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TI: So let's, let's go to your life now. We've talked a lot about the family and your parents and a little bit about your siblings, which we'll probably talk more about as we go on, but let's go to your life, and what are some, what's your earliest childhood memory?

MT: My, it's when my younger brother was born. We were living in Terminal Island. I remember having my sister, my mother was not there, at home, and I remember going with my sister, oldest sister, she took my hand, the other two siblings going ahead of us, and tripping over the sand of Terminal Island. Terminal Island was sand. The whole island was sand 'cause it was dredged and put in there, and only time you had plants was when you put fertilizer into the ground and to make it loamy to grow things. So I remember tripping over the sand and the curb and so forth, going to see my mother, and we went into this house, one of the barrack-type houses, went in there and I saw my mother in a, what was then, now, a hospital bed. I didn't know at the time, but it was a, was a big bed and had a, basically a cream-colored, ivory-colored frame with slats in it. And she was lying in it and I wanted to crawl in next to her, and they wouldn't let me. He had, I wanted to do that and said I couldn't do that, and she had something next to her, but I didn't know what it was. I could care less. I want to be with my mother, right? And what it was, my brother was born and she was there and now she had recovered enough that we can go see her. That was my earliest recollection of anything in Terminal Island, the sand that I had to, tripping, my sister holding my hand and taking me over to see her. And I knew my brother and my sister were with me.

TI: That's pretty remarkable, 'cause you were under two years old when you --

MT: Yeah, one year, eleven months, little less than, a little over, five days. He was born January 11th and I was February the 6th.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.