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KL: This is... let's see, it's July the 13th in 2015. July the 15th... 14th...

MS: Thirteenth.

KL: July the 13th, 2015. I'm Kristen Luetkemeier, a park ranger at Manzanar National Historic Site. I'm here for an interview in, outside of San Mateo, California, in our hotel room. We're gonna be talking today with Midori Suzuki and Sat Takaha, is that right? Okay. And Larisa Proulx from the Tule Lake unit is also here operating the camera. And we'll be talking about their experiences in Topaz as well as their lives before and after that in Half Moon Bay, California, and then after the war and their adult lives. And before we go any further, I just want to confirm on the tape that I have your permission to be talking with you today and recording the conversation and to make that available to the public.

MS: Yes.

ST: Too late. [Laughs]

KL: You're in, for better or for worse. Well, thank you for doing that. Let me ask you guys first to just talk some about your parents. Let's start with your father. What was his name and where was he born?

ST: His name is Zenichi, Z-E-N-I-C-H-I. Where was he born? Aichi-ken?

MS: Yeah, they were both from Aichi-ken, which is one of the prefectures in Japan.

KL: What year was he born?

ST: Who?

KL: What year was he born?

ST: Was it 1882?

KL: Around 1882?

ST: Something like that. I wasn't around, so I don't know. [Laughs]

KL: Yeah, that would be kind of miraculous. Did he ever talk to you about his life or his family in Aichi-ken?

ST: Very little. Always with my mother.

MS: Yeah, that was very typical of all the Issei parents, it was the mother that interacted with the kids and kind of ran the whole show, and the father kind of just sat back and let her do it. [Laughs]

KL: Do you know anything about what that family did for work, or about his education?

MS: I guess his mother also did embroidery work in Japan, did she not?

ST: I'm not sure.

MS: I believe that's how they learned the embroidery business.

ST: All I know is my mother came from a farm, farm family.

KL: And what was her name?

ST: Tome...

MS: Aoki, her last name is.

ST: Yeah. What was her middle name?

MS: It's Sueno, Tome Sueno Aoki.

KL: What did she say about the farm that she grew up on?

ST: Not much.

KL: Where was it in Japan?

MS: That was also in Aichi-ken. I know she... apparently her grandfather was some kind of a lord of the village or whatever, because she did talk about the great famine and apparently he had saved a lot of rice and had it stored away, so he distributed the rice to all the families in the village, so they managed to not starve. And she herself didn't... she didn't do much work or anything. She said that she didn't even know how to boil water to make tea when she got married.

ST: She sure learned someplace.

KL: She was a good cook?

ST: Oh, yeah.

MS: Well, she had to learn all that. And she was the one that did more than... yeah, 'cause Dad was more of a... he was a creative artist and everything, so his mind was somewhere else most of the time. And I remember seeing them out in the field, and Dad would go down one row very meticulously, and then he'd stop and have his cigarette, the old Bull Durham, he'd sit there and roll it up, and sit there and have his cigarette. So while he was doing that, Mom's done a couple rows already, and he's just sitting there. So I think even the farm would not have done so well if Mom wasn't there, 'cause then she'd have to run in and do the housework and cleaning and everything. So she was quite a dynamo.

ST: Oh, yeah.

MS: And then they had ten kids in between.

KL: Yeah, yeah, that's a lot of responsibility.

MS: So we didn't have to hire any help, we had plenty of help.

<End Segment 1> - Copyright © 2015 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.