Densho Digital Archive - Iwao Peter Sano Interview (denshovh-siwao-01-0005)

<Begin Segment 5>

TI: Let's talk a little bit about your siblings, because they all are part of the whole story. So you mentioned earlier you had two older brothers, Yosh, Yoshiro, and George?

IS: Yes, Yoshito.

TI: Yoshito.

IS: Yoshito, he was the firstborn, and he's the one that drowns. I think I explained that in the book, he's the one that drowned. And then the next one, George, is the one that had that accident. And I write about that, too, where he drinks lye. My mother was in the hospital in Los Angeles and I guess she was getting well, so my father was going to go to Los Angeles to go after her and bring her back home. And some other Issei neighbor was going to look after him, took him there. And this woman was making konnyaku, and I don't know the process, but they use lye to make konnyaku. And he thought it was water and drank that and burned his throat. And, of course, he didn't die. That's my first, my mother's first trip to Japan is to take him, because the doctors here said they couldn't do anything for him. So my mother decides to take him, or her relatives in Japan said, "Why don't you bring him to Japan? Maybe we could, Japanese doctors could do something for him." So she goes with him. But by that time she's pregnant with the second, the third child, which was born while she's in Japan.

TI: So this is your older sister?

IS: Yes. And then she was born in Japan, and then the doctors in Japan finally say they can't help George either, so she has to come back to the United States. It was all, I guess, it was all arranged. And so she comes back, and they persuade her to leave Yoneko, the baby, because it would be difficult to try to go back on the ship with this child that has this accident and a new baby. So I guess her plan was to go back again soon to bring her back. But that didn't happen. She grows up in Japan. That's the third child.

TI: So that's the third, so the oldest one drowns, George has an accident, and then your older sister is in Japan.

IS: Is born and stuck in Japan. And then, then Patrick is born, he's 1922. And then I come next, 1924. And then there's... I have a sister, Ruth, who, when I'm, what, two years or three years old, I guess, she comes down with meningitis and dies overnight. And then after her, 1928 is Florence, my sister Florence, and then 1930 is Belle, another sister. And then 1931, Roy.

TI: And so there's, at home, there are five of you. So it's Patrick and you who are the two, like, older brothers, and then you have three younger ones, Florence, Belle, and Roy.

IS: Yes.