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HH: Today is August 27th, the time now is 11:47, and I'm doing an interview. What is your full name?

YO: My full name is Yoneko Watanabe Okamoto.

HH: What is your occupation?

YO: My occupation? Right now I am retired, but I was formerly a medical record librarian and then a school secretary for fifteen years.

HH: And your parents' name?

YO: My parents' name, my father's name was Isaburo Watanabe. My mother's name was Hama Takeuchi.

HH: Where were they born?

YO: Both of them were born in Tokyo, Japan.

HH: I see. Do you remember the approximate year of their birth?

YO: I do not know, I cannot figure that out, I'm sorry.

HH: Where were you born, what year?

YO: I was born in Tokyo, Japan, 1918.

HH: And where did you grow up?

YO: I grew up in Hollywood, California.

HH: Hollywood? How old were you when you arrived in Hollywood?

YO: When I arrived in Hollywood, I was five years old.

HH: How would you describe the Hollywood, California, that you knew when you were five?

YO: Oh, Hollywood was just beginning to become a movie center. I remember going to different places to watch them film the "Our Gang" comedy outdoors. I remember the star Nancy Carroll, who used to have football pictures, and it used to be filmed in the high school grandstand. And they paid people three dollars a day to sit in the grandstand, and I often wanted to go, got my friends to try to go with me, but we were too young and they would not let us in, therefore we could not make the three dollars a day. [Laughs]

HH: What grades did you attend at school in Hollywood, California?

YO: I attended Fairfax High School up to the twelfth grade. From there, I went to, actually, it was Los Angeles junior college later they renamed it Los Angeles community college, and I went there for two and a half years. So I do not have a college degree. I do have what they call a civic health, it's an associate degree.

<End Segment 1> - Copyright © 1994 JACL Philadelphia. All Rights Reserved.