<Begin Segment 7>

CO: Okay, so let me get this straight. So you have some family at this point in Japan.

JO: Yes.

CO: Can you just run it down for me?

JO: Well, the, my mother, my mother was taken -- [interruption] -- I was six years old.

CO: When she left. But so when you're, just tell me where everybody is now at the age of thirteen.

JO: Age of thirteen, my youngest brother and my two sisters were with my -- were not with my mother, was with a grandmother in Katsusa, Japan, and my mother was with a sister in Nagasaki. And the three of us were given that choice by my father whether we would want to accompany them to Japan. And when he said to us, we thought about it, and while we were thinking he suddenly said, "If you go, go with us, you can never come back." And right away I popped up and says, "I want to stay here." And my brother agreed with it. So the three of us, three eldest brothers stayed in the United States.

CO: Have you ever seen your siblings then in Japan?

JO: No.

CO: Have you been back to Japan?

JO: No.

CO: Or ever went to Japan, I guess you'd... okay, so now you're going to. Okay, did we get the, your education? Let's start with that again. About your education.

JO: Well, I went to seventh grade before I left Bainbridge Island. And I continued my education in Pocatello, Idaho. And I came back one year to Bainbridge, one term, and then I went to Broadway High School where I graduated, in Seattle.

CO: Now at this time you're just all by yourself?

JO: Yes.

CO: And how are you supporting yourself?

JO: Well, I worked as a schoolboy. And on top of that, people helped me. Not Japanese, but hakujin people helped me.

CO: Being a schoolboy meaning?

JO: You know, you work in homes, do some odd jobs and they give you board and room.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 1994, 2003 Densho and Emiko Omori. All Rights Reserved.