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JS: Okay, can you tell you us your name?

TS: Yeah, my name is Toshiko Shimada.

JS: And where and when were you born?

TS: I was born in April 29, 1925, in Clarksburg, California.

JS: Okay. And can you tell me the names of your parents and siblings?

TS: My parents are Sadami Shimada, mother Yoshiko Shimada, and I had two brothers, Jim and Dave Shimada. My sister came -- I had a sister, but my sister came from Japan after the war. She was born over there.

JS: Okay. Can you tell me when the Shimadas came to California, your parents? Or grandparents?

TS: Gosh, that's a long time ago. Well, my father came, I can't tell you the year, but he came first and worked a little bit, and then he went back and got my mother, and brought her back. And they lived in, not in Clarksburg, they lived in a town called Escalon that's near Modesto. Yeah.

DG: So had they been married in Japan and had a girl?

TS: Yeah. And she wanted to bring her back, but she couldn't bring her. Well, they weren't, they didn't know what they were gonna do in America yet, so they left her with our grandfather and so she grew up in Japan, went to school there and grew up, and then after the war... well, before the war, I guess, or during the war, she married somebody in the same place and then she had two kids, a boy and a girl. And then after the war, my father called her to come to America to start a living, so they came to Stockton. Well, they were sponsored by Mr. Mizuno, I think it was. He used to go to Japan and pick up people to come to Stockton -- you know the island, Bacon Island? -- to work on the farm. And she never did such a thing, and it was hard, I'm sure, for her. But they stayed for a while, and then after they made enough money, well, they can leave, so they left Stockton and came to... they were living in Sacramento for a while, and he did gardening and this and that. Then they moved to San Francisco 'cause he was having a heart problem, so he was a photographer, or working in a photo place in San Francisco.

JS: So that's your sister's family.

TS: Yeah.

JS: I see. Where in Japan is your, the Shimadas from?

TS: Yamaguchi. Yeah. There's a lot of Japanese, Yamaguchi people here.

JS: So when did the Shimadas come to the Clarksburg area?

TS: That was before the war. I can't say what year it would be.

<End Segment 1> - Copyright © 2012 Densho and Preserving California's Japantowns. All Rights Reserved.