<Begin Segment 5>

RP: Your, can you give us your mother's name?

SI: Wakaye.

RP: And what do you, what about her do you remember?

SI: Not much. I mean, she was very gentle lady. And for one reason why we don't see them is because she was working every day.

RP: Where did she work?

SI: And a lot of time...

RP: I'm sorry, where did she work?

SI: At the cannery, fish cannery. And then to this day, you know, like, we used to... my oldest brother used to love to cook. So he used to cook for us and of course we never used to eat meat. That was... of course, meat was... why, I don't know. My brother used to go out and buy weenie. He used to make weenie and tomato sauce and onion. That's... that and the two thing that I can remember was he used to make that and spaghetti. He used to love to make spaghetti. And that was a treat for us. And once in a while we used to have hamburger. And I'd... but we'd cook it with, hamburger with onion and put it over the rice. So... but one thing, though another thing that Dad told us was, "You don't leave the table unless you eat everything on your plate." And not even one grain of rice, you cannot leave there. And that was the thing of the, I guess it's, most families were like that. That's how we, that's how we were disciplined.

RP: Do you know which cannery that your mom worked in? There was three or four of them.

SI: [Shakes head.] There was a...

RP: Van de Kamp's and...

SI: Well, I really don't know which one because when... the only way that Mother used to know which cannery that she used to go to work was by the whistle. One for this, two for that, three for that. And there was about, oh, I would say about half a dozen canneries over there. Yeah.

RP: So whenever the, whenever the fish came in, that's when they, when they'd blow the whistle?

SI: When the fish come in that particular cannery and when the whistle blows, it doesn't make any difference whether it's night, day or what. So they used to pack up and go work.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2009 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.