<Begin Segment 33>

KP: How many times have you been back to Japan? You said you'd go a couple...

TM: Five all together. Five times, yeah.

KP: You go to visit family there still?

TM: Yeah, that's all I did. I didn't go visiting, I mean, travel much. I just go visit family.

KP: This is the same family you met in 1930 when you went back?

TM: Yeah. See, my mother had ten in the family see. So spent a lot of time there. But now she only has one sister living, living there now, see. And, yeah, she lives at, in a home someplace and I visited her the last trip I was there. That's about five years ago I went there. I was gonna go again this year but I don't know. I have a hard time walking now. And I enjoy going there, yeah.

RP: Is there any cousins left from your, or other relatives --

TM: Yeah.

RP: Of your father's family?

TM: You know, recently I had thirty-six cousins just on my mother's side. See, she had ten brothers and sisters all together. And when I first went there, no, second time I went there, I counted all the... I didn't meet all of 'em but there were thirty, thirty-six cousins. But there's one cousin I see all the time. Because the husband is really a nice guy and he takes me around. Yeah. The last trip I went, he took me to a prefecture, Kagoshima. And that's where the kamikaze planes were. And he went to the museum there, and these kamikaze plane, they were paper-thin plane. You should go to Japan.

RP: I'm hoping to go.

TM: Yeah.

RP: So this museum is totally devoted to kamikaze?

TM: Yeah, all these guys, sixteen to eighteen years old guy, all perished, kamikaze. All their pictures are all over the museum, yeah.

RP: Are there any relatives left on your father's side that you visited?

TM: No. Well, we weren't too close. I don't, I don't see any of... I have a few cousins over here I used to see. But, no, I don't, so I don't go to my father's side of the family, yeah.

<End Segment 33> - Copyright (c) 2008 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.