<Begin Segment 5>

KL: Would you, tell me again about your mom's siblings. Did she have more than one sibling?

IT: She had, she was the eldest of five, well, five children. So she took her, okay, under her was a sister that's a year and a half, and she's the one who really helped us out.

KL: And what was her name?

IT: We call her Mrs. M, Matsumoto. I can't, Ayako I think her name was. But she and her husband just really helped our family out. We couldn't have survived, because when my mom died I was only fourteen, and she really helped us out, because my dad couldn't do too much. And I'm forever grateful to her. And right now she has, she had four children, two of them already died.

KL: What was her husband's first name? Do you know?

IT: I know he -- Shigeru, Shigeru. He went, I think he went by George, but Shigeru, yeah.

KL: And then did you mother's younger siblings stay in Seattle area?

IT: Okay, he, underneath her was Mitch Shinoda, and he was in the 442. He was like an interpreter or translator or something like that. Then underneath him was Miyo, who my mother, I guess, helped raise.

KL: Miyo with an M?

IT: M-I-Y-O. And she married a guy in Hawaii, and they own, right now they own -- well, he's dead now, too, but they owned a bunch of supermarkets. At that time she married him, I think they just had one store. She told me that they wanted her to head the clothing or the, they had the clothing section, they sewed material, and she had already made up her mind not to work for the family because there's gonna be trouble later on, and later on she felt she did a wise thing. She became, I think a vice president or something of a bank like in Hilo. But she died. They all died, I think she died at fifty. My mom died at forty-one. Her, and then there was a younger brother who was eighteen, I think, and joined the army and the war ended so he didn't, I don't think he went. But he died at forty-five, with a heart attack.

KL: Was he still in Washington state? Did he go to Minidoka also?

IT: Yeah. And then they went back to Seattle. But my, the brother's family had a house and I don't know if people took things from it. I mean, I don't really know the situation.

KL: What was your mother's maiden name?

IT: Shinoda.

KL: Okay. And the fifth brother, what was his first name?

IT: Ted.

KL: Ted.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2014 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.