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TI: And then tell me about your mother's family. Were there other children?

JH: Yes, my mother had two sisters and two brothers, two older brothers.

TI: Do you know the birth order of...

JH: George was the oldest, and I'm not sure where Henry came in, and then my mother was the oldest girl, and then there were two younger sisters after that. I asked my mother once, "How did you get your names?" because there's George, Henry, Margaret, Helen, and Mary. And she says, "My mother wrote these names down on a piece of paper and picked our names." [Laughs]

TI: [Laughs] Almost like randomly, like from a hat?

JH: Yes, yes. She had the three girls' names, and so that's how Mother became Margaret.

TI: That's so interesting how names happen. Like yours was J.S., and so...

JH: Well yes, because I'm sure, especially my grandfather, he wouldn't have a clue as to, but I think a lot of that generation everybody had a George in the family, right? And I think Henry was fairly common too.

TI: Right. And even yours, Margaret, Helen, and Mary.

JH: Helen and Mary. I says, but Margaret seems a little... but leave it to my mother to pick that one.

TI: So your grandparents on your mother's side were in, like in produce you mentioned?

JH: Yes.

TI: Okay. And this was in the La Jolla area?

JH: No, they settled in Long Beach. Mother was, moved to La Jolla after she got married. I think she was eighteen. She graduated high school and she took off.

TI: Okay. And so has your, did your mother tell you any stories about how she and your father met?

JH: No. I mean, she rarely spoke of him.

TI: Does she ever talk about the divorce? Was that difficult for her?

JH: No, no. She divorced him because he was a gambler, so she was very nervous when my, I showed an interest in playing cards. When we were in Santa Anita I'd go down, we were all in the same stall area, so when Mother would be gone I'd go over to my uncle's place and I'd say, "Uncle George, can we play cards?" He says, "Where's your mother?" I says, "She went wherever," and he says, "Okay, go get the cards." So he taught me how to play gin rummy and those kind of games. We never played poker or anything like that, except when I got older. [Laughs]

TI: But everyone kind of knew that your mother was really against gambling.

JH: Oh, yes. She was very concerned that maybe it was something in the genes.

TI: Now, did you have any siblings?

JH: I have sisters who are twins.

TI: Okay, and they're younger?

JH: They're younger. They're two years younger.

TI: So you mentioned how your parents got divorced two years later, so it was right after the birth of the twins?

JH: Yes. Because I remember, I don't remember my father at all. I have a seen a picture where we were, the whole family was at the beach, but other than that... and then during the war we went to different camps, and we went to his funeral. He died in camp.

TI: Your, your...

JH: My father.

TI: Your father did. I see.

JH: He died in Heart Mountain.

TI: Okay. But you went to his funeral.

JH: We went to his funeral.

TI: So you went up to Heart Mountain?

JH: Right.

TI: Okay, we'll get to that later. That's, I want to, first why don't you tell me the names of your sisters, the twins?

JH: My sisters, they always went by their Japanese name, which was Asako and Nobuko, but their other names were, let's see, Nobuko's first was Arlene and Aline.

TI: Arlene and Aline? Okay. And were they identical twins?

JH: Yes.

TI: Okay. So that was a little unusual in the community to have twins.

JH: Right. People would say, "I don't know how you can tell your sisters apart." To me it was, they don't look alike at all, but to everybody else they looked very much alike.

TI: Now, did they tend to wear similar clothes?

JH: Well Mother, when they were little Mother used to know, she used to dress one in pink and one in blue so she could tell them apart.

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