Densho Digital Archive - Yukiko Miyake Interview (denshovh-myukiko-01-0009)

<Begin Segment 9>

SY: You mentioned about the gossip in the community. I'm wondering, living in a community where people knew each other's business very quickly, how did the community accept you and your grandmother knowing that your grandmother was raising you without your mom and your father there?

YM: How did the community... I don't think they thought anything of it. Well, at least not to me they didn't think anything. They never said, saying derogatory except one lady did say, "She is Ichiko's" -- that was my mother's name -- "Ichiko's daughter." And I know the other ladies would look at me. I was not what you would say, a very pretty child. I was really homely. You call them stodgy? What do you call them? I wasn't fat, but I was not, I was not a pretty... because my mother, according to what my uncle used to say, my mother was a very attractive, and I was the shortest. They were tall.

SY: Your mother and...

YM: My mother was tall and my sister was nice and slim and tall, but I was short. And I don't know what you call it. Chubby? I wasn't chubby, but I was more chubby than the rest of the family, I think now.

SY: So when the, when you overheard women whispering that you were Ichiko's daughter, what did that mean to you?

YM: Nothing because my mother, my mother had no meaning to me.

SY: Did you know --

YM: Because my grandmother was my mother.

SY: In your mind.

YM: In my mind.

SY: Your grandmother was your mother. What did you call her?

YM: I called her Okaachan. I never called her Obaachan. I called her Okaachan. That's mother. And my uncle used to call her Okaasan.

SY: So when did you learn that your grandmother was not your mother?

YM: As I got older my friends, they must have told me because I started thinking.

SY: Thinking about it. What was that like when you first met your mother?

YM: Nothing. I don't think -- I shouldn't say I don't think. I don't know, but I don't think my mother cared for me the way she cared for her, my younger sister and my younger brother, but that's one thing is they always lived together, and I lived with my grandmother. But it was after I got married, my mother started treating me more like a person. But before then, I don't think she cared much one way or the other. That's what I think, but I don't know.

SY: Would you ever see your mother?

YM: After I got married, when I went to visit my grandmother down in California, yes, I did see my mother.

SY: With a community that is very closely knit, Nihonmachi, and you had overheard some people whispering and then other friends tell you about your own history, did it make you feel like your, the community was supporting you, or did you feel a little bit like the community tried to keep you at a distance?

YM: No, I never felt the community was at a distance. I think they were kinder to me, but that's how I felt and so I really don't know. This is all in my mind, you know.

SY: It's just it's interesting because the Japanese community was so different then than it is now. So when you tell us about the way the community was, it helps me get an understanding of the feelings that went on so it's very helpful.

YM: Oh, I don't know, but I get the feeling that maybe they were kinder to me because of that, because my grandmother raised me.

SY: In what ways did you feel that people treated you with more kindness?

YM: Well, when you're a child, when you get the first candy from somebody, you feel that, they... until I got married, but I know they were really good to Kako. I don't know how I knew, but to me they were kinder. I think I felt the kindness behind all that.