<Begin Segment 11>

SY: So now, tell us when your dad passed away.

YM: Pardon?

SY: When did your dad pass away?

YM: Oh, he passed away in '36.

SY: In 1936. And he, it was, how old was he then when he passed?

YM: He was in his sixties. So then after that my older brother's family and myself and my mother and my brother, we lived together.

SY: So this was still in that same house in Uptown that you moved to.

YM: Yes, that's right. Near the grammar school there. And at the time my brother had two children, so there were seven of us. He had two children, his wife and himself. And then they had two more children while we were there, before the war anyway. And so my father did not go through evacuation at all. He was gone by then.

SY: So that, your brother kind of was the head of the household?

YM: Yes, he was.

SY: And your mom was how old by then?

YM: By then, what, let's see, she's in her sixties.

SY: When the war broke out.

YM: Uh-huh. By the time --

SY: After your dad died and then she --

YM: Right, if I'm twenty she's sixty-four, so when we evacuated she was, like, sixty.

SY: Sixty, in her sixties. And was she in fairly good health?

YM: Yeah, she was pretty good. And in camp she learned little crafts and things like that.

SY: She stayed busy.

YM: Hmm?

SY: Did she, she stayed busy.

YM: Yes. There were, there was things for them to do, which was nice since had to replace all the cooking and housekeeping and everything else, keep busy.

SY: So she kind of took care of all those house things while your brother worked?

YM: Yes. And my sister-in-law was home too because she had children. So then, and then my brother Tak and I were in school.

SY: So your brother was the, so did you feel like you were fairly comfortable as far as the money coming in?

YM: I guess we did okay, because I really don't know too much about the finance and all that, but we all lived together. I'm sure it was hard on my sister-in-law, but, 'cause my mother being so much older she wasn't gonna go out to work. She never did go out to work anywhere after she came from Japan.

SY: So it was, at least you had food on the table.

YM: Yes. That's right.

SY: You never felt like you were going to have to do something.

YM: Yeah. And my brother, the one that's right above me, he would work summers and things like that. It's not as if we needed... well, I don't remember getting an allowance or anything. I don't know what we did, how we did it. [Laughs]

SY: You, so your first job was really in this, in Howard Greer.

YM: Yeah, real job. I used to help at the market on Saturdays, but we'd be making about a dollar or something like that. Just, just, it's not like I'm a full time clerk or anything, but I used to help on the weekends 'cause it's always busy Saturdays.

SY: Yeah, so that was kind of your allowance.

YM: Yeah, I think that's where I got my allowance. [Laughs] It went a long way.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.