<Begin Segment 25>

SY: How about your mother? Did your mother support you, too?

MN: Yeah, she always supported me. Yeah.

SY: How did she show her support with you?

MN: Well, 'cause she did my jobs at home a lot. I (had) to take the eleven o'clock bus home, and I'd get off and I would see her silhouette in the window (as) if she was watching for me. I told you about she bought me a typewriter. (...)

SY: She bought you a typewriter to do what?

MN: Because I was using the Oriental Garden business typewriter. And then sometimes I'd have to take it to the studio with me to do some typing there and then my brother would get mad because he wanted to use it (...). So, but I needed a typewriter, too, so she bought me a typewriter.

SY: And you said that your mother would be waiting for you late at night, and you could see her waiting for you through the window?

MN: Well, (...) there was a window that she could look out and see the bus stop and see me get off. So she probably was worried about (my) getting home.

SY: So once you got home, what would she say or what would she do?

MN: Well, she just, then she'd go to bed, I'd go to bed. [Laughs]

SY: And this was in the Lake City house?

MN: Yeah, that was in the apartment behind the store greenhouse.

SY: And at that time, did you and your mother sleep in separate rooms?

MN: Yeah, she slept in one room and then, well, let's see, she used to sleep in the big house. And then later on, she slept in the same apartment behind the store where I slept. But it was quite different after the war when we came back because my sister May had gotten married in assembly center. And my brother Tom was in the army, and he got married to a girl that he was courting before the war. And then my brother Woody got married, too, to a girl. They were going together before the war, but they got married while (he was) in the service. So three members of the family (...) did not come back after the war. So only my mother and my sister Connie and I were there, and (...) Pearl and Hiromu and their two boys. (...)

SY: So all, when you came back from the war...

MN: That's who, (...) our family had diminished.

SY: Shrunk. [Laughs]

MN: Yeah. And then Connie got married, and I took off to dance. [Laughs]

SY: Oh, I see.

<End Segment 25> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.