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RP: And how did they meet?

MY: My father was in wholesale produce and they were, at the wholesale produce market downtown, they would sell to other smaller markets, restaurants, hotels, whatever, and he was a salesman for a company. I believe it was called the Highland Produce Company. And my grandmother had a restaurant right at First and San Pedro in Los Angeles, and I'm sure a lot of the young bachelors would go to the restaurant to eat and maybe that's where she found my father for her daughter. [Laughs] But it's just that it was a very small community, and I think socially a lot of the Japanese just met through living closely together, and I don't know if they went to the same Buddhist temple. That, I don't know. But I do know that she was one of eight children, and there're five girls and three boys. And Auntie Vera, let me see -- no, she didn't -- but my mother, and then Auntie Dorothy was the younger sister, and Auntie Sue, the youngest sister. Vera and, no, Dorothy and Sue both married men from the wholesale produce market, so it must've been just a real tight knit group there. And so I just never asked questions and they didn't elaborate as to how they met.

RP: And so your mom's parents end up coming over here.

MY: My grandmother and grandfather came over here late 1990s, because my mother was born, I believe, 1907 or '08. Auntie Helen and Auntie Vera were born before her, so maybe my grandmother came over when she, the early 1900s, maybe 1901, 1902. And she came over with just one son and her husband, and then she had eight more children, but in the meantime, the oldest child that she had, that she brought to California with her, died during the flu epidemic. Yes, and so, and then my grandfather died, I can't remember when, but after Uncle Toshi was born, and she was left a widow with eight children. And she was able to carry on running a restaurant and being a mother, a restaurant owner, all by herself. And she said with pride she didn't have to rely on any charity. And there was no social security at that time, but they were able to survive.

RP: What do you most remember about your dad? He was quite an amazing guy.

MY: Well, that he was in wholesale produce business, so we had to be very quiet in the afternoon because he would go to work about twelve, one o'clock in the morning and come home fairly early, while we were still in school. He would always have to take an afternoon nap, and then he would go to bed about eight o'clock and then get up, say, about one o'clock to go to work. While at home we always had a beautiful garden. He raised, we had a fig tree, two fig trees, white figs and the regular figs, the kodo -- no, it's a mission fig. And also we had a loquat tree, but also a beautiful garden with beautiful chrysanthemums and all kinds of Japanese vegetables. We didn't have a koi pond at that time, but we had lots of Japanese vegetables as part of our garden, and it was just a part of his, maybe, relaxation or what he did as a youngster in Japan. I don't know. But we used to help him.

RP: What type of Japanese vegetables?

MY: Nasubi, like eggplant, and cucumbers, daikon, which is like a Japanese radish, green onions -- he loved his green onions -- and that's all that I remember. And I remember the chrysanthemums because they were such showy, big chrysanthemums. He would pinch them back so there would be only one bud so you get a huge chrysanthemum. And we used to cut some of the most beautiful ones to take it my grandmother. She didn't live very far from us. And so that's what I remember about my father, about the time that he spent at that house. But every year we would go to see the wildflowers. He loved to see the California wildflowers. And we'd have to pack up a lunch and everything, and I got so tired of seeing the yellow poppy fields and the lupines, and I would much rather have been going out to the beach, but my father wanted to see the wildflowers. [Laughs] And I think we used to come up towards the Lancaster area, but whenever we went to see the wildflowers, I mean, just the whole hillside would be covered with flowers. And then what else do I remember about him? Many of our, my memories are just family centered. Since my mother was from a family of eight, we always went to Obaachan, to my grandmother's home, and every single weekend I got to play with at least ten to fifteen of my cousins at my grandmother's home. And we'd all get in the car and go down to see my grandmother, which is right on the fringe of Japanese Town in Los Angeles.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright &copy; 2011 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.