<Begin Segment 7>

SY: So did your mom talk about meeting your dad at all?

NG: Yeah, she just, that's... when I -- this is old-fashioned kind of marriage, right? -- when I was dating my husband, Yas, and we would be, as I would tell her, we were just discussing things, but she heard it as arguing and she would say, "You know, this is not gonna last," because she said she never opened her mouth for the first five years, right? [Laughs] She was this dutiful wife. You would, well, we would never know it 'cause by the time we were aware of things, to me, she ruled, she ruled the household. [Laughs]

SY: But she was good for the first five years.

NG: Yeah, she didn't, he made all the decisions and I guess he did. But it wasn't that way once we came along. She did everything.

SY: Yeah, because for your dad not to really have a family of his own, he was probably grateful to be married. And how many children did they have, your mom and dad?

NG: There's three of us. I'm the eldest, and two brothers. Yeah. And then my mom, well, at that time they just, they and my grandparents too, wanted someone who was, who would be a good wage earner, and my dad always, always was.

SY: And your dad only had this eighth grade education, but then he, how did he get from being a farmer? Do you know, remember when that happened?

NG: I don't know, because he must've gone, I'm wondering if it was before they got married. He went into... 'cause he, it says here he was like a driver to the markets. It must've been afterwards that he went to work as a mechanic. Yeah, he was already married. They moved to Compton and he was, he worked as a wholesale market mechanic, so no, it must've been before they got married he went, got some training.

SY: He, you think he went to some sort of...

NG: Yeah, like a vocational school or something.

SY: School to learn how to be a mechanic. And that was what he did his whole life?

NG: Yeah, right.

SY: So when they, when your father married your mother, do you know when that was and how that, what that wedding was like?

NG: Yeah, they got married in Nishi Hongwanji, and she, I know that she --

SY: That Nishi Hongwanji downtown?

NG: Uh-huh, downtown.

SY: Downtown Los Angeles.

NG: And I know that she rented her gown. Let's see now, and what year was that? 1938, they got married.

SY: And they were, where were they living at the time?

NG: They, after they got married they moved to northern California.

SY: Okay, so when they were, but when they were here, you mentioned they lived in a trailer. Was that something?

NG: No, that was my grandparents later on, I told you.

SY: Yeah, okay. I have it confused, then. Your father, so this was when, when he moved here they, they were married... when your father and mother were married then they immediately went to northern --

NG: I think so. I think that's when they went, yeah, they went, moved to -- it doesn't say, she doesn't say when, but I think, I assume that right after they got married they went to Bouldin Island up north where he knew that area, so I think they started making their living there.

SY: And he worked always as a mechanic there too?

NG: I think whatever they could find there, whatever, whatever job that was, maybe driving a truck, or if they needed a mechanic -- his mechanic career, as I know it, was after the war, at the island that I had talked to you earlier.

SY: So if they were married in '38 then they must've only stayed there --

NG: Right, because --

SY: -- very shortly. And they were there when the war broke out?

NG: So they, I guess with all the talk with impending, with the war coming on, that's when they moved back to, and that's where I, why I was born in Compton.

SY: That's, yeah, to be with your family. And so they had some inkling, obviously, before they moved back that this was gonna happen.

NG: Yeah. Well, they just wanted to be close, I think, to my grandparents.

SY: And do you remember what year that was that they moved back?

NG: Well, I was born in '40, so...

SY: Right before that.

NG: Yeah, and I was born in late '40, so probably, maybe earlier that year.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.