<Begin Segment 6>

SY: Well, then a little bit later, actually, when you were six years old, after a period of your father not feeling well, he passed away. What do you remember about your father's death?

MN: Well, I remember the night he died because there was a lotta hustle and bustle going on, and running back and forth with, I imagine, hot water bottles or whatever towels, or whatever were needed. And then I remember standing in my nightgown and watching this going by. And then later on, I noticed that my mother wasn't sleeping in her bed, she was sleeping in my brother's bed, and she was crying. And I said, "Why are you crying?" and she said, "Papa died." And it -- that didn't mean very much to me because somebody dying was, new, was not familiar.

SY: Right, you were six years old, right. How did the household change after your father's death?

MN: Well, it was decided that Pearl and Hiromu would take over the leadership, and of course my mother couldn't run a business. So they ran the business. And then we -- so we had two households. Pearl and Hiromu had two boys, two young boys, and then my mother had about eight children, I guess. Anyway, we stayed in our big house, and then Pearl and Hiromu had another house. But we, although we lived separately, we shared meals. We ate together. So that was the only -- that was the big change.

SY: So in some ways, it's -- you had many older adults raising you?

MN: Yes.

SY: Who would you say -- who raised you when you were young?

MN: Well, I guess Pearl and my sister, Misao. And they had bought our clothes and made our clothes and dressed us, and pulled on our galoshes before we went to school, saw to it that we had breakfast and all that. So it was kind of a, kind of a change from...

SY: From having...?

MN: From living with just my father and mother.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.