<Begin Segment 5>

SY: And when your mother remarried, then, did you still live in the same place with your aunts and your grandfather?

CI: Yes, I think so, for a while. We didn't move too often. In Sacramento I remember moving twice from the drugstore to Third Street, and then after she remarried, we lived on Fifth Street. All still in Japanese Town.

SY: I see. So how did this drugstore come into being? How did your family...

CI: I have no idea. How they purchased it?

SY: Uh-huh.

CI: All I know is we owned a drugstore.

SY: In Japanese Town.

CI: And so it had a soda fountain, and so I know after they sold it I didn't know that it no longer belonged to us. And so I used to go to the soda fountain, I used go to the drugstore and sit up on the counter and order whatever ice cream I wanted. [Laughs]

SY: And they would give it to you, huh?

CI: Yes, uh-huh.

SY: And the name of the drugstore?

CI: The Nippon Drug Store.

SY: Nippon Drug Store. So after your father was learning how to be a pharmacist when he passed away.

CI: Well, no, the Depression came right about then, 1928, and then he passed away, and so my mother lost the drugstore.

SY: I see. So was she working at the drugstore with your father before?

CI: Probably, but here she's only nineteen years old.

SY: And she has two children.

CI: She has two children, plus her father and plus her two sisters.

SY: And your grandfather, was he working at all, do you remember?

CI: I don't recall him working.

SY: So somehow she managed to cope after she lost her husband until she remarried, and then I assume that your stepfather became the wage-earner.

CI: Yes.

SY: But do you remember what your mom did in between?

CI: I know that she went out with her sisters, and they were waitresses, whatever they could to earn a salary.

SY: In Japantown, in Sacramento Japantown?

CI: Probably.

SY: So her sisters worked as well, huh?

CI: Oh, yeah.

SY: And they were single?

CI: Uh-huh, they were. Until my middle aunt got married and moved to Los Angeles.

SY: So how would you describe your mom? She must have had a... I mean, having gone through such a rough young life...

CI: She was a remarkable woman. She was sent to Japan when she was eight. Probably they were having a hard time, and she and her sister Irene were sent to Japan and they lived there for five years. So she was very conversant in Japanese. She probably knew Japanese better than she did English. Being there only five years, but it was a family of teachers where she was sent. It was a good friend of my grandfather. And all I can say about my mother is that she was remarkable, she's very intelligent, and everything I know about Japan I learned from her.

SY: So was she very tough on you, the three girls?

CI: Very tough.

SY: She was?

CI: On us, yes.

SY: In what way?

CI: She was really a very strong disciplinarian. Very old-fashioned. To be a Nisei and to be so traditional, she was very traditional.

SY: Since you didn't have a father for many years, then she had to sort of play both...

CI: My grandfather was there, though. And he was just as a disciplinarian as she was.

SY: So when your mother met her new husband, then you were about five years old, you said?

CI: Yes. So I have no recall about how they met.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright &copy; 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.