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MN: We are at the Lomita residence of the Kageyamas', we will be interviewing Keiko Kawahara Kageyama. We have Tani Ikeda on video and I will be interviewing, my name is Martha Nakagawa. So Keiko-san, let's start with your father's name.

KK: Oh, my father's name is Kosa Kawahara.

MN: And what prefecture was he from?

KK: He's from Saga-ken, Shiota-machi, but I don't know the rest. [Laughs]

MN: Can you share a little bit about what you know about your father's early life?

KK: His what life?

MN: Early life.

KK: Early life? Oh, all I know is he went to school in Japan. And he was the, I think he was the youngest of all the Kawaharas, and he has... how many? I don't know how many brothers and sisters, but he had around three brothers, I think, that I know of. And I don't know how many sisters he had, but we went to visit them in Japan when I was about eighteen.

MN: Okay, I'll ask you about that later, but do you know when your father came to the United States?

KK: I don't know the year.

MN: Do you know what he was doing in the United States?

KK: Well, he was doing various things as far as I know. He worked on the, in the fields, he learned how to raise a pig. [Laughs] That's one of the things that he learned, and he tried his hand at raising pigs. But it wasn't profitable, so he quit. But I don't know too much about his life except that he got together with friends and he did whatever they were doing.

MN: Okay, let me ask you about your mother then. What was your mother's name?

KK: My mother's name was Nobu Kamichika. Very unusual Japanese name, but she lived about a block away from where my father used to live. And she used to see him going to school. And they would tell her, "Oh, he's going to school, you better get up," and all this.

MN: So they knew each other when they were young.

KK: Not too well, but they knew of each other. They knew, most people knew each other in the neighborhood. I don't know if they, I don't think they played together or anything like that, but they knew of each other.

MN: And then, so your parents got married, and then by the time they started to have children, do you know what they were doing in the United States, what kind of job?

KK: Well, they were farming. By that time my father had learned to farm, and he decided to marry my mother when he found a place to... you know, a house for her and everything. But the early part of their life I don't know too much about, because they never told me.

MN: So your parents, how many children did they have altogether?

KK: They had four.

MN: And where are you in the...

KK: I'm the top one of the four. So I had a sister right after me, about two years younger. And then after that, my brother came about five years later, and another five years later my youngest brother came.

MN: What year were you born?

KK: I was born in 1920.

MN: Where were you born?

KK: I was born in a farm, and I had a sambasan, Mrs. Harada, as my midwife. She delivered. So, anyway, my mother had gone to a nursing school in Japan, in Fukuoka, so she and this nurse, I mean, midwife, became good friends. So they knew each other. I mean, you know, most of the Japanese kind of stuck together during that time. Whenever they knew you were Japanese, and so they got together and talked about this and that. So my mother knew lots of people, even though she was from a foreign country, she knew lots of Japanese over here from different place. But mostly when her, people from her ken, Saga-ken, came together, they had newspaper around that time, so they congregated and had picnics and everything. So they knew, began to learn.

<End Segment 1> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.