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RP: Yes, your mom's name?

MN: My mom's name? Yuki, Y-U-K-I. And that means snow in Japanese, and so Shari, her middle, her Japanese name is Yukiko, after Grandma.

RP: And your mother's maiden name?

MN: Kawakami.

RP: And she, your mother came over with her parents originally?

MN: No, she, well, she came over when she was, I understand, about sixteen. And she didn't know English or anything, and apparently she was, they docked up in San Francisco somewhere -- they call it, what is it, Ellis Island or something -- she didn't know how to dress, she only knew Japanese customs, and someone, some lady, real nice lady that was a wealthy person, she took her in and showed her the trade, all the, what you're supposed to do here, how to dress correctly. Showed her how to set up, like, well, she kind of helped her in the home, so she showed her how to set up dishes and all, did all that for her. I'm not sure how she met my dad or if this is why she came over. But she was up in, I think it was up there near San Francisco somewhere, when she first came from Japan. But she learned, and even the, when she was taught how to dress, well, in those days they had these big beautiful dresses with big sleeves and big hats, well, even as she grew older she always liked big hats with big flowers and everything. She looked good in those. [Laughs]

RP: What else do you remember about your Mom?

MN: My mom? Well, she's a hard worker. I mean, she said she had to, when my dad passed away in San Diego -- this is where we were, apparently I was born down there -- but we were living down there and, because she was by herself with the five children, she came to live with Grandma and Grandpa up here in the valley, San Fernando Valley, which is some, they had a place up there. And what she did was, well, when she, before my dad died, apparently, to make ends meet she would bake and do preserves and everything, strawberry preserves, but when she came up here to live with Grandma and Grandpa, and there was a huge flower growing farm up there and she would have to cook for maybe fifteen, twenty people, workers and everyone, plus go out in the field and pitch in. And then also, we lived in a house right, not in the main house but we lived in a home right on the ranch there, and so she had to -- this is when Sumi used to, she had to do a lot of the cooking, my older sister Sumi, and she had to kind of take care of all of us. But she had to go to school too. [Laughs]

RP: What values or lessons did you get from your mother?

MN: My mother? You know, she always said that, and she's always told us, if you work hard, you're not afraid of work, and she said that, you be honest, she says, and she used to tell us, if you ever have, run a flower shop -- from, actually from the wholesale end of it, she moved out, right close by here, up on Los Feliz here, opened up a small flower shop -- and she said, "If you're not afraid of working," and she said, "you'll never, never starve." And that's true. You learn the profession. I started, I think, helping there, I don't know, maybe when I was seven or eight, doing little things. Family business. And I don't think I got to wait on customers. Maybe I did, but I learned, through my experience I've learned how to make corsages, arrangements. Well, my arrangements were not as good as hers, Sumi's, but I used to like to do small things, like for the weddings. And when they had the weddings they, in those days everyone had big fancy weddings and so the crew, flower shop crew, mostly the driver and maybe two or three of us, we would go there and help decorate the church and everything. And I learned, we learned. And it's something that I feel you treasure it, you know? You can't just learn by going to school or something. And the customers, we had real nice customers. So holidays, well, even during the week, as I, after I went, start going to school, if we didn't go to Japanese language school, which was either all day Saturday or after your regular school on weekdays, we'd go to the shop and help. [Laughs] But it was, we learned.

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