<Begin Segment 3>

KL: Let's back up a little bit before that, 'cause I want to get kind of a picture of just your, your recollections and what your family life and your neighborhood and stuff were like before, before they were so disrupted, before Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor.

IT: Well, my dad used to, he was like a, what do you call a janitor like, at the medical building downtown. And my mom worked in the barber shop. We went, they spoke Japanese at home, my mom spoke good Japanese, and so we spoke Japanese, but when we went to, I think it was the Baptist school nursery, we learned English. And it got to a point where we wouldn't speak Japanese at home and it would irritate my mom, but we'd keep saying to our parents, "Speak English!" [Laughs] And it was even more so when my dad got the stroke. But anyway...

KL: Did your dad, was he bilingual?

IT: Not really, but he'd try, and he was quite friendly, because they called him Teddy at the... no, this was, okay, I'm getting ahead of myself. No, he, I don't think he was bilingual.

KL: Do you know how your folks met?

IT: Well, only thing I could remember, I asked my mom, and he would -- now, I don't know why he wasn't working then, but he would play some kind of go or, not go, some kind of Japanese game with little wooden things, or I don't know what they were, but he would go over and play with her dad, at the barber shop, I guess, in front. And he also worked behind the fountain somewhere, because have a picture of him, and we don't, I don't know much more about that. Anyway, my mom told me that, "I called him Ojisan," which means, I guess, uncle, somebody older than she is, and so she kind of laughs and says, and then she ends up marrying him. But that's about all I remember about them, I mean of what she told me. [Laughs]

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