<Begin Segment 13>

[This transcript has been extensively edited by the narrator.]

SY: By the time you got to camp and you had nothing really to work with, your brother had nothing to work with, what did he do to keep...

GN: Well, do you want to see the same diagram that I showed at JANM?

SY: Maybe we could show it at the end of the interview.

GN: All right. The next morning when we got up, we were covered with dust. We kind of shook ourselves off. He said, "I was thinking, Grace, I saw last night when we were going over to the laundry room, I saw some boxes that the commodes were (packed) in. I think that if we get two of them, we can make a really nice reclining (back) chair. I'm pretty sure we can do that." He said, "You carry two and I'll carry two, we should be able to do it." I think in his duffel bag, he had gotten for Christmas a small toolkit from one of my uncles. I think he brought that with him. You weren't supposed to bring in anything (like that). I think it just had nails and maybe it had a hammer. Might have had a little teeny saw. He brought it anyway and nobody took it away. He was a kid dragging that duffel bag, he brought it anyway. He said, "Pick up two rocks, put a rock in your pocket." So then we both liked to wear things with pockets. He always told my mother -- my mother sewed everything for us, our clothes -- "Always put pocket on, Mom," because we like it. I have a quilt that I made when I was twelve, too, that I could show you. I have the sewing machine, too, that my mother made all these things on, and I (sewed the quilt squares together on) the quilt. It shows all of the materials that she used to make our clothes with. She made everything, she made our pajamas. She made everything, all of our clothes except our socks and underwear.

SY: So making things runs in your family, too.

GN: My mother invented all kinds of things for sewing. Later on, there's an adjustable measuring (device when you) put a hem in, you can measure three inches and it will stop right there. Well, she made (this) kind of like a measuring thing. She invented that way before they ever had it on the market. All the tools that she needed for sewing. Then she invented a little thing, you could run this thing and mark and track where you want to put a seam or your hem. (This device hold's tailor's chalk for making the correct measurement). If she didn't have it, she invented it. She's a very creative mind. I think that's why (we're creative). Mother was also very (systematic because she was) a CPA, too. She (was a) graduate (of) Woodbury College, she could have been anything (she aspired to be).

SY: So your brother got all this inventiveness, maybe, from your mother. So you were talking about him making wood boxes.

GN: (And my father's genes. He graduated from UC Berkeley with an Electrical Engineering degree). We didn't have a lot of money because my mother was a widow. She saved stuff for us and we'd make something out of it. We played with those things. We made our own toys, a lot of our toys. Of course, our uncles and aunts gave us things because they felt sorry for us. We didn't have a father, so they gave us a lot of things. But we still made our own toys. My mother read to us every night, and every Saturday we went to the library. I still did that with my kids. We'd go to the library every Saturday and each one of us would get a stack of books. Each one of us was responsible for the books we got, so we never had an overdue or late book. They had transaction cards then. We'd take 'em all out and put a rubber band around them. "This is for you, Joel, this is for you, (Daniel and Linda). You're responsible for getting all those books (back) next Saturday (when we are) going to the library." We never had a library overdue book and neither did any of our kids. That was their job, they had to find that book or we weren't going to the library that day.

SY: Can you finish that story about your...

GN: Yes. So my brother and I played a lot. We had this big wool rug that was patterned, it had border on it. And so we used to play (on it). We used to make our own little cars and we had all kinds of imaginary animals we'd make out of my mother's little scraps of material. We'd stuff them and we'd make little animals and people and all kinds of stuff. We played we were imaginary animals, and we had a big library table, and that became one of our dens and we would hide in the den. We did a lot of creative things. My mother never told us, but just the two of us, we could entertain ourselves for hours. We didn't go to the movies or anything like that. We didn't have television. We used to have our favorite radio programs like The Lone Ranger. [Laughs] Things that we would listen to on the radio (at) certain times.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.