<Begin Segment 6>

BY: So I want to actually back up a little bit and find out more information about your brothers and sisters. So can you tell me the names of all your siblings starting with the oldest and maybe how much older they were than you? Or if you know the year that they were born. So starting with the oldest one, who was that?

MK: Well, my brother Taka, (Takaaki).

BY: Okay. And how much older was he?

MK: Sixteen years.

BY: Sixteen years older.

MK: Than me.

BY: Oh, okay, that's a big difference then. And he was the one who was in the army?

MK: Yeah, and he was killed in France.

BY: (Okay, all right. And then next was...)

MK: (Kiyoko, Kiyo, fourteen years older than me.)

BY: (What was your second sister's name?)

MK: (Emiko, Amy, twelve years older than me.)

BY: (What was the third sister's name)?

MK: (Well, it was Sumiye. She added Dorothy as her first name. She was ten years older than me. Then my mother lost a son at birth, Yasuo was his name. And then my sister Miyoko, Miyo, was born.)

[Interruption]

MK: (My brother Frank, Kazumi, was four years older than me.)

BY: (So he was the one who was four years older than you, the one who took care of you all the time.)

MK: (Yeah. He was four years... I was born in '31, he was born in '27.)

BY: And you were the baby?

MK: Yeah.

BY: Were you spoiled, do you know?

MK: Oh, yeah. Gosh, (my sisters), they used to fight over me. And then so my arm would get out of joint. And so I remember at least two times, I had to go to a masseuse, Japanese masseuse, and had to have my arm on a sling.

BY: You mean they dislocated your arm?

MK: Yeah.

BY: Oh, my goodness.

MK: Yeah, because they would pull, I guess. But I remember wearing that, and it was the man who took care of all the judo people, judo and... he was the head athletic person.

BY: So he was like a sports medicine doctor or something like that.

MK: Yeah, because he lived up the street. And so I remember having my arm in a sling several times.

BY: Okay, all right. Wow, that's interesting. That seems like pretty, they're pretty possessive of you then, or something. [Laughs]

MK: Yeah, so Shirley Temple happened, so I had Shirley Temple doll, you know, a doll, and they would curl my hair.

BY: My gosh, wow.

MK: I was their toy.

BY: Interesting.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.