<Begin Segment 2>

KL: Tell us about your mom and her other siblings. Who else was in the family?

JO: My mother had four sisters. Well, five sisters and one brother, and she had an older sister who passed away at birth, and a younger sister who passed away from peritonitis when she was nineteen. And then she had the sister who graduated from USC as a doctor, and then she had another one who's a beautician, and then two others. One was going to UCLA at the time of our, having to be moved to camp, and so she had to leave UCLA when she was, I think, a junior. And she then recently got her honorary degree at UCLA in May 15th of 2010. She had an honorary degree, and she got to wear the, you know, honorary degree cap and gown, which was really fancy, not like your undergraduate cap and gown.

KL: Did you go to the ceremony?

JO: Yes, oh, yes, it was such a big honor, we had to all go.

KL: What is her name?

JO: Her name is Sakae Kusuyanagi Okabe. She is still alive, she's like ninety-one or -two, and she lives at the retirement home... no, convalescent home in Keiro.

KL: Would you spell her name?

JO: Sakae, first name is S-A-K-A-E, and then nickname of Sally. And then Kusayanagi is the family name, and then Okabe, O-K-A-B-E.

KL: And I should have been asking you the other people's names probably as we went, too, Dr. Kay who...

JO: Worked in the hospital?

KL: Yeah. Would you just say her name?

JO: Dr. Masako Kusayanagi, K-U-S-A-Y-A-N-A-G-I. She never used the name Dr. Goto, because Dr. Goto was her husband.

KL: Yeah, I hear her called Dr. Kay whenever I see her referenced.

JO: And now she's Dr. Miura.

KL: Uh-huh.

JO: 'Cause she married a Miura.

KL: And then the other, I think there were two others that you mentioned, your sister, or your aunt who was nineteen when she passed away?

JO: That was Tomiko, T-O-M-I-K-O. And she was married, so her last name was Uyeda, but I found it very interesting, on her grave, she's got this huge gravestone, and all it, it just says "Tomiko," because they didn't approve of her husband.

KL: The family?

JO: I gather that, because nowhere is it mentioned that she was married.

KL: She was young. I mean, not as young as it would seem now, but to be married and to have passed away.

JO: Married and passed away all within a year. And she was also going to UCLA. And she joined, she was a charter member of Chi Alpha Delta, the UCLA sorority that I later joined.

KL: Oh.

JO: So I have her pin.

KL: And then the other siblings?

JO: The other one is, the one just below Dr. Kay is, her name is Kimiko Kusayanagi Hasegawa. Hasegawa is her last name, and she's the one that had the two children in Manzanar.

KL: And then was there an older sibling, too, that we missed, or there were just five?

JO: There was an older, but I don't remember her name.

KL: Okay.

JO: I think it was Fusaye but I'm not sure. I think it was Fusaye.

KL: That's a lot of girls. [Laughs]

JO: Then there was one brother, George (Takeo Kusayanagi).

KL: How did he fare in all that?

JO: He was spoiled rotten. He was also, had mental problems. So he did not fare very well.

KL: I guess it depends who you ask.

JO: So anyway, and then the youngest one was Irene (Kusayanagi), but her first name was Aiko, A-I-K-O, Aiko. And her nickname was Irene.

KL: And most of the kids helped out in the store, too, do you think?

JO: No, no. By the time... I think only the first few. By the time my mother got married, I don't think her sisters worked in the store. Because my mother worked in the store, she was always working in the store. But she was, like, in her early twenties. And I don't recall any of the others working in the store. Because I used to... when I was born, and later on, when I went to school, I went to Maryknoll. And I went to Maryknoll specifically because the bus would pick me up at home and take me where my mother instructed the bus driver to take me, whether it was back home or to the store.

KL: Oh, that was her main reason for choosing Maryknoll?

JO: That's what she said. Otherwise I could have gone to --

KL: It'd be a big help.

JO: Yeah, otherwise I could have gone to the local elementary school. Because I went there in kindergarten and then I didn't go there in first grade. So my mother would always go to the store to help and work during day. So I would go there after school. All I remember was my mom working. I didn't remember any of the other kids working, but you know, it may be that when I was... I remember one time my aunt, my youngest aunt Irene, she took me up to the top floor of City Hall. We had to climb, it was a Saturday, we had to climb twenty-eight floors. So I said, "Oh, I hope we get to ride the elevator down." And guess what? The elevator was not working because it was a Saturday. So we had to walk all the way down.

KL: How was the view?

JO: The view was very good. I remember, "Oh, look, we can see everything." But then we had to walk down.

KL: Yeah. We walked down the Washington Monument shortly after my family moved to Washington, D.C., that was a long staircase, too.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2012 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.