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VY: Let's talk about the birth order of your siblings, since we're talking about that. So how many siblings do you have?

DC: So there's eight above me and I'm the youngest. And the first was Dorothy, and she was born a year following their marriage. And then next came Laura, but we call her Fumiko, by her middle name. And then Ruth was born, and shortly after then was Paul, so he was the eldest boy, and then there was Claude, and Junior, who is Mototsugu Morita, Jr. And then Flora and Betty and then myself, and there's eleven years' difference between me and my next sister. So it was very, it was kind of neat the way she did that, or they did that, three girls, three boys, three girls. And my mother, I think, always felt that she had to somehow justify that birth order, poor thing. Because we know now that it's the male that contributes the gender, right? But my mother always said, "Well, if I had given birth to a boy first, they would have been in the war and would have died." So she sort of rationalized it to herself and it did happen to be rather true, what she said. But I think we all tried to justify why things happen to us, and even though we really didn't have any control over the gender of the child, it was something I think she needed to do because she probably was deeply hurt by the criticisms because she was alone.

VY: Yeah, it sounds like she was very isolated and didn't have a lot of support, other than her husband, of course.

DC: Yes, but then, that was his mother. So that puts him in a difficult position, doesn't it? And, of course, my mother was very beautiful, and Seki was not, and I think that may have contributed to some of the animosity as well, some kind of jealousy. She (Seki) loved my father, evidently. According to my sister, Fumiko, who grew up in Japan, she said, "Oh, Grandma would always say, 'Moto wa ii na,'" you know, her son, and she'd shorten his name. So she really loved him, and so to share him with another woman probably was difficult, and I think that dynamic probably carries out in many families, even if they're not Asian. So there were tensions, but my mother persevered, and yeah, she was thrown into an agrarian lifestyle that was totally foreign to her because she had grown up in the city where these five beautiful women that were well-known throughout the area as the Sakakiyama sisters, and she told me that they would parade through the town with their parasols, and men would come by and drop love notes in their kimono sleeves. And my sister, Fumiko, says that they were renowned for their beauty. So here she is, a citified lady, and then she has to go and became a peasant. And I think all these things were very difficult for her, but she managed to persevere.

VY: Was she the only sister that came to the States, came to America?

DC: Yes, that's true, yes.

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