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SY: Okay, we're here talking to Yosh Nakamura. We're in their home in Whittier. Today is January 25, 2011. Tani Ikeda is on camera and I'm Sharon Yamato. Grace Nakamura is in the room and we've just finished talking to her. So Yosh, maybe we could begin with you telling us your full name?

YN: Okay. My name is Yoshio C. Nakamura.

SY: And the C stands for?

YN: C stands for Claude.

SY: And that's a name that is your birth name, huh? Your parents --

YN: Well, it's one I've attached. You see, when I was in (Butte) high school in (Gila River camp in Arizona), some people thought my head was in the clouds, so they started calling me Claudio, so anyway, that kind of stuck. So I've adopted Claude as my middle name. [Laughs] But I just wanted the initial. There are other Yoshio Nakamuras in this world. I discovered one was a dentist. When we first got married we used to get quite a few calls about having headaches and toothaches and whatever, and we would tell them, "Well, you might try an aspirin or something, but I'm not the dentist."

SY: [Laughs] Very good.

YN: So anyway, by having a middle initial, that kind of differentiates me from other Yoshio Nakamuras. In fact, there's one on the Go For Broke monument by my name also, from a different company.

SY: Two, wow.

YN: I was with M Company in the 442nd.

SY: So, now, where is it that you were born?

YN: I was born in Rosemead, California, which is not too far from here.

SY: And the date of your birth?

YN: My date of birth was 1925, and we lived in (Rosemead) through my sixth year in school.

SY: And your parents, then, when did they arrive here?

YN: (From what I remember being told), Father came over as a very young person, and I think he's the only one who left Tonda. My understanding was that he came when he was about sixteen years old and he traveled about. He started in Honolulu, then he was in Seattle and Salt Lake City for a while, and then we think in San Francisco, and he finally ended up in Los Angeles. He was first a houseboy, and I think as a young person he thought he was going to make it rich by being a good houseboy and get some kind of gift or whatever, or an inheritance, and then found out that, well, I guess he'll have to go to work, and so he started farming. So when I was born, we were living in Rosemead, and I went to Rio Hondo Elementary School.

SY: So where is it that he met your mother?

YN: My mother came from the same machi, or the same town, Tonda, but she was quite a bit younger. Unfortunately we lost her when she was only thirty-four years old. So my father was traveling back and forth from the United States back to Japan, and on one of those trips he married her and had a son, my older brother, who lived in Japan. He's nine years older than I, and he lived in Japan until my father went to get my mother and my brother to come to the United States. As you know, in I think 1925, there was a cutoff date for immigration to the United States, so he came over.

SY: Right before that.

YN: Yes. And I attribute the fact that I get seasick from the fact that I was born about nine months after the trip. [Laughs]

SY: So you were conceived on that ship, huh?

YN: I seem to have some problems with bumpy rides of that kind.

<End Segment 1> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.