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TI: Okay, so let's just briefly talk about your sisters. So you have an older sister and a younger sister. What are their names?

FC: My older sister was Sonoko.

TI: Okay. She's six years older. Then you came next, and then after you was...

FC: Setsuko.

TI: Now how much younger was Setsuko?

FC: And she's eighteen months younger.

TI: Okay. Now are they still alive?

FC: Yes.

TI: Are they in California?

FC: Yes, they live in the Los Angeles, one lives in, where is that? My sister lives in Torrance. She used to live in Palos Verdes, but she downsized and now she's living in a senior condo building in Torrance, and my younger sister lives in Monterey Park.

TI: Now, when we started the interview you mentioned how you were born in the house that you grew up in, so tell me a little bit about the house. Where was it?

FC: It was, okay, we lived off of Central Avenue and Forty-Second Street, which was roughly Jefferson Avenue and Central Avenue, if you know L.A.

TI: Okay. I know L.A. My daughter went to USC, so...

FC: Yeah, it was a little bit east of the USC area.

TI: Right, so I'm familiar with the streets. I'm just trying to picture where that is.

FC: It's like, Martin Luther King Avenue was Santa Barbara, and Santa Barbara was like Forty-(First) Street.

TI: Okay.

FC: And Jefferson is where SC is.

TI: Yes.

FC: And so we lived between Jefferson and Martin Luther King.

TI: Okay, so I know where this is.

FC: And my father selected it because it was close to the market, and again, he was so independent he did not want to live on the west side where most of the Japanese community gathered. He wanted, he didn't want that kind of connection with the neighborhood where they all talked about each other, so he chose to move a little farther away. And so we were on the east side rather than west side, and near Jefferson High School, which was not a particularly good high school. And the neighborhood when he bought was kind of like, I would say, working class Italian, Irish, some Jewish, but then the African Americans started to move in, and so by the time we were of school age the neighborhood was largely black.

TI: So you really saw a neighborhood change, sort of transform.

FC: Changing. And so, but there was a German couple that lived right next door, and these were all single family homes. We had, like, a three bedroom house, a detached garage, and a full basement -- not a full basement, a small one room basement that was mainly like a storage area cellar.

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