<Begin Segment 3>

SY: So now when you were, so you were born in Seattle?

YM: Seattle.

SY: And your older brother was also born there too.

YM: Right.

SY: Were you born in a hospital in Seattle?

YM: I doubt it because, because my birth certificate says who delivered, who was the doctor or whatever, they ask, and it just says a friend. [Laughs]

SY: Really?

YM: They're either midwives or friends or somebody, and I think it says a friend.

SY: [Laughs] Wow. Good friend. And so your first, earliest memory was when you were around four or five?

YM: Yes.

SY: And you remember going to the Pike's Market?

YM: Uh-huh.

SY: And they would just bring you there to...

YM: I remember being there, not every trip, but I do remember being there, just, I think they sat me at a little shelf somewhere. I remember I dozed off and I fell off 'cause I, that's what I remember about it. [Laughs]

SY: But you didn't, you didn't hurt yourself?

YM: Uh-huh.

SY: That's funny. That's, you were pretty young when that happened.

YM: Yes, right.

SY: And then your parents, both of them actually worked in the market?

YM: Yeah, when they went I think they, they worked in the... it's just, I don't know how big a stall it was, but it wasn't that big. It wasn't as if you had to walk back and forth.

SY: Right. Do you know if they did any truck farming too, or was it just --

YM: No, I think that's just what they, I don't know how they made a living just going once a week, but I think there were people who were there every day, not raising their own vegetables. They'd be just a regular market for them, buying and selling. But our folks were just, and I think there were a lot of Japanese people who did that.

SY: And did you, do you remember actually doing the farming, your parents actually...

YM: No, all I remember is, the farmland was a little lower than our house. I remember we had to go down the hill, and it wasn't a big patch. I don't remember it being a big patch, was very small.

SY: So the children didn't have to do much except your older brother.

YM: Yeah, I think my sister, when they first came they had to pitch in a little bit.

SY: But you were young enough that you didn't have to. So then where did you end up going to school?

YM: Well, in Los Angeles was my first school.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.