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TI: So let's move to your mother's side, we talked about the Shimomura side. So tell me about your mom's family, like the grandparents on that side.

FS: Okay. Well, my mom's family came from the Turlock/Livingston area, and that was part of this so-called Yamato Colony that was set up by Abiko, Mr. Abiko, who was a real enterprising publisher and entrepreneur. And so my mom's family was, she was a Morimoto, and in that area, I think like five brothers or something named Morimoto came. And so like half the community is named Morimoto. [Laughs] So if you're a Morimoto from Livingston...

TI: You have this extended, kind of, family.

FS: Yeah, everybody knows everybody.

TI: But are they related? You said they were brothers? They were all brothers, right?

FS: I think they were all brothers or cousins, but they had the same last name and they came from the same place, they were related. But what happened was this Morimoto, who was the biological father, had five kids, and my mother was like the youngest. And she was born in 1922, and her father died just before she was born. He was in a tractor accident, he was working out in the field, and somehow the tractor flipped over on him. And so her mother, whose maiden name was Miwa, M-I-W-A. So there she was with, she had five kids, and now she was a widow. But she had a certain personality, because she lived to be into her nineties, so I knew her.

TI: You smiled when you said that.

FS: Yeah, she is very friendly and bubbly, and she just loves gossip and everything, and she actually does a lot of matchmaking, because she's good at that, she knows a lot of people. So she's very personable and interested in people and gossip and all that. And so here she was, a widow with five kids, and so you would think, "Boy, that's going to be kind of tough to find a new husband, right?" But she did find another husband, and his name was Sam, but he was a little bit older Issei, and he was the opposite kind of a personality, he was very kind of shy and reclusive, but very hardworking kind of guy, didn't complain or anything. And he was a little bit artistic, too, because he could do wood, and in camp he made some camp art that we have.

TI: About how old was your mother when her mother remarried? Because she was the youngest, I was just curious.

FS: Yeah, I don't know, but I don't think that she... or how old was my mother?

TI: Yeah, your mother?

FS: Probably two or three years old.

TI: Oh, so quite young. Okay, so she didn't really remember, then, her biological mother.

FS: No. And she really loved her stepfather, I guess you might call him. Because she was the youngest, so she was spoiled, she was the little favorite. [Laughs] And so that's where they grew up, in that area. But the thing that was different was that because this was part of the Yamato Colony, they were able to own their own property. They had some kind of co-op system there.

TI: So they were able to do it through some other legal entity? Not as individuals but through a co-op or corporation or something?

FS: Yeah, because Abiko bought all that property and then divided it up and sold it to different families. But somehow, I think maybe part of that was to circumvent the alien land law, that was kind of one way of doing it, because the corporation owned it. And it took a while before the state legislature plugged all the loopholes, right? [Laughs]

TI: Oh, that's interesting, I'm going to look into that.

FS: Yeah. But that made a big difference after the war, because they had a little farm to come back to on my mom's side.

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