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SY: So now, Frank, let's find out when you were born. When was that, what day and year were you born, and where? We're gonna find out how old you are.

FO: [Laughs] What day? Gee. I was born March 31, 1924, at Rice Maternity Hospital in Uptown. But Rice Maternity was a little hospital for a maternity ward, they had one or two maternity ward, and that's where most of the Japanese in that area was born. It was on Twelfth and Harvard, and we lived about five houses away from this maternity ward.

SY: So was it a place where all the people in the area, not just Japanese, it was for everyone?

FO: Yeah.

SY: Anyone who had...

FO: Anybody that wanted to come.

SY: And it was just... I mean, did your mother deliver you and then go home right away?

FO: No, she stayed in the maternity ward there for a while.

SY: Uh-huh. And were you, you were not the first child in the family.

FO: No, I was number two. I had an older brother, George.

SY: And was he born?

FO: He was June 3, 1922.

SY: Oh, so just two years older. And he was born in the same place?

FO: Yes.

SY: So your parents then, do you have any idea when they arrived in Uptown?

FO: No, I don't know the dates. You know, I tried to find it, but maybe I'll run across it sometime, but I don't know.

SY: And how about the rest of your siblings? Do you have other siblings?

FO: Yes, I have a younger brother named Paul. I had a younger brother named Paul, and I had another named Hoover. And the youngest sibling is Grace, she was the only female among the siblings. Right now George is gone, he had Alzheimer's, and he's gone. Paul was a schoolteacher out in the valley, and he had a heart attack, I guess. I never knew how he died, but he never got married and he died. And then now my youngest brother, Hoover, he's got Alzheimer's. And my sister and I are the only one that's normal, I guess.

SY: And your sister lives in Los Angeles, too?

FO: She lives in Carson. She married a guy from Hawaii and she was a schoolteacher in Gardena area.

SY: I see. So when you were born in Uptown, do you remember very much about your childhood there when you were very, very young?

FO: Yeah, we all went to Hobart Boulevard School, which was between Harvard and Hobart on Olympic Boulevard.

SY: So very close by to where you lived.

FO: Yeah.

SY: And you went to a school that was integrated?

FO: Yeah, it was integrated, and then after that we went, we walked to St. Mary's to go to Japanese school.

SY: You did that every day?

FO: No, not every day, but I don't remember if we went every day or not, but in junior high we went every day.

SY: But when you were in elementary school, did you have other activities besides St. Mary's, or was St. Mary's kind of where you went?

FO: Yeah. St. Mary's, it was the center of all activities as far as we were concerned.

SY: Uh-huh.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.