<Begin Segment 2>

KL: Before I get to your childhood on the farm, I wonder how your parents decided to marry.

MW: They were all fixed marriages. In the foreign countries long ago, that's what they... the parents or some of the friends fixed you up with someone they knew that was a good person, and that's how they, that's what my mother said. And I said, "You didn't know that?" And then he was (sixteen) years older than her, and I said, "Why would you marry someone so old?" [Laughs] She said that was all arranged.

KL: Did she ever speak about what it was like to meet him the first time?

MW: I asked her, I said, "How could you marry someone you don't even know and never even seen?" She says, "I had to depend on..." oh, and her mother died when she was young, so her sister and brother (...) had to be scattered off, and she was sent to Grandma, my mother's mother, and in Okayama, but she said, "I did what she told me to," and that's what it was. She probably had someone else who arranged it, but then, back then, you didn't disagree too much with Grandma or your parents, only she didn't have a mother, but the father had some sort of business and he couldn't take care of the children. That's the reason why he had to have somebody else in the family take over. And so she didn't really grow up (...) with (her) sister and brother. (...) But I know the sister is gone, she went to Japan to meet her. Her brother-in-law had told her that they're at wherever it was that they were gonna meet. But before she could get there, her sister died, so she never got to talk to her sister. So I don't know who the brother and sister were raised by. And this was... my goodness, you say camp days are long ago, this has been longer.

KL: Did your parents adopt your dad's nephew together, or was that before they were married?

MW: No, I think they had to adopt him together, that's probably why. They were probably married by then.

KL: Do you know when you, did your dad go back to pick her up or did she come along?

MW: No, I think he came first with, like all the fellows. I think it was a little easier that way, I presume, but no, he went back. But there was so much age difference, but you know, back then, that didn't matter, as long as the person was a decent person, that's what they were concerned with.

KL: How was their marriage, do you think? How did they interact with each other?

MW: Well, I asked her that. She said, "When a person is so much older than you," she said, "from young, you learn respect." And she was not an argumentative person or anything, disagreed a lot. So she seemed to have gotten along well with him. But she told me that, when I was having children, and I have four, and she said, "Don't have too many, it's only hard on the mother." And I said, "Oh, Mother, you can help me." And she said, "Yes, I can," but she says, "it's just hard for you." And she said she only wanted two, and here I came (as) the third one. My brother was the oldest, my sister was two years older than I. And then I came along, and then later on she said, "I really only wanted two," and she said, "But my goodness," because my brother died at fifty-seven, my sister died at forty-four, so they were all young when they died. And she said, "No child should go before parents." She always used to tell me that. I said, "Don't worry, Mother, I'll be around." And so I used to, when they were gone and she lived with my sister-in-law, my brother's wife.

KL: Tell me your brother and sister's names.

MW: My sister's name was Toshiko, and my brother's name was Masashi, like the warriors, the samurai warriors. And so I have a grandson that's taken my brother's name as his middle name, my daughter gave it to him.

KL: And then were you the last of your parents' children?

MW: Yes, I was the last one.

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