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RP: Your father's family owned, they were a land-owning family?

AS: From there, too. Yeah, they were well-established families. But my father came over quite early. I understand he came over (...) to learn the language...

RP: How did he learn English?

AS: Oh, I don't know. Isn't it unusual? He went and came all over Los Angeles area. At that time, with the discrimination, you know, they would not sell land to the Asian people, so at least he had a produce business. He was, he established that. He would just rent it. And he was one of the founders of that Ninth Street Terminal Market, I guess they called it.

RP: Did he have a large, did he come from a large family in Japan?

AS: He is from a, yeah, he is from a large, nice family. Not too many people came from that prefecture because it's a large prefecture and I guess they had... they were pretty well-educated, I think, his family. The way... I met some of them, but my father was, he's one of those people that really... you know he went all, he went to Mexico, too, but he didn't want to establish in there, so he came here and he worked schoolboy. And you know up there in Dominguez Hills? He worked, it was, it's called Carson Estate now. This Dominguez family owned that, all that area, and we used to go by there to go to the beach. And my father said he worked there, too, as a schoolboy to learn the language. Imagine that. (...) I guess he married the (...) Dominguez daughter, and then they found all that oil. But my father was telling us about how he worked there, also. He worked all over, at least to kind of learn the language. And at the end he did work for this -- it's a very touching story -- he said he worked for the judge, Smith. And it was a funny thing, I just wondered how I got my name Anna, kind of unusual, huh? But I have a Japanese name also. My middle name's Uta, U-T-A. And so later on when my older sister (...) went to Polytechnic High School -- you know that's in L.A. -- she had this gym teacher named Anna Smith, and that's the Anna Smith I was named after. Isn't that unusual? My father worked there to learn the language, so that's how he kind of got to know the language. But my father was real gutsy. [Laughs]

RP: Yeah, in reading some of your brother's book, it's mentioned that he was pretty self-taught and very good with figures.

AS: Oh yeah, he was very good at figures, numbers, which everybody in the family, except me, is pretty good in numbers. He used to run that thing, abacus. Oh, you should see how fast he used to run that thing. Unusual for a young fellow, he got established in the business, and so he was in the market area quite a while, long time. And we lived in this old house there, and he had boys there. And the funny thing... when my mother came, she was brought up... well, big farm family, and she didn't know how to, she just knew how to study and stuff, 'cause they had people... her family raised horses because that's for transportation, and then they raised silk worms. And so they had people to cook for the... so my mother didn't know how to do anything. Just study. So she went on from the village school to the high school and to Tokyo, so she was, she marries my father. He has these fellows living -- and she didn't know how to cook, but she's telling me she put this noodle in and it was going over, but she always told us, " As long as you know how to read, you learn." I mean, it's kind of embarrassing to say, but that's why she never wanted us... we were kind of lucky. We never had to wash dishes. She wanted us to... be active, we took piano lessons and all that, clubs and... so she says, "Just study." She did the dishes. Unusual, huh? To hear from Japanese family.

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