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SY: Can you tell us your father's name and your mother's name, and then the siblings who were in Japan?

YM: Okay. My father is Mankichi Koyamatsu, and my mother is Hatsuno Sakai Koyamatsu. And my older brother is Susumu and my sister is Natsumi.

SY: And then your older brother here, was born --

YM: Takeo.

SY: Takeo.

YM: Yeah, the one that's right above me is Takeo.

SY: And then do you have younger --

YM: No, I'm the, I'm the baby.

SY: You're the youngest. And so when your younger, or your older brother and sister finally came, had you been born yet?

YM: No. Yes. No, no, I was born after they came, 'cause I was born in --

SY: After they came.

YM: Yeah. 'Cause they came in 1918 or 1919, I'm born in 1921.

SY: Wow. So they were, what were your earliest memories of your brother and sister?

YM: I don't really remember. Well, my sister was married. I remember that 'cause I was about four or five years old. She was married to somebody that worked at Jackson Furniture Company, and I think there's a lot of Japanese people that worked at that place. And then my parents by that time were farmers, actually raising vegetables, and every weekend they would go to, they'd take the produce to Pike Market, which is a big market in Seattle, and they'd sell their vegetables there. And I think every week they'd change stalls. They had to rotate so that everybody had a fair chance, I guess. So you could be selling radishes and carrots or something, the next stall would be selling the same thing. [Laughs] You never knew what was kind of a, who was selling what.

SY: So it was a tough life.

YM: Right.

SY: Wow.

YM: So they did that for several years, I guess, and my brother helped too. But my sister was married in 1925, so I guess she was out of the house.

SY: There's a big age difference between your oldest brother and sister.

YM: Oh yes, there is.

SY: So they, and they were Issei, really.

YM: Exactly. So many of my friends, their parents were the generation of my brother's. My parents were rather old for, compared to my friends' parents.

SY: Right. So they, yeah, 'cause when, by the time they had you they'd been married for many, many years.

YM: That's right.

SY: But they, I assume they wanted to have more, a bigger family, huh?

YM: I guess so. [Laughs] After being separated for twelve years, you know.

SY: Yeah.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.