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KL: What was your grandparents' work?

MN: Pardon me?

KL: What was your grandparents' work? What were their jobs?

MN: They were farmers. But when I thought, when I was growing up they were too old to do anything, so they were retired. But they had a farm.

KL: What did they grow on the farm?

MN: Mostly rice. Rice and wheat, that's all. That's all, not a, they weren't a vegetable farmer, just rice. Mainly rice.

KL: And where, did your father have other siblings?

MN: Yes, he had two brothers -- no, one brother and two sisters. But they, I don't know them because they already passed away.

KL: They died pretty young.

MN: Yeah, one... my father's older brother, he went to Hokkaido, far away, because he was disowned by parents, his father and mother, because he married a girl kind of low class. So my grandfather's, my grandfather... [coughs] I'm sorry.

KL: No, it's okay.

MN: Can't talk too long. [Laughs] So anyway... what did I say?

KL: You said your father's older brother moved far away.

MN: Yes, because he fell in love with a girl that's kind of low class people, so my grandfather disowned him. So my father's older brother went to Hokkaido. You know that's the northern part of Japan. So I never got to see him because he passed away kind of early. And my father had two sisters, but they kind of passed away early, because one sister died when, the day I arrived from America to Japan. She and her husband, that time a sickness went round in Japan, I mean Hiroshima area, so they both died of the sickness. I heard that the day I arrived in Japan, they'd passed away. My husband, my father's younger sister.

KL: So was your father the second oldest?

MN: Yes, he was.

KL: What about your mother? Would you tell us her name?

MN: Her name is, before she was married her name is Kagawa, K-A-G-A-W-A. She, her father passed away when she was a year old, so her mother went back to her mother and she got remarried. My mother's mother remarried and had another family, so my mother was raised by grandmother too. 'Cause her father passed away and mother remarried.

KL: Her father was Mr. Kagawa?

MN: No, she was raised by Kagawa grandma. That time, her grandfather was gone already.

KL: And she was Shizue?

MN: Shizue, yes. She took her father's name was Yanagawa, but she went back to live with her mother's mother, so her mother's mother's name was Kagawa.

KL: Do you know her mother's mother's first name? Her grandmother?

MN: Oh gosh, you know I hardly saw her, because I don't remember.

KL: It's okay. You're remembering an amazing amount of things. It's fine. So what was her, what was Shizue's childhood like? Or what...

MN: She grew up in grandma's home, mother remarried, grandmother's home with mother's younger sister. She had three younger sisters, so she grew up with them. My mother's aunt, but she was my mother's, grandmother's three younger sisters.

KL: Were they in the countryside in Hiroshima, too?

MN: Yes, Kabe. About eight miles from Hiroshima city.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2014 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.