<Begin Segment 2>

MA: So a little bit about your parents and what they were like, what their personalities were.

BU: Okay, my dad really didn't have, was not an ambitious person. And Mom, my mother pretty much raised us. And my dad, I believe he was raised to be a Japanese gentleman, okay? He never did anything around the house, do dishes, cook, gardening, he never did any of that. And my mother just catered to him and waited on him hand and foot. He never really had a, a good job, and of course, during the Depression, although he was employed, but we, during that period my grandmother, my dad's mother, died in 1933. And at that time, my mother, our family at that time was, my brother -- I only had brother at the time, and we all moved into my grandfather's house, and he had a big house. It was (three)-story Victorian.

MA: And this was the one on, in east Oakland?

BU: No, no.

MA: Oh, this was before that?

BU: No, this is the Utsumi house. Utsumi, my grandfather that was a doctor. And he, he had a huge house, and the story a little later I can tell you, but eventually, during the war, they converted it to a six-apartment unit after they sold it. But my mom went to live, well, we went to live with them and at that time my grandmother died, my dad had three brothers that were still in school, and my grandfather and my dad and two sons and just Mom. She had no help, she did all the cooking for them, and... do you mind if I just wander here a little bit?

MA: Yes.

BU: Because she did all the laundry for not only them, but also for the dental practice. She used to buy soap in those wooden tubs, those fifty-five, fifty gallon wood tubs that soap, for commercial (businesses) used to buy. She used to buy soap in that quantity, and she did all the laundry for the... let me see, six, seven boys and the two dental practices. And my uncle, one of my uncles and my grandfather had to have a clean white shirt every day, as well as all the towels. And she used to iron everything, t-shirts, the whole nine yards. She worked her butt off.

MA: Yeah, so it sounds like, not only was she raising a family, but also sustaining the dental practice as well.

BU: Yeah, and oh yeah, and then, well... I think my mother was the only one I know of that had one of these iron mangles, do you know what that is, mangle?

MA: Can you explain, what is that?

BU: It's a electric, almost like a commercial ironing thing, it had a round tube about this wide and this diameter and about this long. And it's got a heating element with a pad and a thing that comes over it, and you just feed in clothes or, in this case, she used to iron the sheets and pillow cases as well, as well as the dental towels and gowns.

MA: So how many, how many children were in your family, I guess, how many siblings did you have?

BU: I had two brothers.

MA: So there were three boys.

BU: Three boys. And my next brother Don is fifteen months younger, and then Ed was born nine years later during that Depression.

MA: So you were the oldest then?

BU: I was the oldest. And I was the oldest grandchild in the Minami side, and I was, my brother and I were quite old before the next grandchildren on the Minami side came along.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright ©2008 Densho and the Topaz Museum. All Rights Reserved.