Densho Digital Archive - Shigeo Kihara Interview (denshovh-kshigeo-01-0005)

<Begin Segment 5>

RP: Do you recall, Shig, what year your dad was born?

SK: Oh, boy, let's see. He was nineteen when I was born, so nineteen years before '35.

RP: Do some math here. '16, 1916.

SK: Someplace in that neighborhood. I can't...

RP: And his name was spelled interesting. It wasn't the usual "Ray," it was R-A-E.

SK: Right, I have no idea how they came about spelling it that way. But even my dad told me at the time that he told us that it's R-A-E, that it's the... from what I understood, it was the female way of spelling Ray. I don't know if my grandfather and grandmother knew that that's what it was, but that's how he ended up being R-A-E. [Laughs]

RP: And did he have other siblings?

SK: He had one sister, Eleanor.

RP: And was she older or younger than Rae?

SK: Eleanor was younger.

RP: And so she was on, growing up, was she helping with the farmwork in Florin at all? Eventually she got married.

SK: Yeah. You know, she wasn't at Florin, she was already married when we were in Florin. So I think she must have only been up in Anderson, but I'm not sure. By the time I remember her visiting us, she was already married and had a son, but they lived down in L.A. and we would only see them very seldomly, maybe once a year.

RP: Let's bring in your mother to this discussion. Her name was Pauline...

SK: Right, correct.

RP: Ogino?

SK: Ogino.

RP: And can you tell us a little bit about her early life?

SK: Well, my mother's maiden name was Ogino, but her parents passed away when she was, I don't know how old. I can't remember, I know she told us, but I can't remember how old the parents were when they passed away. So she was actually brought up by a relative or somebody else. I know that she had a brother named Tommy and Tony, and I don't know if all of them were brought up by, it was one of their relatives, but I can't remember exactly when she lost her parents, but she was pretty young at the time. But after her parents passed away, I believe she lived in Sacramento, in fact, she was born in Sacramento, and she was raised here in Sacramento. I don't know where she went to... I'm pretty sure she went to school in Sacramento and everything, finished school in Sacramento, but that's about all I know about her history. I think she talked more to my sisters about that than she did to me, because I don't remember any of that.