<Begin Segment 3>

LH: So your mom came over and she was living with their family?

MN: She comes over finally when she's kind of a -- I think she is sixteen, seventeen years old. She comes out to Wapato with the family, and she meets her little brother for the first time. And she's sixteen years older so this little brother could be her child rather than her brother. And then she finds out her older brother, who she grew up with in Japan, was kicked out of the house so she decides she's not going to stay there. So she...

LH: So what did she do?

MN: She leaves Wapato and comes to Seattle. Now listen, she's a late teenager and she doesn't speak the language. She said Grandma gave her a little money that had tucked away, and I don't know. And then she comes out to Seattle. She finally finds where her brother was staying only to find out that he's not there 'cause he went to Alaska to make some money over the summer, so...

LH: What did she do?

MN: Hotel manager let her stay in that hotel for a while 'til her brother came back, and so she plopped herself down and tried to learn how to speak English and tried to... [Laughs] I don't know. She's a spunky lady. They come from spunky people, but it was so neat that what I wrote about in her recollection of when her brother finally landed and she was getting ready to go out to meet their boat, and he had already been released so he comes running up the stairs saying, "Hisako, Hisako." And then it's almost like a movie. Isn't that neat that brother and sister could be that close to each other? Her brother and her were close. She never got real close to her parents because she really didn't grow up with them.

LH: And so how did your parents meet?

MN: Well, then her brother and her lived for a while, but they decided that they needed to put her in a different apartment, and I guess my uncle needed some privacy. And he talked to my mom and my mom said that when she was in Japan, she saw how alcohol had ruined so many families so she said if she ever gets married, she would love a man who does not drink. Well, my uncle had one friend who does not drink. [Laughs]

LH: And everybody else did. I see.

MN: I kind of get the feeling my uncle was kind of a Mafia kind of figure. I think he was one of the people that were not in the legitimate business and my mom was finally -- there was very few choices to make a living in those days and one of the things that she was, option that was available -- she said she don't want to be a waitress. People look down on waitresses and kind of demean them. She thought it'd be a good deal if she could learn to be a barber so she goes in to be an apprentice, and she finally finishes off her course and she's pretty happy and she's really to be a barber and her brother sets her up, I guess. And then she gets no customers and so she just kind of abashed... just kind of ready to make money and no customers. And so finally, apparently, customers start coming in and she finds out that her brother had recruited all his friends to [Laughs] -- and one of the friends he recruits to come in is this handsome, handsome man who happens not to drink, and I guess that's Dad.

LH: So it was a little set up?

MN: I think so, yeah. So we were teasing mom a lot of times, did your heart thump when you cut his hair? She says no, she just noticed he had very fine hair. She was always cool about this. [Laughs] She never said she fell in love with him or anything like that. She kept saying he didn't drink. That was his only good quality: He didn't drink. [Laughs]

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.