<Begin Segment 8>

KN: Mom, what was that story you used to tell me, when everyone came to the funeral, or came to the house? Even though your mom died, you were real happy to see the people.

RN: Yeah. Because we were too little to realize the death of... my sister May, she just curled up under the coffin, playing under the coffin. She was only about four or five.

KN: But why did it make you happy to see all the people?

RN: Because they don't come around, you know, first time. When Mother died, all these people came to pay their respects.

JS: Because you lived out in the country, and you didn't live close. Your neighbors were far, right? So that... when your mother died, and often in Japanese homes when they have someone, a death in the family, the body remains in the home.

RN: Yeah.

JS: And then they have, invite people over to see, to visit. So that was several days that...

RN: Yeah.

JS: ...after your mother died that the body was there? So you said that your sister was playing underneath the coffin?

RN: May, my sister May, played under the coffin.

JS: And do you remember how you felt or what you thought when you saw your mother after she died, and did you think she was sleeping?

RN: No, I just came home. And little bit after that, my auntie, this auntie and uncle came and took me to California. So they were my mother and father.

JS: Right. But it was a very different life, huh, that you first had and...

RN: Yeah.

JS: So when you think back on that, that you had these two different lives, you were raised on the farm in a big family, and then raised by the Fujimuras in the city, what do you think about that?

RN: I used to cry for my sisters and brother, that I couldn't, I couldn't see them anymore. But gradually, I got used to... they do everything for me.

JS: So when Alice came to Fresno, that was right before she got married?

RN: Uh-huh.

JS: Okay. So that must have been really kind of a happy time for you. And then the rest of your family, your father and your brothers, they went...

RN: They were, stayed in Auburn.

JS: They stayed in Auburn?

RN: Until they had to leave. Everybody had to leave Auburn.

JS: Auburn. And when was that?

RN: And they all came to L.A.

JS: Uh-huh.

RN: And they all ended up in gardener.

JS: Oh.

KN: And produce, too. Uncle Frank and Uncle Louie.

RN: Yeah, the produce.

KN: Real successful, right?

JS: So they left Auburn in, right around the time of the Depression? Is that when they left the dairy farm?

RN: Yeah.

JS: In the late... that photo that you have is... what did we say? That's like 1926? Uh-huh. Okay.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2010 Densho and Preserving California's Japantowns. All Rights Reserved.