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KL: So your dad grew up in Gardena?

KN: Yeah, that's right. Then eventually the war, so...

KL: Who else was in your father's family when he was a child? There was him and Shimpei, were there any other siblings?

KN: Where at?

KL: When your dad was growing up, did he have brothers and sisters besides Shimpei?

KN: Not my father. My father came from the other side. He came to the Nishimura family. So there were only two, a brother and a sister, Kyoko and Shimpei in the Nishimura family.

KL: I see, okay.

KN: There was a third son, but he passed away when he was an infant in Japan. His name was Tadashi.

KL: And then was your dad an only child?

KN: Who?

KL: Your father.

KN: No, there were five in his family. Four sons and one daughter.

KL: Okay, yeah, that makes sense. I'm sorry I didn't pick up on that. So Kyoko and Shimpei grew up together as siblings, and then...

KN: My dad had three other brothers and a sister.

KL: Okay. Well, then what kind of stories did you hear from Kyoko and Shimpei about what they were like as kids? Like were they involved in the nursery?

KN: No, you didn't hear too much from them because they were... like Shimpei before the war was never home. He was at Berkeley. And even after he graduated, he spent time there as a graduate student and a researcher. My mother went off to Woodbury, then she worked in the nursery, too. In those days, you, they worked very hard to make a living. So Grandmother tended to both Gary Hata and I.

KL: Because your mom was working?

KN: Yeah, they were all working in the nursery. So not much, all I remember is... I do know that they're very hardworking people, very good work ethics, they worked hard to, I guess you might call it scratch out a living, you know.

KL: What was your mom studying in Woodbury? What was she doing?

KN: Oh, she got a business to create. Like typically it was... I think she was good at shorthand, I don't know which one, Gregg or another one. But most of them went on to be secretaries or something, she never did that because she couldn't get a job. The only place she could get a job was downtown in Los Angeles working for a Japanese American company. She stayed home and worked at home.

KL: And do you know if Shimpei contributed to the nursery operations, too, as a teenager?

KN: Obviously he did. He had interest in growing, so he was very knowledgeable in plants, because he's a scientist. And so, of course, he learned all that at the nursery, didn't he?

KL: I would guess so. I mean, usually it was kind of a family operation.

KN: And he really loved plants. At the nursery, it was a big laboratory for him.

KL: Yeah, I was always curious about that, if he had an interest in plants before being involved in guayule.

KN: Yeah, he always did. He always had an interest in plants.

KL: This is another one of those questions, it's weird, 'cause I know the answer, but for the recording, tell us about his education and his field of study and his work.

KN: Nobody's ever told me he had a PhD, but if you read the newspaper and everything, they'd always address him as Dr. Nishimura. So apparently he had a PhD, and Japanese are modest, they're not going to tell you they have a PhD. I do know he was a brilliant man. And the other thing that used to amuse me was I used to think when I used to look at him, he had the biggest head in the world.

KL: Physically?

KN: Physically he had a big head, and that became obvious, no wonder he's so damn smart. Because he was a brilliant man, actually.

KL: That's the impression I get.

KN: Very bright man. And people have sent me articles like when he was going to junior college, he wrote in the mathematical journals, so he was quite academic. Somebody asked him for, they were asking for a solution to a math problem, so he submitted it and he published it.

KL: But you said he was pretty modest?

KN: Yeah, he never talked about himself.

KL: What was his field of study when he was associated with Berkeley before the war?

KN: He talked fondly of some of the Nobel prize winners. He was affiliated with students, and they were together as they worked on labs. And so you could always tell, he's quite academic, because he ended up in Illinois after the war, with Robert Emerson, his colleague. And I wrote him a letter, it came back all marked up in red. I never wrote him another letter. [Laughs]

KL: Yeah, that's a little intimidating.

KN: Matter of fact, he diagrammed some of the letters, some of the sentences to show me how incorrectly it was constructed.

KL: So he, after he finished his degrees, he was still at Berkeley?

KN: Yeah.

KL: Do you know what his work there was, if he was doing research or teaching?

KN: I have no idea. Because don't forget, that was between when I was born and when I was three, so you're not too aware.

KL: You weren't concerned with his career or physics when you were two? Yeah, okay.

KN: It was fortunate that I recognized that he existed at that age.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2015 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.