<Begin Segment 6>

AH: How did your parents meet?

WY: Oh, I don't know. [Laughs]

AH: They never told you?

WY: I don't know.

AH: But they were living in the same area.

WY: Right, yeah.

AH: So probably in just the natural course of...

WY: The thing that I can't understand was, see, my father was Okinawan and my mother Japanese, what they call naichi. And those days, the Okinawans and the Japanese, they're not too keen about marrying like that. It's just like me now, when I met my wife, my name is Yonamine, that's an Okinawan name, and my wife's name was Iwashita. And a lot of times, maybe my wife's parents wasn't too keen about me going with the daughter. And we used to have the fam-, my wife's parents used to get calls from the Okinawans, says that, "Leave the Okinawa boy alone. Let your daughter marry the Japanese, the Okinawans marry the Okinawans."

AH: Do you think your mother heard that, too, from her parents?

WY: Might be. In those days, way back way before us, I'm very sure that they must have something like that.

AH: Would you describe your parents' relationship as a loving one, as a close one?

WY: Yeah, my mother and father was very close. Very close. But, so that's the reason why I think my family, my brothers and sisters, we're pretty close.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2003 Japanese American National Museum. All Rights Reserved.