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Takaezu - 1 - 3

Q: But the mullet you ate?

Takaezu: Yes, we did. And at night the mullet would be jumping and we'd have this rowboat. And these wonderful waterlilies. They had the day lily and the all-day lily. The pink ones would bloom in the morning and at midday it would close. But we used to have a lot of that. And people used to stop just to take photographs.

So we had a good life. We raised our own animals and we had our own garden. And my father was not really a man who could work that hard. He was strong, but he wasn't raised to do labor type of work. He likes to play chess and play the instrument. Consequently he moved from one place to the other. And it was hard on my mother. She worked in the cannery for the time being, but raising all the children was, I think, quite difficult.

Q: Did the children get along pretty well together?

Takaezu: Oh, yeah. We still do. We enjoy each other's company. We hate to go out, thinking what we're going to miss. So I think my mother did a good job that we enjoyed each other's company. But she didn't want us to be out together all the time. She always encouraged us to go out on our own, but to be friends. And when she died three or four months ago, that's the concern that she had, that we would all get together.

And I did tell her when she was ill that she had raised us in