<Begin Segment 10>

SY: Okay. We're talking about how you felt -- it was interesting how you felt about being reunited with your parents, and it was just another, another day in your life, right?

TI: Another day. "Who's this woman?" [Laughs]

SY: And your parents didn't have any kind of emotional attachment, reaction?

TI: Well that's another side that I'm aware of today, but at that time I was not aware of it. But there was a great depth of emotional feeling of my mother towards me, in a sense that, later on in the years I found out what, why my sister and my brother had complained about me and felt jealous of my mother and the fact that they don't exist when I'm there. And when there's, when she's serving tea or, hot tea or cookies or something, she would serve it to me, my tea, and then that's it. They'd just sit out there and not have anything. But I'm not aware of this until later in years when I was reminded, "Hey, this is what happened." And I said, and I tried to tell my mother, which there's a barrier there. This is what I'm saying about conversation. My mother is, had a mental situation in which you couldn't explain logic, that if you're going to have guests here, my guests, or your family here, everybody needs to be treated evenly. You serve tea to me, you serve tea to the others and stuff like that. I try, in my way I've tried to explain it to her. It doesn't, it doesn't register. After many years, it doesn't register. But they tell me, "Yeah, Mom loves you more than everybody."

SY: They notice. They noticed it and you didn't. Now, when your mother returned though, did you notice her behavior being different? Like obviously you saw when she, before she left.

KS: If you remember, I said we were raised on a farm, we were basically growing up ourselves. We had no influence or, let's say, directions from our parents, maybe except for being reprimanded for something that we did obviously it was wrong, like me spreading rice all over the ceiling to try and amuse my brother, to make him laugh, freshly cooked rice. [Laughs] She repeated that story several times, and that's why I remember it.

SY: But, so not, you didn't have a relationship with her, so you didn't notice any kind of change in her behavior?

KS: No, I didn't notice a change. There was, there was no difference between that period, during the period of time at the orphanage, and during the time when she came to join us as a family unit. In fact, thereafter many years there was always this non-bonding relationship, as far as from this side to that. Now, my mother may have felt otherwise and she indicated, she didn't indicate it, but her behavior indicated that I come first when something's to be served. And my father was, I guess you could call it a sho ga nai kind of thing. You know, "She is what she is." [Laughs] She can't cook, she can't sew, she can't do anything, and my father was cooking, my father was sewing, my father was doing all the things. She just can't, she just couldn't grasp how to do things. I tried to show her how to cook the fish properly, and I'd buy fresh fish from the going, mobile market or whatever you call 'em, and try to make this nice dish and I showed her how to do it. Turned the fire up and I get a black piece of fish. [Laugh] But you know, it's a frustration of lacking, lacking the correct response, try to correct situation, and it's...

SY: But as far as you know, though, she wasn't getting treated?

KS: She wasn't getting treated late, in her later years, and she wasn't getting treated after she got, came into camp. And whatever she went through, we, I got little bits and pieces of stories from them, from other people that were kind of aware of it or were from our... I don't recall where the stories came from, but there're little bits and pieces of it. And that's what I was piecing together, and it's just like, well, they took, experimented on her with electrical shock, electric shock, and what we wound up with was a, what we wound up with.

SY: I see. And did you ever find out what her diagnosis was?

KS: No, never looked into it. Like I said, our conversation was very shallow. We'd never go into depth of anything in a family situation. And my father never talked about it.

SY: I see.

KS: So we never dug into it. [Laughs]

SY: Maybe better.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.