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BN: And you mentioned you and all your siblings were born in Fairfax, so you must have been there quite a few years.

NK: I tried to relate the timeframe with the age of my brother. My brother is the oldest and I was the youngest, and there was an age difference of eleven years between my brother and I. And so even, I really don't know the exact year my father came to the United States from Japan, but based on the fact that my brother was born eleven years before me, that kind of equates to some time before 1917. And so details beyond that is kind of, very, very vague.

BN: And then you mentioned the oldest brother, you were the youngest, how many total were there?

NK: Well, I had two brothers that died as infants, and even that, I'm not sure. But I believe one of them passed away in the state of Washington, and the other was, passed away when they were sent back to Japan. So, there was... I had three sisters. I was the youngest. I had three elder sisters, and counting the two brothers that were infants, that gave a total of... let's see, three girls, so there's seven of us, including myself.

BN: Of which, then, five were kind of surviving?

NK: Actually, the two brothers that passed away, naturally, we knew very little about except that I knew there was two brothers. So there was four boys and three girls amongst the siblings.

BN: Now you mentioned that, alluded to before that your mother took the first four eldest to Japan?

NK: Well, actually, the last two kids were myself and my sister right above me, her name was Kazuye. And all the other siblings were automatically -- I say automatically -- but they were sent to Japan. Because in Japan, my grandmother and grandfather were in the village in Shiga-ken, and so the kids that were sent to Japan, they stayed with, were raised by my grandmother. And they, except for Kazuye and myself, the two of us, all the other siblings were sent to Japan and raised by my grandmother and also educated there in Japan. And one of the main reasons for that was, working in the sawmill, there was no schoolhouse, you might say, in the middle of the forest because all we have is trees, and the people cut trees down and hauled it away. So my brothers and sisters were, you might consider Kibei Niseis because they were educated there and then eventually came back to the United States.

BN: So really, as you're growing up as a young child, even though you had the siblings, it was really just you and Kazuye, really.

NK: Kazuye, right.

BN: And then later, some of them came back, of course, but then you were small. We should, even though we have it in writing, we should note, when were you born?

NK: I was born June 23, 1930.

BN: And Kazuye was how much older?

NK: [Narr. note: Two years older.] Well, my oldest brother was eleven years older than I was, and everything was based on, younger than my brother, and I related my timeframe to the age of my brother.

BN: Now, in your memoir, you mention a story about how you were almost adopted by a Obayashi family.

NK: Yes, that's true.

BN: Can you tell that story?

NK: Well, when my father was working at the sawmill in Washington, one of his best friends from Shiga-ken was... had a hotel business in Tacoma. And my father relied on Mr. Obayashi for many things besides loans and companionship and so forth. When the depression came in the '30s, my father... the sawmills were closing down, and so he decided to move down south to California and try something new, because the depression was killing the sawmill business. Once we were down in California, Mr. and Mrs. Obayashi had no children, and so being good friends as they were, Mr. Obayashi and his wife asked my parents if they could have me as the adopted child because they didn't have any children, and they wanted me to be a person that would take over the Obayashi name and continue on. Well, I didn't have no choice in this, of course, but the outcome was obvious, I have remained a Kamibayashi. But in a way, I was very, very touched by the Obayashi family, knowing that they had an interest in me.

BN: And they recur a couple more times later in your life, too.

NK: Right. They didn't give up, they kept trying, but as I grew older, I got more attached to my family, so the exchange did not take place.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.