Densho Digital Archive - Ann Sugimoto Interview (denshovh-sann-01-0003)

<Begin Segment 3>

RP: Your mother originally, from what I've read, wanted to be a doctor.

AS: Yeah, that's right. That's why my sister, she should've been a doctor, the one... she wanted to be, and her father said, "No daughter of mine gonna be a doctor," you know, in those days. But my sister took my mom back to Japan when she was okay, and she said she gathered a couple of her friends and she said there was a lady that did become a doctor. But in those days they didn't... unusual. But my mom, she says, "Well, the next thing best to be a schoolteacher." We had a lot of schoolteachers in the family. But she said, well, she's okay. She never wanted to become a schoolteacher, but that's one way of getting out of, go to Tokyo in those days.

RP: Your mom really stressed music at an early age.

AS: She liked music. We were little kids and she used to take us to the Hollywood Bowl. I remember sleeping way up there. She really liked music, you know.

RP: So she did, did she teach you piano?

AS: No, no, she was a schoolteacher, but she liked music, and my brother... his dad was a real good singer, too. My sister was, my oldest sister was a very, and she was a good musician. She minored in music, UCLA and all that. But my mother, beside that, after she graduated, my brother went back -- oh, he, he remembers, he was only four years old when she went back to kind of get together with her mother, and this woman there... I guess she was still living to this age. She was pretty elderly woman, but when my brother went, just before he passed away, and he said this woman said, "Yeah, your mother was the, she was the village queen. She was very pretty." She was pretty. She was really pretty. Even... we didn't mind it. You know how when you, when you're little kids you don't like your mothers to come to school and all? My brothers didn't... my mom was coming to school and I remember one of the teachers saying to me, "Is that your mother?" Because Japanese ladies in those days, well, they didn't speak the language too well either. My mother wasn't too hot at that. But she always would like to visit us, and the teacher would say, "Oh, is that your mother? She's very pretty." She was very pretty, they would always tell. A very attractive woman. So anyway, that's how it ended up. That's how we got to America, anyway.