<Begin Segment 2>

MA: So you were telling me that you were born in Oakland but actually spent some time in Japan when you were very young?

CY: Yes, about when I was from eighteen months to six, I think.

MA: And why did your parents take you back to Japan?

CY: Well, the purpose of it was if, so that both of them could earn money. But two years later, my brother was born, and another brother was born, and they decided, well, there's no way that my parents are going to go back to Japan with two more children, so they decided to call me back right away because the immigration law came into the picture, that (1924).

MA: And how did that, what, did the immigration law affect you?

CY: It had something to do with, if you're, if you're in Japan and you want to come back to the United States, you had to be back by a certain date. And so I think, I'm not quite sure, I think it was June 30th or something like that. So I came back on the last boat that would make it in time for the regulation. And so I came back on the Taiyo-maru.

MA: And so when you, when your parents took you to Japan, they left you and then went back to Oakland? So you were...

CY: Yes, they left me... originally I was to stay with my mother's mother, but my father's mother said, "No, she's my son's daughter, and I would have the responsibility of raising her." So she insisted that my mother leave her with her. And so she was already a widow then, so, and she had, she was taking care of three other nephew and nieces, and so you could imagine, I was the fourth child, but I was the youngest of the four. But I was her granddaughter, the others were one nephew and two nieces. Their mother and father were in Korea, and her father, their father was in Korea and passed away and when the mother received the telegram that he passed away in Korea, she had a heart attack and died right there. And so the children became a widow -- I mean, orphans, and so the aunt took over. And that was most unusual because in those days, the Japanese woman had no way of earning money. And so, but I guess she must have had funds enough to raise those three children, and by the time I left Japan, they were all three of them working. And soon after that, they were, by arranged marriage, they married very, very well.

MA: So they were much older than you.

CY: Yes.

MA: So you had some early memories of Japan that you were telling me, especially of the, the earthquake?

CY: I was a very spoiled child because I was the youngest. [Laughs] And the only grandchild that was living with my grandmother.

MA: And do you remember the, the big earthquake in Tokyo?

CY: Yes, I was, in 1923, I was right in Tokyo, and I survived all of that.

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