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PW: How did he meet your mother then?

HS: Hmm?

PW: How did he meet your mother?

HS: He met my mother not... of course, my mother was in Japan enjoying a very easy life. Because my mom says, I said, "What did you do during..." she said, "I went to school with my girlfriends and in the summer I would like to go shopping at Matsuzakaya," which is one of the very fancy Japanese department stores. So she had a very easy life not getting her hands dirty for any reason. And so you think, well, why would she come over here? But she had, she was born here in Sacramento, in California. So I think that her dream was that she was going to come over here and really enjoy a nice life over here. She didn't know what she was getting into. So it was kind of like a nakodo, which means there was a go-between. And so I'm not sure who the persons were, but they knew that there was a girl in Nagoya, Aichi, where my father's family's from Aichi-ken, too, and that he was looking for a bride because he wouldn't know how to go... he's never been on a date or had never met any girls or anything. So he needed help. And so somehow they approached both our... whether the in-between person approached them or my grandparents in Linden asked someone else if they could, if he could meet and possibly marry a girl from Japan. And so it was set up. And so after it was, then I heard that they exchanged pictures and they thought, well, it's okay. So my father went to Japan and they got married in Japan in 1937, January of 1937. And I was born in December of 1937, so started a family.

PW: Quick question going back to your mother again. I remember she was Kibei.

HS: Yes.

PW: What age did she go back to Japan after she was born?

HS: I think it was quite young because she didn't have any schooling over here. So that means that, I'm just guessing that it was probably around five or six years old. And she had an older sister, too, so she had two older sisters. So when she went back to Japan, of course, they went to school in Japan. So my mom was probably four, five or six, and they had an older sister, too. And the older sister actually stayed in Sacramento. And I don't know who she would have stayed with, because both grandparents went back to Japan. So I'm afraid that's kind of a blank, I should ask where my oldest auntie, who she lived with, because I know she lived in Sacramento and she lived in Stockton, too, that older sister.

PW: So but when your mother get married in Japan, to your father, she doesn't speak English yet, correct?

HS: No. [Laughs]

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