<Begin Segment 6>

MN: Now I'm going to go back to a little bit about when you first arrived at the Shonien. Did the staff make you feel welcome?

MY: Oh, yeah, the staff was really almost like your own mother or father. Well, they were all mothers, mostly ladies. There was one handyman but they were all different... I mean, they were all really nice. I don't remember one that was mean or anything. In fact, I can remember most... a lot of them that were there.

MN: How about the children who were there? How did they treat you when you first came in?

MY: Oh, just like... very good I remember. I don't remember ever having any bad feelings about going there.

MN: And then when you arrived, were you able to share a bed with your other two brothers?

MY: No, my younger brother was in the second babies room they called it because he was six years old. And I was eight so then I made the boy's room, me and my older brother, and they had one room in the corner of the bedroom that had one of the otonas, the workers, that would stay in one of those rooms. All the otonas or workers are volunteer, they were all really nice.

MN: Now were all the children at the Shonien Japanese?

MY: There was three, one was a... his name was Gene Thompson but he always considered himself Japanese, he looked more like a hakujin but then he considered himself... in fact, when his daughter got married he lived in Lake Tahoe and he invited us up so we went. And when we all got there they took a family picture and he said, "Come on you guys," and considered us part of his family 'cause he didn't have any other family. Then there was another family, they were Bobby and Ira Iwada, they had a Caucasian mother. Well, she passed away in childbirth so the father couldn't take care of them and he sent them to Shonien. Other than that they were all Japanese.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.