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SY: Being the youngest, I'm the youngest out of nine and you're the oldest, I'm just curious, from your perspective, what it was like growing up with such a large family and whether you thought, you think it was helpful to you in life, or if it could've been better if you were, there weren't so many of us?
PM: I really don't have any feelings about that. I always felt like we're a family, we really didn't need friends outside of our family because it was such a family that was close in age, and so I have enjoyed it. But on the other hand, you can see that all of us don't have more than two or three children, so I guess we all that feel that we have enough siblings to make it a family. In my case, my sister is married to my husband's brother, so they feel like they're double cousins. They even feel closer, and it's been really nice. I've enjoyed it.
SY: Even if it meant that you had responsibility for the younger children. I mean, when you were growing up you --
PM: I never looked at it that way. They were just all family and I enjoyed what I could. Maybe I've forgotten.
SY: And how would you characterize our family? Would you say that we're... sometimes I say things like, on the outside we're very, we appear very, very successful on the outside, but, yet there's still problems, like every family has.
PM: Right.
SY: But kind of like how you're so, you seem to be very proud of our family.
PM: Yes, yes.
SY: I mean, is that how you would characterize your, how you feel about our family? Are you very proud of --
PM: Oh sure, sure. And I'm friends with everybody, and I know there have some misunderstandings about, but I just don't bring those up and I just feel as though we should try to be friendly to each other but we'll do the best we can do.
SY: And does everybody, I mean, is that something that you feel you are, that you are the only one who's thinking that way? Do you think the rest of the siblings share your attitude about life?
PM: I haven't really talked with them about it, but I'm just proud of our family because so many families have so many splits where they don't speak to each other or where they don't get together, and I'm very proud that we still can get together and everyone seems to be doing well. And I think it's something to be proud of.
SY: So you, so all in all you're really happy that there was, that we had this big family that managed to stay together.
PM: Yes.
SY: Even though, well, it's interesting, though, that all of your sisters, the ones that you grew up with, became teachers, right?
PM: That's right.
SY: And still, and then ended up raising families.
PM: Right.
SY: So there was no, no one else like you really in the family, in terms of starting a business or maintaining a business.
PM: This only happened because of Dad. I went into the business because he wanted me to go into it, to the point where I didn't feel like having any more children because I didn't think there'd be time since I'm working for Dad in the office. So all along it was Dad's business that I went into.
SY: But even though you nurtured the business, you really grew it and kept with it, that's not something that the other siblings --
<End Segment 31> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.