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SY: Okay, we're talking today to Phil Shigekuni at his home at North Hills, California. The date is August 29, 2011. I'm Sharon Yamato and the videographer is Tani Ikeda. So, Phil, let us start with talking a little bit about your family history and if you could tell me about your parents and where they were from originally.

PS: My family goes way back, so much so that I don't know that much about their arrival in this country because my mother is Sansei. She died about twenty years ago and she was seventy-six or so when she died and she didn't speak much Japanese. Her Nisei mother was very fluent Japanese and English and she obviously had my mother at a very early age and she was kind of ahead of her time, too, my grandmother, in that she was married three times. And so my mother was the result of her first marriage and after she had my mother, my grandmother got remarried and had three other children. And so my mother because of... I think there's a certain stigma attached to being remarried or to being divorced, never talked very much about it. And also the two of them didn't get along. Part of the reason I think my mother got married at such an early age, she had my sister at sixteen and had me at eighteen, was to get out of the house, and she married this man. So there were some family problems where my mother finally got a divorce and moved down to San Diego, didn't want to connect with her mother who was living in Los Angeles. So it was a very... my sister had a birthday the other day, she turned seventy-nine, and we sang "Happy Birthday" to her and all in the restaurant. And I told some of the people around who were at the celebration that my sister and I got very close because when my mother moved down to San Diego, she took a job I think as a waitress and couldn't afford a babysitter. So she put my sister in charge and my sister couldn't have been more than five or six and I was a year and half younger than she. So I just remember being locked up in this room all day.

SY: But it's so unusual really... the thing that really strikes me is the fact that your mother was so young and that your grandmother was so young when she came to this country.

PS: Well, she was born in this country.

SY: Rather, I'm sorry, yeah.

PS: My grandmother was born in this country.

SY: The fact that she was a Nisei so her parents obviously came to this country at a really, really early time.

PS: They were here at the turn of the century.

SY: At the turn of the century and then she was born, I would imagine her parents were fairly young when she was born as well.

PS: Yeah.

SY: And then your mother must have been born when your grandmother was fairly young.

PS: Yeah, very young parenting.

SY: So now where did your grandparents -- so you don't know who your grandfather is?

PS: Just seen pictures.

SY: And where did they settle?

PS: They were in San Francisco and they were there when the earthquake hit in 1906 or 1907 and I guess they stayed up there because I was born in '34 in San Francisco so they somehow decided... at least my mother decided to stay in San Francisco after the earthquake.

SY: So if she was married and had your mother by 1906 then probably, right? Do you know when your mother was born? Oh yeah, she just passed away.

PS: Well, she was the same age as my dad, my stepfather and my stepfather I know was born in '15, 1915. So my mother was, I think she was 1914, 1915 something like that. So they were living in San Francisco at the time so it wasn't until after that that my mother moved down and my grandmother had already moved down and she had at that time her third marriage married a Dr. Miyamoto who is a physician and he had his practice in the Seinan area. And so after my mother struggled with the situation I just mentioned, she eventually broke down I guess and we came to live with my grandmother and her husband in the Seinan area close to Normandie and Thirty-fifth Street.

SY: And you were about how old at that time when you finally moved back?

PS: I started kindergarten so I must have been five.

SY: Again I go back to the fact that you were then considered Yonsei because your mother...

PS: Yeah, on my mother's side.

<End Segment 1> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.