<Begin Segment 7>

KL: What roles did your parents take on as parents? What was your relationship to each of them?

KM: They were parents. When I was about nine, eight, I called my mother by her given name. She said, "You can't do that, I don't want you to do that. I'm your mother, I am not your friend."

YI: She called her Masako. [Laughs]

KL: Once, right.

YI: Once.

KM: And then in those days, there was the hierarchy, and it maintained itself. It was never anything other than parent and child. I tried to say Masako, but...

KL: Was she home during the day?

KM: Yeah, they worked on the nursery, and so it was on the grounds.

YI: Are you talking prewar?

KL: Yeah.

KM: Watched ourselves, huh?

YI: There were so many kids, I mean, she was busy, and she cooked for all of us plus all the hired people that worked for my dad.

KL: How many hired people were there?

KM: Less than half a dozen.

YI: But you know, hanging up diapers and feeding all these people and feeding your children and sewing clothes, she was busy. A pioneer woman.

KM: Yeah, working out in the sun and cold.

KL: Who were the hired people?

KM: Other Japanese and some Mexican families, and they would do work on the property.

KL: Where did they live?

KM: The old man who ran the boiler because we needed warmth in the hothouses, he lived in a room off of the boiler. Do you remember anybody else there?

YI: I don't remember; I was too young.

KM: There was a Nakano-san, who was, I think, a brother-in-law of my father's, or... brother-in-law or a cousin. And he lived on the property.

KL: Were you guys in school at all before the war?

KM: Uh-huh. I started kindergarten and my brother was in first or second grade. Plus he went to Japanese school. I was too young to go to Japanese school, so I didn't go. But Pearl Harbor happened and we didn't... I don't recall going back to school.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.