<Begin Segment 3>

KL: So do you, how old was your mother when she came to this country?

MU: When she came here? She must've been about eighteen or nineteen.

KL: Did she have plans for her life?

MU: I don't think so.

KL: You said she wasn't very happy to come here. I wonder what --

MU: [Laughs] When she found out what kind of work she had to do, yeah. Farm work, it wasn't easy.

KL: Did she expect to be farming? What did she think...

MU: I'm sure she knew. I'm sure she knew. And with the kids coming on, and had to work in the field, wasn't easy.

KL: Yeah, and probably it was new to her, right? If her family was...

MU: I'm sure.

KL: What did, did your dad come from a farming family?

MU: I don't know what his background was, even if they were farmers. Japan is small, area that they came from was very small, so I don't know what his background was, or the family background.

KL: Do you know what port he came into the United States through?

MU: I think San Francisco. I remember something about Seattle, but I'm not sure.

KL: Did he talk about the journey, what his first impressions were?

MU: No, no. I don't recall.

KL: What did he do for work when he came?

MU: He was a farmer.

KL: Right away?

MU: Uh-huh.

KL: Where did he settle?

MU: In Fresno. Well, out in the country, about twelve miles due south of Frenso, in, closest little town was Caruthers. And that's where the other relatives were, too.

KL: Did he or your mother ever talk about what they thought when they first saw each other?

MU: No. I've never heard her, or them talk about it. You know, we, growing up in English, being the oldest, I knew a little bit more Japanese than siblings, but then, but there's that language barrier.

KL: Did your folks ever learn English?

MU: My parents? Very limited.

KL: So your mother came straight to the Fresno countryside.

MU: Yeah.

KL: And tell us about the farm.

MU: Farm, we had, Japanese were not allowed to own land, so just they, all they could do was rent it, and we had forty, our farm was forty acres, about ten acres in Muscats and about ten, eight acres in Thompson, seedless Thompsons, and then we had some, a little bit of open land.

KL: Did you have a kitchen garden?

MU: Oh yeah, we've always had a garden.

KL: You said there was other family around Fresno. Who were the other family members?

MU: There were a number of families. There was one family right behind our farm, and there was another family down the street, and there were quite a few.

KL: Were these part of your father's family?

MU: No, no, only one.

KL: Okay. So they weren't related to you.

MU: No. There was another two families that were somehow related through marriage. Most of the relatives all lived in the Fresno area, close to us.

KL: Were there mostly Japanese American people in your little community, or who else was there?

MU: There were a number of different nationality backgrounds. We had, the next door neighbor was a Portuguese, family across the street was French, and we had Italian friends.

KL: How did everybody talk to each other?

MU: It had to be in English, limited English.

KL: Did, like your Portuguese and Italian neighbors, did they come to the United States around the same time as your parents?

MU: I think so. I think so.

KL: That's kind of neat to imagine everybody, they might've made kind of their own language with some English.

MU: When their whole group got together, it was in their native language. So our grammar school -- we called it grammar school then, not elementary -- we had quite a few national background, nationality background. So it was interesting.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2014 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.