<Begin Segment 5>

RM: So a lot of times we ask if kids went to Japanese school, but I'm guessing with your mom growing up in Montana, yeah... do you know, did her mom speak mostly Japanese at home?

PS: Uh-huh.

RM: And her dad as well?

PS: He must have been able to speak some English, because he worked for the railroad, he would have had to have spoken English. My grandmother, her English was limited, very limited.

RM: So was your mom pretty well bilingual?

PS: No, my mother spoke very little Japanese.

RM: And so her communication with her mom would have not been a whole lot.

PS: Right. I mean, my mother did learn some words here and there that you probably would use all the time, but she said her mother used to wander off and the police would bring her back.

RM: So you said that her mom had "melancholy."

PS: I know, but I think she was... I don't know. She definitely wasn't all there, 'cause you couldn't keep a... my stepfather, when he used to talk to her, he said, "She can't keep a conversation." And my mother obviously couldn't have a conversation with her. But no, she was definitely not all there, but the police knew where to bring her back. Because I don't think she would get that far, but she'd wander off, and they'd wonder who she was and she would ask, and eventually she'd be back at the house, or their apartment.

RM: Was... who was the oldest brother, Bin, am I pronouncing that correctly?

PS: They called him Ben because, I think, most people, they would not have thought of Bin.

RM: Yeah, yeah. Was he sort of in charge of that household at that point?

PS: He was in charge of the household, but my mother said that she never listened to him.

RM: Oh, yeah. [Laughs] What about her other siblings? Did they sort of follow his lead?

PS: I don't think so, because let's see... if my mother was twelve and he was twelve years older, he's twenty-four, then our other sister had to be twenty-two, and the other one was twenty, they all probably were either dating or had a job. I don't know what Hide did. I know that they all lived in the same apartment, because my mom used to say Uncle Frank used to come over and he is madly in love with Hide. He would just hold her hand, and she said, "Just go home." [Laughs] He would just hold her hand.

RM: Do you know if, when they moved to Los Angeles, if the family joined in with different holiday celebrations that were going on, like New Year's? Actually, I guess I don't know if they had Nisei Week in the 1920s in L.A. Kristen's nodding affirmatively.

KL: I think it was around the late '20s.

RM: Okay. Do you know if they ever joined into those kind of celebrations?

PS: I don't think so. My mom never mentions going to Nisei Week then.

RM: Did she mention any holidays that her family celebrated?

PS: No. I think my grandmother probably was a handful, because she did wander off. And so she was kind of responsible for her some of the times, I don't think a lot. Because I know I've seen pictures of my mother, and I don't see my grandmother with her.

RM: What did your mom do after she graduated from high school?

PS: She dated my father.

RM: Right away, right after high school?

PS: Oh, I think so, because she was seventeen.

RM: Oh. So how did they meet? Do you know that?

PS: He used to come to the dances that they would have. There were dances that would be in the area. My mom loved to sing; she loved music, and she loved Frank Sinatra. She would call her girlfriend to tell her that Frank Sinatra was on the radio.

RM: Did she ever perform?

PS: Oh, no. No, no, no. But she did like to sing a lot, she memorized all the words to songs, and I do remember she used to always say, "We'd go to dances."

RM: And that's where your dad was, one of those. Do you know if this was right after high school or if it was while she was still in high school?

PS: Well, I don't know how long she had dated him. It had to be the year that... well, she would have graduated in June, so by the next year, she was already pregnant. So I would think that he started dating her pretty quickly. I know my mother was madly in love with him, she thought he was so handsome, she used to call him Brown Eyes. So she was pretty much infatuated with him.

RM: What do you know about his parents or his family?

PS: I don't know anything about his parents. I know he was a truck driver, and that was all I knew about him, and he was from the valley.

RM: From San Fernando?

PS: Yeah.

RM: So besides that first dance where they met, what do you know about your parents' courtship?

PS: I have no idea. My mother never said anything. Because actually she just talks about once the war came in 1942, and there was a curfew, and now they weren't able to see each other, then they were going to have to leave.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2015 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.