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TI: Tell me about your, first your mother, her personality. How would you describe her as a person?

NH: Oh, I don't know. My mother's still alive.

TI: She is?

NH: Yeah, she's a hundred and two, and she is now in the Keiro nursing home in Los Angeles. Oh, I don't know, she's okay. [Laughs] Mothers are mothers, I guess.

TI: Well, is she more quiet, or was she talkative?

NH: Oh no, she's very outgoing, yeah. She was active in the Buddhist temple before the war. After the war, she had some ins and out with some people that were in the temple, so she dropped out. But that's okay, she, she went on her own. And she, she didn't know how to, she didn't speak English very well -- of course, I'm not speaking very well right now either -- but anyhow, so she went to the housecleaning business and that's what she did. She went to clean people's homes. And very outgoing, she'd get on the bus, pay her fare and go up and get her work done and come home. And on the way home, stop at the grocery store and get all the groceries and lug them home and fed us.

TI: Well, how about your father? What was his personality?

NH: Well, my father was a gardener, so he did, he went out in the morning and went gardening and then came back in the evening.

TI: But personality-wise, what was he like? Was he outgoing?

NH: He was very, he was more quieter. He was a quieter sort of person, but he, too, was active in, with... well, with the church a little bit.

TI: And how was he when he got together with his brother and his friends?

NH: Oh, they all, they... Thanksgiving we had a big family dinner, and we would either go to my uncle's house or they would come to our house and we would have a great big turkey dinners, yeah, and that was fun.

TI: And how was your, your father with his brother? Were they pretty close?

NH: Oh, they were fine, they were good friends.

TI: Okay, good. So, so in 1926, that's when you were born.

NH: Yeah.

TI: Let's talk about your, your siblings again. So can you tell me the birth order? So you were the first...

NH: Well, then every two years, 1928, my sister, Lillian, and then 1930, my brother, Clarence, and then 1932, my sister Alma.

TI: And you mentioned that two of them are still living, two siblings?

NH: Yes.

TI: So which one passed away?

NH: Alma, the youngest.

TI: Okay.

NH: She was a, she was a nurse.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright ©2008 Densho and the Topaz Museum. All Rights Reserved.