<Begin Segment 3>

SF: At the time you were in high school, was your family kind of middle-class, would you say, for a Japanese farming family? Somewhat better-off or worse-off than the average family?

GH: I'd say it was... we had a tough time. My mother passed away in 1934, so I was like ten years old. So, and my dad raised us. And so it was pretty tough, you know.

SF: So did you feel pressure to go to work, because, to be an extra breadwinner because your mom passed away?

GH: No, not really, yeah.

SF: So who did most of the stuff that your mom would have done if she would have been alive?

GH: Well, of course, my sister was only, like, twelve years old at that time, and so my dad did a lot of work, and, of course, she helped out a lot. She had to work pretty hard.

SF: So was your family pretty tight because of that?

GH: I think so, yeah. I think so.

SF: So how was your relationship with your dad? How would you describe it?

GH: I just, I guess it was like any other son/father relationship, but after, after the, I got out of the service, then, of course, my sisters and brothers were all married and I was the only single person, so my dad and I lived together for about six or seven years, until I got married. So we were pretty close, yeah.

SF: How about with your mom, up to the time you were about ten years old, before she passed away? How was your relationship with your mother before she passed away?

GH: Fine, but I was still only ten years old, so it wasn't like she was around for a long time. Could hardly remember.

SF: Before the war, what did you want to be when you grew up?

GH: Well, you have a lot of aspirations, you know, but I would have liked to have been a lawyer.

SF: So did you plan on going to college, or was that kind of like a hoped-for thing...?

GH: It was just something that I had -- I would have liked to, I would have liked to have been, but then I hadn't gone into it enough to say that, "I would go to this college or that college."

SF: So the economics of it or the fact that your family didn't have a lot of money, you sort of felt you had to sort of continue the farming, sort of life, or what?

GH: The what, now?

SF: Because of the fact that your mother had passed away, your dad was really working hard --

GH: Right.

SF: -- you would have liked to have been a lawyer if everything worked out, but you just didn't really think you could do it, because you had to take care of your brother and sisters, or contribute to the family because of the money situation, or how'd that work out?

GH: Oh, yeah, I'm sure that would have a bearing on it, sure. Yeah.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2004 Densho and The Japanese American Museum of San Jose. All Rights Reserved.