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SY: Okay, we'll start with the date. Today is November 28, 2011. I am at, we are at Centenary United Methodist Church in Los Angeles, and the videographer is Ann Kaneko. My name is Sharon Yamato, and I am very delighted to be interviewing my oldest sister, Peggy Mikuni, today. It's a treat for me, and it's a little unusual, so I guess we'll have to just start, I want to make sure that we, I'm objective, so I'm gonna try to ask questions that I may know the answers to and also many that I don't know the answers to. So Peggy, why don't we start with when and where you were born?
PM: I was born May 27, 1929, in Los Angeles, California.
SY: And your, can you tell us your full name that you were --
PM: Yes. Peggy Toyo Yamato.
SY: Okay, and Mikuni is your married name.
PM: Right.
SY: So now, do you know how you got that name, how, how your parents came up with that?
PM: My mother said that when I was born there was a child actress by the name of Baby Peggy, and that's why she named me Peggy and not Margaret or not Meg, which most people think, that Peggy should be Margaret or, yes, that's why.
SY: That's interesting.
PM: And Toyo is my grandmother's name.
SY: Your grandmother's name.
PM: On my father's side, right.
SY: Okay. So yeah, now I'm going to probably refer to Mom and, our father was always called Daddy, right?
PM: Right.
SY: So how did that come to be, that we always called him Daddy? Is that...
PM: I think we just called him Daddy. [Laughs]
SY: And then his mother was the one, person you were named after.
PM: Yes, Baachan.
SY: Baachan. And can you tell us a little bit about Baachan, how she came?
PM: Baachan came from Hawaii, and it looks like she was born in Japan in Hiroshima -- no, sorry, she was born in Yamaguchi-ken in a place called Agenosho Oshima-gun, and she was married to Kotojiro Yamato. And they both came to Hawaii, and they were in Hilo. They came in 1893, because the first child was born in 1897, and after they arrived in Hawaii he was kind of a fishmonger, or a seafaring man anyway, and then after about ten years they had a hotel in Hilo. And then he passed away after that and she continued taking in boarders, and then she came to America, and that was in, let's see, 1930. She left Honolulu and came to Los Angeles 1931.
SY: With her family?
PM: She, her family had already come to the United States.
SY: I see. And tell, and can you tell us how many people were, how many children she had?
PM: She seemed to have had eight children, but only five -- well, two were, I think passed away very early, one at childbirth and one at about four months, and one in an accident when she was very young, so really only five were remaining.
SY: I see. I didn't know that. So the one who died in the accident, do you remember her talking about --
PM: Not very much. I just know that Auntie Taneko sometimes mentioned that there was a sister that passed away.
SY: And Auntie Taneko was her, where was she in the order of her children? Maybe you could give us the names of all of her children that survived?
PM: Let me see, I didn't bring all of that, but Eddie Kaichi, our dad, was the first one, and then there was Toshimi Harry, and then there was George, and then there was Taneko, and Kiyo, so the five that survived.
SY: Very good. Yeah, that's amazing that she had eight children.
PM: Yes, I was surprised too when I looked up some of the historical records.
SY: So how did you find the historical records?
PM: There was a lady in Salt Lake City who worked for a genealogical society but she also had a personal interest in this. Evidently Uncle George had married her and she was trying to find out the history of his family because he became a stepfather to one of her sons.
SY: I see.
PM: Yes, and she had sent it to us and so I had that much information. It was more towards George, however, rather than towards Eddie, our dad.
SY: So this was done later.
PM: About ten years ago.
SY: After, after his first wife passed away?
PM: Yes.
<End Segment 1> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.