<Begin Segment 9>

JC: What were the values that your mother and your father wanted to pass on to you and your siblings? What were the things that were most important that you remember they were teaching you?

FO: Well, I lost my father very early. But I think the basic family, you might call it instincts, is to be good workers and strive and be good at whatever you do. So we all seem to have that, the drive to, to do well in whatever you get into.

JC: Did your spirit of independence and almost adventure come from your parents?

FO: Well, because my siblings, the children are all college educated, so we'll have to give credit to our parents, I'm sure, because it seems like we're all strivers. I have a sister up in Seattle. She has three children. They're all college educated. The youngest graduated from Yale. She's an attorney.

JC: Do you think that, this is just curiosity. Are the, do you think the values of, that you as a Japanese American, you and John as Japanese Americans, pass on to your child are different, or what is it you wanted your children to, what's most important for you to have had to have taught to your children, your child?

FO: Well, it seemed like education, I think it has to be talked about at an early age. You just can't say when you graduate from high school you must go to college. No, I think that's too late. I think it has to be from grade school on. You must do well in school in order to get into college, so it has to be in the growing up years. I think education is foremost.

JC: You mentioned that your father had passed away when you were young. Can you say more, what happened to your father?

FO: In an industrial accident while he was working for the Clark and Wilson Lumber Company.

JC: And you were --

FO: I was ten, ten years old.

JC: So your mom was, had seven children?

FO: Uh-huh.

JC: What was it like for a single parent to be raising children at that time? That would be in the 1930s?

FO: Uh-huh.

JC: What do you remember that experience or her talking about that experience?

FO: I think she kept much to herself. She never showed despair. We often marveled at how she endured because she never, at least to my knowledge, she was never one to show despair. And we wondered how she managed because she never let the children know or feel that of hopelessness, so we never felt the, the devastation of losing our father. My only remembrance is shortly after the death of our father, my personal feeling was I don't think I want to go to school. I wanted to stay close to home because something may happen to Mother. I remember that sort of feeling.

JC: Did she talk at all later on about what had it been like to have seven children?

FO: No. Those are my regrets, you know. When you, after you've lost your parents, you always think, oh, I wish we had more sessions. I wished we had more time. I think everyone goes through that, uh-huh.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2003 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.