that, I know she was telling the neighbors and bragging about me.

TI: Well, so did your mother make an effort to teach you how to cook, like the --

MB: Not really. I just kind of sat around and watched her.

TI: And how about your brothers? Did they have, like, jobs or chores that they did when they were growing up?

MB: They did, and my father was a disciplinarian, would just really shout at them and it was always a big fight between the brothers and my father, but that seemed to be fairly common with other families. (Narr. note: My brothers worked on farms during vacations and saved for college. They wanted to buy shoes or something related to sports but they were allowed to spend money earned. They were forced to bank earnings from farm work for college.)

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