<Begin Segment 2>

RP: Tell me what you can about your family background, both your maternal and your paternal side in Japan, where did your parents come from?

GU: I knew very little about their background other than the fact that they came from the town of Hiroshima. They lived in the farm there, away from the main town of Hiroshima.

RP: Can you give us your father's name?

GU: Father's name is Masaichi, and mother is Shizu.

RP: And they both came from the general area?

GU: Of Hiroshima.

RP: Outside of Hiroshima.

GU: Yeah.

RP: Do you know if your father had much schooling at all?

GU: He just went through part of grammar school. He didn't go to high school.

LU: Yeah, I don't know for sure, but he came here when he was young. And I think when he first came, he worked in Montana area on the railroad, that's all I know. Before I started to realize it, we were living in Florin, California, so I guess somehow he got around to Florin, California, and started the farm.

GU: One thing I heard about him working on the railroad was that because he was small... well, most Japanese people were small. Anyway, one of the, I guess, managers, the leaders of that group that he was working for took, decided he would be better working in the kitchen or something where it was a little easier for him as far as physical labor. So he became a pretty good cook, himself. Even after we were growing up, he did some cooking and was good at it.

RP: Was he better than your mom?

GU: No, I wouldn't say that. [Laughs]

RP: There were two cooks in the family.

LU: I guess that's why when we first went to Manzanar, he, right away, he started working in the kitchen.

RP: He was a cook in the mess hall?

LU: Uh-huh.

RP: Well, we'll want to talk about that a little bit more, because we just recently restored a building to look like a mess hall at Manzanar, so we'll talk a little bit about that later.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2009 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.