<Begin Segment 2>

BN: What do you know about your mother's family in Japan? What was her family name, first of all?

HM: Her family name was Okamoto. And she lived in a neighboring town, and so her story again was that she had... I guess in those days, your parents always tried to arrange marriage, and she said she had lots of offers. [Laughs] But I guess she decided that she was going to Hawaii. And her... the way that her mother decided that it was all right for her to come to Hawaii to marry this man that she had never seen, was that she said that, "If it's that woman's son, then it's okay. You can marry him." So I guess she felt... there's a word called shikkari in Japanese, so she felt that his mother, my father's mother, was shikkari, and, "I'm pretty sure she brought up her son in the proper way, so you can marry him." [Laughs] So that's the way she decided that she's going to be married.

BN: But she never met him until coming here.

HM: (Yes). She never met him, it's just by picture. And he was quite nice-looking, so I guess she decided, "Oh, he's nice looking, so I think it will be all right." [Laughs] She took a chance.

BN: And you mentioned, by that time, he already had the hat store?

HM: No, he had a hat cleaning business, yes.

BN: Where was that?

HM: That might have been in... I think Bob and I were talking about it, and there was a Kamanuwai Lane or something, I'm not sure exactly where it's located, but it was in a lane someplace.

BN: But it's more downtown area?

HM: Maybe in Nu'uanu area, I don't know, but (yes), more downtown area. And I know that all the children in my family were born at different locations. Because in those days, all the childbirths were by (midwife), not by going to the hospital. So we were all born at home.

BN: So Bob was the oldest...

HM: Yes.

BN: He was born the same year or pretty soon after...

HM: He was born 1917 in October. And I think they were living in Waikiki someplace. But they moved to different locations. Then my second brother Barney was born at the second location, and that might have been (during the) cleaning business when Barney was born. And then they went to the hat store, and that's when my sister (Alyce) was born. So they're all different locations.

BN: And then the last two?

HM: I think, I'm not sure where Larry was born. Maybe he was born in the same place as the hat store. But then I was born upstairs. We lived in the apartment above the store in Aala building, so I was born in Aala.

BN: So you were the only one probably born in Aala.

HM: Aala? Yes.

BN: That was it, right, the five?

HM: Yes, five of us, yes. So, yeah, we lived above the store. And all of the businesses there had apartments upstairs, so we visited each other.

[Interruption]

BN: So the Sato Clothiers began in Aala.

HM: Yes, 1928.

BN: And then the family lived above?

HM: (Yes), upstairs. And I went to kindergarten across the railroad station in Palama, Palama school. We would walk barefooted (to) school. Kindergarten, first and second grade, I went to Palama school. And then in third grade, we had to transfer to Kaiulani school, and my father decided that he wanted to send me, well, my sister and I, to Saint Andrews Priory.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright &copy; 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.