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LG: I don't think I asked this. What did your father or parents do for work here in Seabrook?

DM: Oh. My father, when he was in camp, he used to work in the warehouse. So when he worked at Seabrook, he worked in what they call the cold storage where the packed items were stored. And then he was sort of like, not the boss, not the top boss, but he was responsible for making sure that if they wanted two thousand packages of this brand loaded into a truck, that he had to load that truck. He knew what had to be loaded on that truck and he had to make sure that the right product was loaded onto the truck. And then my mother, she didn't like to leave us alone. And for a short time, my grandfather worked, so she would take... she wasn't like most of the Japanese women who worked at the plant. She would take jobs that would leave her free, so we never came home to an empty house. We never had to go to the childcare center, and she was always there to make us our meals. So she was sort of an American housewife, and she was able to do it because she was frugal. My dad earned enough so that they didn't need the second income to survive, so she worked in the, as part of Mr. Seabrook's enterprises, he had a rose business. So she worked in the rose room for a while, and then when we were old enough, she went to work in a sewing factory.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2023 JACL Philadelphia. All Rights Reserved.