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EB: And so what is your birthday and where were you born?

GS: My birthday is September 23, 1935, and I was born in San Francisco, California.

EB: And tell me about your brothers and sisters.

GS: I have, I'm the eldest of four, and my brother is next. He's Walter, eighteen months younger than I. And then I have a sister, Eleanor, who was born in 1940, and then Carolyn, the youngest, who was born in 1943 in Manzanar. And we all live here in the Los Angeles area, so we still see each other often.

EB: Good, good. So what type of work did your father do while you were growing up, and what did your mother do?

GS: My mother basically was a housewife. She took care of us, she was at home. She told me she did a little housework before I was born, I think. And then I know she also did a little of this in the early 1950s after we moved back here from New Jersey. But my father had a background in bookkeeping, so he, before the war he was working as a bookkeeper and then later on, he was an assistant manager for North American Mercantile Company in Los Angeles, and also working as the bookkeeper. It was a small import/export company, but that's what was he was doing basically before the war. Then in camp... do you also want to know about this?

EB: Sure.

GN: In camp, he became the, in Manzanar, after we evacuated to Manzanar, he was block manager for, I'm assuming from the dates, probably couple years. And then he left to go outside of the camp on furlough to do sugar beet harvesting work. Then when he returned to camp, he no longer was the block manager, but instead he worked in administration using his bilingual skills as interpreter/translator for all the interviews which were (taking) place for people as they were leaving camp.

Then (when) we relocated from camp, we went out to Berlin, Maryland, and he worked on the farm. He had no experience as a farmer, but he was willing to do anything to get started again. And we were in Maryland about nine months. Unfortunately, things did not work out as he had anticipated and what he was told in camp. So in order to survive, he just couldn't continue in Maryland. So he moved our family to New Jersey, to Seabrook Farms, which at that time was a huge, huge frozen food processing plant, and they were looking for to people to work there. In fact, Seabrook came out to the camps to recruit people to work. And we lived there for three years, and at that time he was not able to use his office skills. He got a job instead working in the company garage, mainly taking care of inventory of transportation and such.

And then after we moved back to California in 1950, he was not able to find a job. I really don't know what he was doing at that point. But because he was not able to find a job to support the family, he decided to go into business for himself. But in order to do that, he had to borrow a lot of money from my grandfather and uncles to get started, because my father had no collateral and the bank would not give him a loan. So he bought this mom and pop business in southeast, no, south central Los Angeles, near the Watts area, and he operated the market for eleven or twelve years until he died. He died very young at the age of fifty-seven. That's what he did.

EB: Okay, and so where were you raised?

GS: Well, my parents were married in Florin, California, but my father was living in San Francisco. So after the marriage, he had an apartment ready for my mom, and I was born in San Francisco. But when he was transferred to Los Angeles, then naturally the family moved down here. And we lived in the Boyle Heights area of East Los Angeles until evacuation. Then we went to Manzanar, and we were there for almost three years. Then when we relocated we went out to Berlin, Maryland, where we lived there nine or ten months, and then went on to Seabrook for three years, and then came to Los Angeles. And I basically have lived here in L.A. ever since, other than the several years that I lived in Germany.

EB: I'll ask you about that a bit later, I think. So can you describe your childhood in Boyle Heights?

GS: I was very young at that time, but I remember we lived in this duplex, and we had some nice neighbors. And I don't really remember having a lot of children to play with, but we did have neighbors to play with. And I recall with fondness taking the streetcar on East First Street going downtown. I used to go with my mother when she used to go down there to pick up some beads that she would bring home to do work at home, so I assume this must have been piecework or something, whereby she could earn a little money at home. I do recall that. We did not have a car, so everywhere we went it was by public transportation, using the streetcar, and occasionally there was a family friend who had a car, and then we would get a ride with the family friend. I don't know where we were going, but wherever it was that we were going.

EB: Okay. And could you describe your home life and the kind of upbringing your parents provided you?

GS: You mean before the war years?

EB: Before the war. Were they strict or not?

GS: I can't say that they were really strict. Being that I was the (oldest) one, I knew from early on that I had certain responsibilities, and whatever I did I knew that the others would copy or follow. My parents spoke both English and Japanese at home. In fact, I spoke all Japanese until I started school, kindergarten. And I don't recall this, my mother has told me repeatedly when I started school, I was the only one in the class who did not know how to speak English, and so she felt that she had done me a disfavor by speaking mainly Japanese at home with us when we were growing up. But she said that I had no problems picking up the language once I started school, so it wasn't too long before I was speaking English. But even as I was growing up in my youth and even as an adult, my parents always spoke both English and Japanese, so there was a mixture of both. And perhaps because I learned Japanese first, I mean, it was the first language the I learned, maybe because of that, I have been told by people that I do not speak Japanese with an accent, whereas my siblings have been told, "You speak with an English accent with your Japanese." I don't know whether that's true or not, but anyway, that's what I've been told. And my parents were always, they were always cognizant of the fact that they wanted to bring us up as American kids, but they still wanted us really truly to maintain Japanese customs and culture, and our meals consisted of a lot of Japanese foods. I really don't recall as a child having things like hotdogs or hamburgers. We had mainly economical Japanese dishes, not like sukiyaki or tempura, but it was just what we call okazu, a mixture of a little bit meat and a lot of veggies with rice. But... and my father really was the disciplinarian in the family. My mother also, but it was really my father. And when my father said something, I mean, we had to listen. [Laughs]

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2006 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.