<Begin Segment 2>

KL: Was your father's first marriage, did that happen in Japan?

MS: No, it was here.

SO: Yeah, in Terminal Island, right?

MS: I don't know if it was Terminal Island, but he got married here, and the child was born here. And the mother, his wife, died in childbirth.

KL: With that child?

MS: With that child.

KL: Do you think he came around 1910 or so? If you were born in '32...

SO: Gosh...

KL: That's okay, that's okay.

SO: It's okay?

MS: Our mother and father, they were fourteen years apart. And my mother and I were twenty-one years apart.

KL: [Inaudible] So, yeah, maybe she came around 1920 and he around (1910).

SO: Well, when it was illegal for the immigrants to come over, that's when she came. That's why she came up through Mexico, Tijuana. That's why she was so much younger than the Isseis, she was an Issei, but she was a young Issei.

KL: Did she talk about the journey from Tijuana? Did she come straight to Terminal Island?

SO: I don't know. It was, like, pretty hairy trying to get her across the border. I do know her saying something about that, but exactly how they did it, I don't know.

KL: She was with a group, do you think?

SO: No, she was by herself, right?

MS: I think so.

KL: Did she have a guide or anything?

SO: I don't know, my father must have arranged it somehow.

MS: You know, they didn't talk too much. They were so busy working, you know, just like when we went to Manzanar and after, they didn't say anything. So we just never talked to even our friends about our experiences there. Nobody seemed to talk.

SO: We just wanted to forget, because it was such a... we had good times as a child, but then I can remember some frightening things that went on in Manzanar. And it's something we just didn't want to talk about. And our parents never talked about it either. But our father always said, "Just be glad you're an American, you are an American." And then I said, "Well, then I hate Japan even more. I'm an American, and what they're putting us through." And he just said, "You're better off. Just be proud of that."

KL: Did he ever go back to Japan after he came to the United States?

SO: Fifty years later. Oh, well then, after our mother died seven years later, he remarried, a woman from Japan, from Tokyo. And so that's when he went back with her.

KL: Do you know what your parents' families, were they fishermen in Japan, or what was their work in Wakayama?

MS: I know our father's younger brother was the mayor of the town where they lived. But we never saw them communicate with any of the relatives in Japan.

KL: What was the town?

MS: What was...

KL: What was the name of the town?

MS: I guess Wakayama-ken is the prefecture.

SO: It's Ugui.

MS: Ugui.

SO: Ugui something.

MS: U-G-U-I. I think that's where most of Terminal (Islanders) comes from, (their) parents. I believe it's a little fishing community there.

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