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TI: So let's talk about your mother. What's your mother's name?

PF: Saye.

TI: Do you know her maiden name?

PF: Kajihara.

TI: Kajihara. So you have a good memory. [Laughs] That's good. And do you know much about her family, what they did?

PF: I stayed with her mother, my grandmother was alone, so that's where we went, my mother's mother.

TI: And where did they live?

PF: Okayama.

TI: Okayama.

PF: Nakashima, Okayama, Nakashima.

TI: Good. It's good to get all this history. And how old was she compared to your father? Was she younger than your father?

PF: No, they were around four year apart.

TI: Okay, so pretty close.

PF: Yeah.

TI: So she was like twenty, about twenty-two years old.

PF: Yeah, when she came, I guess, yeah.

TI: Your father was maybe twenty-six and she was about twenty-two. Did she ever tell you what it was like for her to come to America? At twenty-two did she ever --

PF: No, she wasn't living with her mother, she said, she was living with somebody else, church people or something like that. And she didn't go school too much. That's what she was saying. But I don't know her feeling, she didn't tell us how she felt.

TI: Did she ever say that she liked it better than Japan or she liked Japan better?

PF: No, she like America. She said she's not going back, yeah, she liked America.

TI: And why do you think she liked America better?

PF: Well, the convenient I bet. Because in Japan, water pumping and the bath is right there in the kitchen. You know, that's why I went, to her house, I went. And America, faucet, bath, and washing machine we had. So it's way different in Japan, you have to wash and scrub.

TI: That's good. Now tell me about brothers and sisters of yours.

PF: Mine?

TI: Yes.

PF: I have sister and I had brother and me and my younger brother. So my father had four.

TI: Okay, so tell me the names of first your sister...

PF: Elma.

TI: Elma? And how much older was Elma than you?

PF: I think she was around fifteen or sixteen year older than me.

TI: And then the next one's your brother.

PF: Yeah, brother, Roy. He was one year different.

TI: Okay.

PF: And then I was two year, I was born after Roy. And then two year later, I had a younger brother, Tom.

TI: So why was Elma so much older? She was much older...

PF: She was the firstborn.

TI: She was fifteen years older than you? How much older?

PF: No, three or four.

TI: Oh, just three or four years older.

PF: Because, see, my sister was born, then my brother was born the next year.

TI: I see. And then two years...

PF: And then two years later I was born, yeah. So she's around three year older. That's it.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.