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HH: When were you born, and what is your present age?

ME: I was born in 1917, which would make me seventy-seven? Boy, that's old. [Laughs]

HH: And you were born in, I believe you said San Francisco?

ME: San Francisco, yes.

HH: What were your parents' names?

ME: My father's name was Shinnosuke and my mother's name was Tei Kasuya.

HH: To what extent are you familiar with your family tree?

ME: Not very much. My father used to talk about a mother, a widower. He didn't know his father, I don't think, because he never talked about his father, and he said that his mother died when he was thirteen, and he was raised by an uncle in Tokyo, and he lived in Yokohama until he came to the United States. My mother, she was born in Himeji, Japan, in Kobe, Hyogo Prefecture in Japan. I don't know exactly when they were born, but my mother was ninety-one when she died in the late '70s. My father was seventy-two when he died in the '60s.

HH: How would you describe the city in which you grew up?

ME: Oh, San Francisco, I grew up in Japantown in San Francisco. And I don't know how I would characterize it, but it was a very cosmopolitan city because it was a port city and my father had a store in Chinatown, a Japanese odd goods store, and later just a Japanese silk, clothing store in Chinatown. And because I was brought up in that atmosphere, our lives were centered around Chinatown and Japantown in San Francisco. So other than school, I didn't have much association with any other ethnic groups at all.

HH: Most of your associations were with Japanese or Japanese Americans?

ME: I would say so. And in school, of course, I got to know a lot of non-Japanese, but I didn't make any real close friends among non-Japanese.

HH: What kind of schools did you attend in San Francisco?

ME: I went to the regular public schools. I went to a school called Redding grammar school, which many of the Japanese, Nikkeis attended, and went to Galileo High School which was in the Italian area. So my friends there are mostly Italians, and, of course, other Japanese.

HH: And when they finished Galileo, where did you go?

ME: I went to the University of California, Berkeley.

HH: I see. And you graduated from Berkeley?

ME: Yes, in 1939.

HH: 1939.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 1994 JACL Philadelphia. All Rights Reserved.