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TI: So we were talking about your mother and you were talking about how she's a loving person.

RO: And she was very physical, she'd hug us and just --

TI: Oh, that was very unusual for Issei to hug?

RO: Yes, I mean especially my youngest brother, Dan, he was like an appendage, I mean, he was always around her and she... he was a child that she wasn't expecting 'cause she was already forty-two when she gave birth to my youngest brother at the Santa Anita race -- at the stadium. It was really, really tough on her. And then of course, two weeks after the birth, we were put on a train to Poston. So she had a rough, rough time in her early forties. But my mother and father, their relationship was not... it was probably a typical Issei couple but my mother was very, as I said, affectionate and she would wake up in the morning to get us going she... we were living in this old Victorian house and it was two stories, the second floor was living quarters, downstairs was the church. It used to be a brothel during the turn of the century. So as a brothel they had this round circle where I could just envision the horses bringing the customers, right, on the carriage, dropping them off at this brothel. [Laughs] It was a beautiful house, it must have been a beautiful place back at the turn of the century. So upstairs where we lived, downstairs for a while the chapel was where probably the dancing girls did their business, I mean, did their dance and that was converted into a chapel, a small little chapel there. And then there was a living room, dining room and then a kitchen. My mother would wake up in the morning and in order to get us going she's start singing, she'd clap her hands and she would sing that song, "Makoto no kamisama tatta hitori." Anyway she would wake us up with this song, that was the alarm for us to get up and get going for school.

She was just a very happy woman, I mean, she was, as I mentioned a very loving mother and she was my best friend because after the war when we returned to San Diego and then from San Diego after a year we moved up to San Lorenzo where we lived in that former brothel place, she and I became very close because in 1950 or '51 they discovered she had colon cancer. And we found out that she only had about three months to live. I was sophomore year, end of my sophomore year going into my junior year in high school and the one memory of hearing, this my father tried to keep this from us, keep that news from us. But I can't recall how we heard it that she was dying and so my brother whose the psychiatrist today he and I when we heard the news... we used to have to go these prayer meetings on Wednesday night and I remember we heard the news and I heard the door open and I heard my brother running up the stairs to his bedroom. So I left the meeting too and ran upstairs and the two of us hugged and cried 'cause we didn't know until then that our mother was dying. And from there because the cancer had spread and it was, I found out years later, the tumor in her colon had grown to a baseball size, a hardball size so my father heard about the City of Hope down in San Diego, and of course a lot of this I found out later, so he worked with the conference to have his status changed from San Lorenzo church down to southern California. Of course there were other things going on I found out years later but anyway we moved down to San Diego, I mean, to Pasadena where we could be closer to the City of Hope and my father then was a minister at San Fernando Holiness Church and then he started a church down in Monrovia. But anyway I used to take my, drive my mother for her exams and she had surgery at the City of Hope, I was in school, I was in college and I was working part time to pay for my college and when I took her, I used to drop out, you know, get a day off, take her to the City of Hope for her appointment and one day I took her and she came out, the doctor said, "I'd like to talk to you, Ruth."

TI: Let's just establish you're only like about sixteen years old about here?

RO: No, I was nineteen. By that time I had graduated high school and we were down in Pasadena. But I was, when I found out about it, I was sixteen, seventeen.

TI: Alright.

RO: But when we moved down to Pasadena and I drove her to the City of Hope and the doctor called me in after he had examined my mother. And I sat down and he said, "Well, you know, Ruth, your mother is dying and she only has five months left to live." And I was like, "What? Nobody told me that she was dying." Five months, was like I just sat there stunned and I went out and my mother and I drove back to Pasadena and I did the usual route with her. I'd take her out for a walk around the block and for a week while I was caring for her, taking care of her, I couldn't sleep thinking that she was dying. It was like my best friend is dying. And so one day apparently because I wasn't sleeping my eyes got puffed up. So I was cooking lunch for my mother, she was sitting at the table and so she said, "Okay, Yoshiko, what's going on?" and so she said, "Come here, sit down." So I sat at the table and she said tell me what's happening. And I told her, "You're dying, Mom, you only have, the doctor said five months to live." And this scene is so vivid, she sat there at the table and sort of drummed the table with her fingers for a minute or so and then she looked at me and said, "Okay, then there's some things I want you to do. I want to have some things done before I die." Anyway, one, she wanted to see me married, she wanted to make sure that my two younger brothers were cared for... well, at that time actually Joe, my brother who's two years younger than me had gone off to college. He had gotten a scholarship and knew that he was going to off to college. So she went into a coma in May of 1956, about the first week of May she went into a coma. And so my brother, Joe, the one who did become a doctor, he would sit silently by the side of the bed, he was so shaken. And he was going off to school and off to college and he wanted, he wished -- I talked to him about this later -- he wanted to tell my mother, "I got a scholarship, I'm going to Dartmouth," but my mother was unconscious by that time so she never knew what happened with her two younger boys that she was very concerned about. Well, she had nothing to be worried about, they did quite well and accomplished successful careers in their professional life. Both went off to Ivy League schools and did well so my mother would have been very, very proud.

