<Begin Segment 8>

SG: So after the war ended and your family struggling to get food, what happened after that?

MK: Well, my mother decided to become a maid, anything to survive. And then for a while, she worked as a maid at somebody else's house. But since my mother didn't know how to be a maid, so she acted like the mother of that family. And when the people came, they treated the real person as maids and then my mother was the mistress of the home, so that she got fired. She couldn't become a maid. Then she got, all the grocery shops and so on needed some bags, so she got all kinds of newspapers. I remember every time we came home, we had to make bags for the groceries so that that will bring in some income, anything to make money. And then, so I began to think how to make money. I remember, I don't know where I got this idea, but although we were all poor, the Japanese people were superstitious, they wanted to have good omen. When the New Year's came, they made with the straws some decorations for the home, the gate, the bicycles, and so on, and I was looking at them one year, and then said, well, I can do that too, but I had no money to buy any material. So I went to the outskirts, the farmer's house, and I picked up straw from the backyard and quite a bit of them and then brought them home and made a straw mat myself so I could sit on, and then I had enough straw to make Christmas ornaments, not Christmas, New Year's ornaments. And then I remember selling, putting this straw mat that I made myself, sitting on it with a couple of buckets. And then my brother Masataka, year older than I was, was my treasurer, and then he guarded the bucket. And then I remember selling the, whatever I made, the decorations, 30 yen, 50 yen, I sold them. And then that year, I remember we were able to have mochi, and then, but I didn't have enough money to, no. I made enough money to buy the mochi rice, glutinated rice, to have it pounded and make it into mochi. I remember that. I made about three buckets full of money, and I don't know if I was in which grade or anything like that. I did that for two years in succession. And then somehow, I had a bicycle. I don't know why. I was able to get a lot of straw in the back of the bicycle. And I don't know if I was able to ride the bike or anything, but at least I was hop, just go like this. I don't know. I was always thinking about making money for my family.

SG: So your mom really raised you and your siblings by herself?

MK: By herself for a while, and she even had this shop to sell bread. She always had kind of innovative ideas, and she started out right, but everybody else copied her. You know, everybody else, many people had fathers in the family. And then the moment the man came back from the war, immediately, almost immediately, their lifestyle changed. They began to live better because the man worked. And then my mother had to close the store because it got defeated because they had better, larger place than my mother. She tried everything. And then after a while, when my mother was at the time very attractive, thirty-five years old, so quite a few gentlemen used to come to the house. And then quite a few gentlemen wanted to marry my mother, and then, but my mother wanted to marry somebody who is very relaxed and casual. And then she got enough of, during the marriage with my father; although, they had a very happy marriage and both are good singers. They used to sing together and very good life, but she just wanted to get away from the formal, like my father had to appear in front of the emperor and so on. And sometimes my mother had to wear the best kimono and then appear in a kind of formal occasion with the navy officer's wives and so on, talk about nothing, and my mother didn't like that, so she wanted to have somebody who is casual, relaxed. So she chose with all the candidates, among all the candidates, chose my future stepfather, and she made a mistake. And then because he was PFC in the army and coming from kind of lower rank in society, kind of casual family and, whereas when he came home, we all sat on the floor and bowed to the floor and said, okaeri nasai, welcome home. He was not used to being treated like that. That's the way we had to do when my father was alive. All the maids and we children all went up when my father came home and walked into the house and then, bow. We all sat on the floor and bowed to my father and, "Welcome home." And then so with the stepfather, he was not used to that. He felt very uncomfortable. And also the pressure that he had with all these little kids, I think was too much for him. And also my mother couldn't forget my father's love, affection, so had the kind of, kamidana where they, every Japanese home usually have a shrine and Buddhist altar, and then the shrine in the living room and the Buddhist altar in the family room, the dining room. And then my father's box, the government sent us an empty box with the name inside say that this is the deceased, your father is killed, was killed in action. It was wrapped up in a white, instead of taking that into the shrine, my mother kept it in the family shrine. And every morning, we had to go and clap our hands and say, "Good morning, Father." And then after that, every morning, I had to give the water, fresh water. And I remember the little bit of rice to my father, and then, "Good morning, Otousama," and then went to the family altar, and then we did the same thing and made a noise, ching, and then, "Good morning all my ancestors and my deceased brother." And my mother couldn't let them go, so that my brother's urn is still there. We used to open up and look and touch my brother, say, good morning. But I tried to do that with my father, but nothing was inside it, you know. We opened it up and looked inside it. It's only that white paper with the name on it.

But things like that, that our relationship with my father in this spiritual way disturbed my stepfather immensely. So once in a while, being a teenager by that time, when I didn't agree with my stepfather, I says, "Oh, I wish my father were here," you know, all these things, bad things. Now, I understand. But at the time, I didn't know. And my mother kind of encouraged us to remember my father as being a great man, so I think my stepfather felt inferior or never accepted. And one morning, something happened, maybe I was a sassy girl and said something, he got mad. And then we are all having breakfast, and we're all sitting on the tatami floor, and then he just tip the entire table, put it upside down, and we just lost everything, all the food and everything, and he walked out. That was the end of him. And then meanwhile because of the pressure or maybe because of the way he was, he liked to gamble. And then he was a good businessman, but he gambled the money away, so my mother always had problems trying to kind of smooth the situation, and she was getting tired too trying to do that and bring up the children at the same time. But during those years my stepfather was with us, I think financially we are doing, we are not starving. We are surviving.

SG: How did you feel about having a stepfather?

MK: Well, if my mother had told us, "This is going to be your father, this gentleman is going to be your father, be good to him," I have a feeling the situation would have been very different. But my mother didn't want us to forget our father. That's where my mother made a mistake, I think, that we kind of had a tendency to look down upon the stepfather. Well, our father was so good, you know. Well, you're terrible, no education, and all this stuff. Teenagers, they're rebellious to begin with. We didn't know what we are doing. And then the fact that once in a while when I woke up, my stepfather was holding my hand, and I said, as a teenager, I felt kind of, I don't know why. I just resented him. He was trying to be nice to me, I guess, because I was the most difficult child to him because the rest of the siblings would follow whatever I said, and I said that you do this and they all did. But somehow, I just couldn't accept him as a father. But it was just too bad. Now I realize that if my mother only had told us to accept the stepfather, we would have done it.

SG: How long did he live with you?

MK: I think only several years, I think, less than several years, I think.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2003 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.