<Begin Segment 8>

BN: And then you mentioned, you talked briefly about visiting your Aihara side grandparents, because they were, continued farming, right?

DA: That's right, that's right. And yeah, I looked kind of forward to that, because summers were, it was wide open. It was a farm, and my other, Henry had two kids, a boy and a girl, and he lived right down... so he's maybe about five years younger than me. But Uncle, one year, he bought his, Brian, his son, a go-kart, and we just drove that go-kart all over that farm, so that was a lot of fun.

BN: This is Henry?

DA: This is Henry's son.

BN: But he also...

DA: Would help out on the farm, yeah.

BN: But that wasn't his primary occupation, was it?

DA: My uncle?

BN: Yeah.

DA: Oh, no. He was a chemical engineer, worked for Lever Brothers, I think.

BN: Okay. So he just helped out on weekends and stuff, on the family farm?

DA: That's right. Everyone, all hands on deck, I think, especially when harvesting started.

BN: Because I'm interested in this, I wonder if you could talk just briefly about his athletic exploits and also your auntie's singing career.

DA: All I know about Uncle's athletics is what I've been told, that he was the most popular guy at USC among the Niseis. And he was there at a time, I think a little bit before the guys like Tets Tanimoto and those guys that were, that got onto the USC basketball team. But yeah, there was a lot of bragging going on back in those days among the brothers. Like I said, my uncle Sam was a great judo guy, and my dad supposedly was a decent judo guy as well, and would claim certain physical, not goals, but things he said he could do, like a hundred pull ups, things like that. I'd look at my dad and go, "Yeah, Dad, don't think so." [Laughs] But you know, it's hard to challenge them when my uncle, he's like five-seven, maybe five-eight at the most, being able to jump over twenty feet. That's pretty good. And then I know the other cousin, Ted, who's the son of my auntie Daisy, he was able to jump over twenty, and he was able to jump over six feet, too, high jump, he was a good high jumper. So kind of gave all of us a sense of, well, the Aiharas must have some decent athletic genes. That kind of gave us a sense of, certain amount of pride. Here you have an uncle that owns a record at a major university. And his name would always come up when, "Oh, are you related to Henry Aihara?" as I'm growing up. "Oh, yeah, that's my uncle." So you got a sense of how well recognized that name became. I was talking to Wimp Hiroto not long ago, and he was, I believe he was, part of his growing up was back east in Chicago. And he would tell me that he would read about my uncle, one of the few Niseis that got that kind of recognition. So that kind of surprised me, that it would travel across the country even during those times. So yeah, I guess you have a famous uncle like that, you just never know how far reaching it is in some ways.

BN: And then earlier we were talking also about how he and his wife were sort of this ideal Nisei couple. How aware were you of her musical and acting career?

DA: Well, that came a lot later, I think, maybe high school time when, yeah, you're a little bit more aware of things around you, right? We always knew Auntie Carrie could sing, I mean, she'd sing at family things. And her son, Brian, became a pretty decent musician. He was able to play, he self-taught himself to play guitar and piano and I'd go over to his place every now and then, he'd be able to play The Doors, "Light My Fire," on the organ note for note, the whole twelve minutes at that time. I'm going, Brian, my gosh. [Laughs] So there was a lot of music back in those days, too.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.