<Begin Segment 2>

EO: Well, just tell me, first of all, your mother was musical... just tell me more about her other interests besides work.

AH: Uh-huh. Are we rolling? My mother was a very musical person, and perhaps that's why she encouraged me to, to take lessons, including piano lessons, and dance lessons. She herself played the shamisen, the three-stringed instrument that looked like a banjo. And also, the koto, the thirteen-stringed instrument. She, I think my father, also, although he was not musical, he appreciated, he loved it. He loved to have music in the house. I feel the rest of my brothers and sisters were also quite musical. I had an older sister who sang, played the piano. Another sister who played the piano. My brother, older brother played a violin. So all of us were able to do something in the music line. When we bought the piano, I tell you, the house was so happy. Of course, my family was very Christian so the first compositions played were always hymns, were the hymnals. I think that perhaps I should mention here, at the time that we were removed from our homes, we had to sell the piano for next to nothing, I think it was something like ten dollars, including all the music. It was a heartbreaking experience for us.

EO: Did you have any aspirations to be a musician or a dancer?

AH: Yes, I had hoped to be, actually, a tap dancer. But I realized as I got a little older -- I took lessons for about six years, but I realized I couldn't come, I couldn't fulfill the image of, for the American public, of an American tap dancing star. I could never be Betty Grable with long beautiful limbs, blond hair, blue eye. I think I kidded myself to think, "Well, if I'm good enough as a dancer, all those other physical attributes won't keep me back from becoming famous." But I think in the back of my head, I knew that this was not the real world for me.

EO: Now... did, you were in this, you had had a little vegetable stand?

AH: My father ran a small vegetable/fruit stand.

EO: And then what happened? Did you succeed in that?

AH: Oh, no. My father was definitely not a businessman and he tried several different kinds of small businesses, and always failed in them. The, I think I was told when I was real small -- I never followed up on it because I didn't have that much communication with my father and mother -- but my older sister told me that he once started up a tofu factory, I think this was in Sacramento. Then I know that he did, and I have seen him managing hotels, both in Sacramento, which we left in 1933, and in Los Angeles, where we moved to in 1933.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 1994, 2003 Densho and Emiko Omori. All Rights Reserved.