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LT: Today is Tuesday, April 22, 2014, and we are interviewing Mary Nakamura in Ontario, Oregon. I'm Linda Tamura, and Dana Hoshide and George Hoashi are in the room participating as well. So, Mary, thank you very much for joining us. You were born on March 17, 1924. And where were you born?

MN: In O'Brien. Well, probably midwife. I mean, there's no hospitals there, and everybody was born by a midwife.

LT: Okay. So you were born at home.

MN: Must have been, I don't know. [Laughs] They tell me I was born on the 17th, but with a midwife, you wait until they register you. So I'm registered as the 21st.

LT: Okay. And O'Brien is outside of...

MN: Kent.

LT: ...Kent, Washington. And Kent is north of Auburn.

MN: I don't know my directions, it's the next town, Auburn.

LT: Okay. And what was your name when you were born?

MN: Haruka Hori.

LT: And was there significance with the name Haruka?

MN: "Spring smell" is what they interpret it as, because I was born on the 21st, which is first day of spring, used to be.

LT: Okay. But when you grew up, you were known as Mary. How did that happen?

MN: Well, first grade that we went in O'Brien, they named all of us English names. So there's Mary and George and John and Jack. It's all English names that were given to us by the teacher, because we had Japanese names and they couldn't pronounce it.

LT: So how did that feel to you to have been born Haruka and called that by your family at home, and then to have a different name when you went to school?

MN: It just fitted, I guess. I just accepted it, and that was it.

LT: Your father, what was his name?

MN: Shigeichi.

LT: Okay. And he was born in Hiroshima, Japan?

MN: Uh-huh.

LT: What kind of work did his father's family do in Japan?

MN: I don't know exactly what they did. There was a plot of land in front of the house, so it must have been farmers, too.

LT: All right. And your mother, what was her name and where was she from?

MN: Shimano, and she's from the same, the next village to my dad. And her name was Otoshi.

LT: Okay, Shimano Otoshi. So how did they meet?

MN: I don't know that. That's too long ago. [Laughs]

LT: Okay. But they lived close by and they married in Japan.

MN: I think so, I don't know.

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