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BN: So your sister's the elder, so she was born in Chicago?

KM: She was born in Chicago in 1946, and then in 1947, they leave Chicago and she's the first one to come back to the West Coast. So she comes to, or they take a train and they end up in Boyle Heights, living in, I think my father's parents' home that they had. I think my uncle Tom lived there, too, his brother.

BN: Your father's brother?

KM: My father's brother.

BN: What drew them to L.A. and/or led them to leave Chicago? Was it something that drew them here, or did they want to get away?

KM: I'm not really sure, but I think it was more my father. Because his family was here, and I think on the GI Bill, he went to a training class, I found some of his books of how to fix refrigerators or something. And I thought to myself, "My father?" He couldn't fix anything. So he went to this school, and I think my mother said the first job he got, he was going to have to get up at six o'clock in the morning, and he didn't want to do that. So then I thought, okay, so she was probably frustrated by the fact that he wasn't probably very good, and then he didn't want to get up to go this job. So it was like, okay, he's got family in L.A., they have a market, let's go back. She's got something there. So I think that's why they came back. Again, I don't know why I never asked him. I might have, but you know, you get weird answers sometimes.

BN: And then you were born?

KM: Then I was born in 1948 in the Japanese Hospital in Boyle Heights.

BN: And then you first, like until you're a teenager, you're in Boyle Heights?

KM: Yeah, and I think that's significant because the street that we lived on was a semi-cul de sac, and at one end was a Molokan Russian church, and I didn't know what the Molokans were at the time, but we'd see them marching over, procession, into the church. But the whole block was, so many different ethnicities, German family across the street, Jewish family, Russian family, of course, Mexican American, couple of them, we were the only Japanese Americans. And so my mother was very outgoing, in spite of her, well, personality, she was a strong personality, but she was also very outgoing and very friendly. And she loved to cook, so she learned all the different foods of the neighborhood, and we would eat German food. People in those days, because everybody was poor, they'd help each other out, babysitting, taking care of us, giving each other permanents or whatever was needed in exchange. So whatever was needed, they'd exchange, kind of like that, picking fruit trees and stuff like that, so making tables for each other. So we got very close with the neighbors and we knew everyone, we went inside each other's homes. They stayed close to people even after we left Boyle Heights.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.