<Begin Segment 16>

TI: So I want to ask a little bit about your husband. You mentioned, when you talked about him, you said, "Dyna." Where did the name Dyna, the nickname "Dyna" come from?

RN: 'Cause he was playing football, he was like a dynamite, I hear. That's where he got that name, Dyna.

TI: So he was quite the athlete?

RN: Yeah. Football, he was really good at it. And they all called him Dyna, Dyna.

TI: To the point where everywhere, friends just called him Dyna? Not Tom, but Dyna?

RN: No. That's how he got that name. [Laughs]

TI: That's a good story.

KN: And then sumo, too, right, Mom?

RN: Yeah, he did sumo, too.

TI: So he must have been a very explosive person like in terms of dynamite.

RN: Yeah.

TI: Going back to the Nakagawa clan and the Fujimura clan, so there was two sisters who married two brothers. How was that arranged? How did the two brothers and two sisters decide to get married?

RN: Parents arranged it.

TI: So it was the parents. So was that common during that time for parents...

RN: Yeah, around then, yeah. Parents had, they did what they thought was right. And the son or the daughter would go along with the parents.

TI: And so when you think of, like your Nisei friends in Fresno, so it was pretty common for parents to sort of say, "You're going to marry So-and-so"?

RN: Yeah, uh-huh.

TI: That's interesting, because it's a little -- I mean, the city, I interview people like in more Seattle, Los Angeles, it seems the Niseis were given a little more, maybe, freedom to decide who to marry.

RN: Uh-huh.

TI: But in Fresno, it sounds like it might be a little bit different and more, it was almost like more traditional, more Japanese traditional.

RN: Yeah, that's right.

TI: So why do you think Fresno was --

RN: Huh?

TI: Why do you think Fresno was a little bit different in this way than, say, Los Angeles or San Francisco, or Seattle?

RN: I don't know. I think they, Fresno, was same as like where the Japanese influence got ahead of everything.

TI: Interesting. Yeah, that's really interesting, that it seemed like it was a little more traditional in terms of the Japanese side.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2010 Densho and Preserving California's Japantowns. All Rights Reserved.