TI: I'm curious, you know, one of the other things she requested was that you got married. In that time period, did you get married or did something happen?

RO: She wanted me to marry a minister and there was one person that she said, "If you don't ask him to go out, I am going to ask him." And I said, "Mom, please don't do that." Yes, I did... so my parents, I didn't realize it then but my parents got involved and did that whole, you know, parent stuff that the Isseis do? I had no idea that my father had been contacting my future husband. Anyway, yes, we planned our wedding for May and he flew back from his school, from his seminary and by the time he got back though my mother was in a coma. No, wait a minute that's right, he flew back, he sat down next to the bed with her and she said, "Onegai shimasu." He was going to be the eldest in the family now 'cause he was older than my older brother. So it was like, "I'm turning my children over to you as you'll be the eldest in the family." And then she wanted to see us married so we planned the wedding in May but nine days before the wedding she died. So I cancelled everything. I cancelled it until August -- this was May -- and I was brokenhearted that she... that was the one thing she wanted to do was to see her only daughter get married and she missed it by nine days.

TI: My sense is she knew that was going to happen so she found some comfort in that.

RO: That's true, that's true.

TI: We're out of sequence, we're not doing it kind of chronologically but I'm just so fascinated by this story. You know, I'm just thinking so you're late teens going through all this. I mean, it's all these major life changes in terms of your mother, your best friend dying and you're caring, getting married and it must have been a very stressful time for you.

RO: It was but the one thing I have is that my relationship with my mother was just really tight and because I was the only girl in the family my father didn't think he had the resources financially to see his sons go through college. So he called, he said, "Yoshiko, you are responsible to help me finance your brothers' education." And I was like, "But I want to go to college, Pop." And he said, "No, you are to help me finance your brothers' education." But I talked to my mother and quietly I took a college prep course in my freshman year anyway and then in those days we had to bring our report cards home and our parents had to sign it. My father looked at my report card and saw that it was college prep and he said, "Yoshiko," I got a scolding from him. "I told you that you need to take typing, all the business courses so you could go out to work to help me send your brothers to school." So in tears I went back to my college counselor and said I need to take typing, blah, blah, blah, so I switched. And at the same time I had been involved in student body affairs in grammar school, too. But in high school I decided to run for treasurer and I ran and became, anyway, I ended up being the treasurer which was a good thing because I had to learn how to balance books and collect money and all of that stuff which was good training for me. And anyway after two years of typing, bookkeeping, working in the treasurer's office and doing all that stuff in my senior year, after my junior year I went back to my mother. I said, "Please, please, please ask Pop if I can switch back to my college preparatory." And my father of course was adamant, "No, no, no, Yoshiko needs to help me." But she spent two weeks talking to my father. Finally he gave in and he said, "Okay, okay." So I went to my high school counselor, Mr. Dixon and I said, "Mr. Dixon I would like to switch back to my college prep." He was so upset at me, he said, "What are you talking about? You can't do that. No college is going to take you in. You have these two business years and you have just one college prep. No, you can't do that." And I said, "Please," but I had to plead with him, "Please switch me back to college prep. I'll find... I'll do whatever I have to to get into college." Anyway so he reluctantly switched me back to taking English and all the prep stuff I had to do.

TI: But the great story is how much your mother was an advocate for you.

RO: Absolutely, all along in my life she always stood up for me, fought the battles that I had with my dad and I owe her everything you know. This whole ambition of going to school, 'cause she was a really good example for me. I mean, she not only was a loving mother but she encouraged us in our education.

TI: Okay, good. So that was great about your mother.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.